The perception or fear that the settlement might be withdrawn weakens the position. The Sacklers are the bad actors and the minions who did their bidding. Let us not forget that the wrongdoing can be obscured in this current climate of moral obfuscation and lies unless we the public and the survivors persistently pressure the courts for adequate solutions.
1
In bankruptcy, that is called fraudulent conveyance.
2
Money laundering
1
One of the many terrible outcomes of Purdue's actions is that now OxyContin is withheld from people in serious pain who really need it. Purdue said this drug was "non-addictive." Doctors should have known better, but they apparently gave it away like Christmas candy.
2
If the Sacklers had an ounce (or even a gram) of decency they would announce that they are endowing 10 regional treatment centers with $1 billion each to help people who want to get off of opiods. They could do all that without admitting to legal culpability, or even being (formerly?) evil. I'm guessing that they'd still have a few billions left. But these people don't care about anyone but themselves. My god--they might not be able to have fresh cut flowers in every room in each of their homes, though I'm guessing they'd still be able to fly on private jets. Meanwhile, some people would get help, and they good feel good about that. Instead, I hope their guilt rots their souls.
2
In the period 2007-2013, Purdue refused to use technology which would have reduced dramatically the illegal diversions of OxyContin along their supply chain. It was less expensive for them to pay fines of hundreds of millions of dollars, rather than control their distribution and supply chains.
The scam worked like this: a pharmacy would place an order for Oxy. Purdue would fill the order, and place it into the delivery chain. Anywhere along the supply and distribution where an illegal diversion occurred, would result in two things: an insurance claim against the loss; and, a second order to Purdue, to replace the stolen/diverted product. Purdue *wanted* more theft, because it meant more orders, more production, and more profit. They deliberately refused to learn about, and deploy, technology which would make such theft/diversion much more difficult.
The Sacklers deserve none of their wealth. All of it should be clawed back.
1
source, please
The family deserves criminal charges, as do the doctors and pharmacies that consistently doled out too many pills to the same person. I can't even get cold medicine without signing a special document at the pharmacy window; and I'm limited to one.
But what are we going to do about very wealthy people that are under investigation for fraud and other crimes from sending billions to another country to hide? I know we live in a global economy, but this is the nonsense that must stop. Now.
2
Money is definitely the root of all evil. Money and the power it buys. These people are despicable, flooding the market with a drug that addicts. And kills. And for what? How much profit is enough?
We are ALL touched by the opioid crisis, whether or not it involves our family members. It feeds a criminal element that makes us all susceptible to the drug trade's addictive tentacles.
Over $10 billion dollars was skimmed by the Sackler Family. Skimmed over a dozen years - and no one noticed until now. Gives you an idea of how deep the coffers are for this family.
There is no justice.
3
@Len
"Over $10 billion dollars was skimmed by the Sackler Family. Skimmed over a dozen years - and no one noticed until now.'
"Skimmed"? From whom? The Sacklers own the company, they can take out whatever dividends and distributions they want. Skimming is when cash receipts are diverted before they are ever reported or declared as income to the owners and the government.
@Len
Money is not the root of all evil. LOVE of money is the root of all evil.
Meanwhile someone selling a 5s heroin bundle can get serious hard time. Oh and they are now selling their overdose meds to China. Where is the FDA and the FBI now. People selling a lethal dose of a narcotic are now culpable to a murder or manslaughter charge. Anybody listening?
3
And one asks, "How do the Sacklers sleep at night?"
A) Vampires don't sleep at night.
B) On satin pillows
C) High on OxyContin.
1
At this point, it’s more appropriate to call them “The Sackler Cartel” and not “The Sackler family.”
3
My sister died of an opioid overdose. You killed her, Sacklers. You should go to prison.
7
A man on a street corner in Staten Island selling “loosies” - individual cigarettes - gets choked to death by NYPD.
The Sacklers reap obscene billions from 250,000 opioid deaths.
The Sackler family needs to face criminal charges and have their blood money claw backed.
And may Eric Garner RIP.
8
I respectfully suggest these Sacklers' should be sentenced to spend the rest of their days in the ER and observe the poor souls, my grandchild included, die gasping for air.
130 EVERYDAY!
8
The Slackers should be left penniless when this is all over. They will no doubt go down in history as one of, if not the, most greediest families.
Don't leave them with a dime.
5
Moral of the story: if you’re gonna do crime, go big. Really big. Billions of bucks and thousands of deaths big.
No doubt the Sacklers all will continue to enjoy lives of relative leisure and luxury, albeit no longer the darlings of the artsy social set, for which I cry no crocodile tears.
Had each of them merely brandished a weapon and taken a few bucks from the till at the corner grocery or gas station, they’d all be behind bars.
4
Thank you for this article. Please would you investigate and report on Mundipharma. The Sacklers are moving the marketing of addiction overseas, exactly as the tobacco companies did when tobacco advertising was restricted in the US. Mundipharma is a plague being unleashed on the world. It could make the opioid crisis here look like a warm-up. And it could make much more money for the Sacklers.
1
Reality Check were did all money come from, insurance companys who paid for the drugs. Came from higher premiums we all pay for health care . Mean while wall street made trillions in captial gains. Follow the money
1
I know! Let's establish an independent federal agency that'll protect our citizens by monitoring and approving drugs and also make sure our food's safe. We could it call it th… - What? We already did that? Never mind…
2
These are modern day robber barons except that the Sackler's activities caused thousands of deaths. Their ill gotten gains should be treated the same as drug cartel profits.
1
Opioids help many, many, many times more people than they harm.
That's an well documented and indisputable fact.
If anyone should be held accountable for prescription related addiction it is the persons responsible for dispensing without monitoring.
Persons who buy opioids illicitly have no one to blame but themselves.
After watching the post-Deepwater Horizon $32 billion shakedown of BP by the Obama administration, I'd take my money off the table too.
Here's an idea: let's blame the whole opioid crisis on one family. Then we'll all feel better. Until we find out the blame is far and wide and this is not a simple problem.
5
Congress should pass laws which stipulate that if a company and its owners have willfully damaged the lives of scores of citizens and brought substantial loses to the society, the company and owners must forfeit all their wealth to the state to be distributed to the individuals, families, com unities and state institutions that suffered loses and are actively engaged in resolving and preventing of such criminal acts. We need more such laws to curb the insatiable greed of criminal minds such as Sacklers.
3
Read this article and then watch the video presentation on a homeless encampment in Oakland, California. Something is very wrong with this country and it traces back to the excessiveness of the wealthy. Elizabeth Warren's proposed 2 cent tax on millionaires is not enough no matter how much they whine. Are you listening Mr. Gates?
6
Ain't America grand? Capitalism above all else. We have completely lost our way.
3
Again, more evidence that the laws that apply to most Americans do not apply to the wealthy, as long as they can continue to buy lawyers and accountants to cover their tracks and make their actions look legal on the surface. Where do we draw the line between "too big to fail" and actual criminality? When are we going to be able to prosecute the powerful - such as Trump and the Sacklers - without cronies (such as McConnell) running interference for them? A two-tiered justice system sounds like it belongs in Soviet Russia, Communist China, Saudi Arabia, or pre-revolution France -- all places where members of the ruling parties were or are above the law -- not in the United States of America, where everyone is supposedly equal in the eyes of the law. It is way past time for Americans to prove that they stand for equal treatment under the law, no matter the perpetrators' social status, wealth, or influence.
7
I understand that the original premise behind oxycontin was that it would be a time release tablet and thus not susceptible to misuse by addicts. That premise was shattered by the fact that addicts could crush the pill, with their teeth or whatever, and thus get the full amount of opioid at once. When did that problem become publicly known? When was it resolved-by changing the design of the pills? What happened in the interim period. Separately, in response to folks who say museums, hospitals and universities should return the Sackler gifts-be aware that the family made a lot of those gifts before oxycotin existed. The amount of money generated by betadine, senecot and ms contin is beyond description. Imagine how much betadine the world used-the sales of that product could fund lots of art galleries.
1
"It could be used to support allegations as to whether the Sacklers intentionally withdrew large annual sums to shield the money from litigation as legal pressures mounted ..."
There is a glaring loophole in our bankruptcy laws for privately held companies such as Purdue Pharma. It was supposed to be that owners of privately held companies are fully liable with their own money. The Sacklers - as many other companies that go private - use these loopholes to shield themselves.
Make no mistake: This is indeed the business model of activist take overs. 1) Go private, 2) siphon the money, 3) go bankrupt w/o accountability.
5
@Jzu
There's no loophole in the bankruptcy law. Fraudulent transfer law provides that whenever any entity -- public or private company -- distributes money to its shareholders, that money can potentially be "clawed back" into the company so as to be available to pay the claims of legitimate creditors. The money can generally be clawed back if it can be proven that the transfers were made to deliberately hinder, delay or defraud creditors, or that the company was insolvent when the transfers were made, and the company did not receive equivalent value in exchange for the transfers.
3
How can human beings do what they did to other human beings?
4
The IRS needs to investigate the offshore holdings.
8
Let's face it, America. Our government only sees us as consumers with untapped pockets and not as American citizens.
The government seduces us to want more that continuously makes us feel emptier inside.
1
The only fitting penalty for this family is to take their money away. All of it. Let them feel the sting of poverty.
7
How about letting them share a cell with Chapo Guzman?
1
I hope all $10 billion is seized to partially compensate for the incalculable harm caused by their greed, their cover-up of the dangers of the drug they peddled, and their reckless disregard for human life.
7
OxyContin was introduced with a promise by Purdue's then-CEO Richard Sackler to create a "blizzard of white" of massive proportions. Anyone who doubts the family's intentions to create addiction to RX heroin need only look at this public statement.
8
I'm confused as to the point of this article. A family takes profits out of a business they own? Seems logical to me. I also am confused over why the Sacklers are responsible for the abuse by the public of a drug prescribed by Doctors? Where s there responsibility in this crisis. Why is it always somebody else' responsibility for our weaknesses in this country?
1
@Mark This article tells only part of the story; read the others, in the NYT or elsewhere, to get the background. You'll understand more once you've read about it.
The Sackler's funded a campaign based on spurious medical evidence to convince doctors the public that their drug was non-addictive.
When will they be arrested?
Did I miss that part?
The Sacklers are drug dealers.
They sold drugs.
They knew the drugs were addictive.
They continued to sell them.
They knew people were dying of overdoses.
They continued to sell them.
They knew people were struggling and sick and ruining their lives.
They continued to sell them.
They knew the drugs were causing unending grief and pain for the addict and their families.
They continued to sell them.
They knew that hundreds of thousands of people - daughters and sons and mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters - were being carted away in caskets.
They continued to sell them.
They even - so clever - built rehab centers and charged their own victims to get clean again.
When are the Sacklers going to jail?
If I went and sold drugs in downtown Portland I would be arrested and I would go to jail.
So why not them?
Because they're white? Because they wear expensive suits? Because they're wealthy?
The Sacklers belong in jail because they are drug dealers.
It really doesn't get much more simple than this.
145
@Katie The company made a legal drug, sold only by a prescription from a doctor, that is currently used to relieve pain for patients. It is still a legal drug available only by doctors prescription. Everyone, including ALL the people who use it, know it is addictive. How is that the Sacklers fault?
5
@Mark people who were prescribed the drug did not know it was addictive, we all know now but not when it first hit the market. But representatives from the company did know. Yes it is still available , but under very strict regulations. A doctor cannot prescribe an endless supply as was the case in the beginning. So now they have moved to third world countries, just like the tobacco industry did.
20
Mark, what they did was illegal since the company knew that the drug was addictive, yet passed it off as “non-addictive” to doctors and, subsequently, patients. Purdue Pharma created the slow release tablet in 1996 as a “non-addictive” opioid. It IS illegal to put a drug on the market without proper characterization. Now, as their time has come, they are filing for bankruptcy. It’s a cop out. Bankruptcy, like the article said, stays litigation. And in the past few years, they have transferred money out of the company, and into their own pockets, furthering the sentiment of corruption and fault. So at the end of the day, the Sackler family paid a few states, and are essentially walking free for murder.
26
Of course. Of course they’ve 10 Billion socked away in a small Swiss sock drawer.
It’s easy to criticize an amoral bunch of billionaires. The harder question is this:
Why did the FDA approve OxyContin?
I’m not a doctor. But even I know that any opiate, taken regularly over a period of time, will at the very least create a physical dependence.
This whole “safe opiate” lie was helped along courtesy of a U.S. government agency.
3
I mostly agree but you are omitting the significance of lobbying and corporate interests that increasingly are driving the government’s agenda. Just look at Boeing as an example. I believe in capitalism but when left unchecked it leaves us with the corrupting influence of wealth and power driving special interests.
4
NO! The Sackler family through Purdue Pharma manufactured drugs such as OxyContin knowing full well the addictive properties of the medication they were manufacturing. Actually, it is my understanding there are internal company emails which confirm that they then - increased the addictive quality - to profit their bottom line. That is why the Sackler family has billions of dollars at the expense of unwitting patients and doctors who believed Purdue Pharma's marketing claim that OxyContin was not addictive. How is this "non-addictive" marketing strategy - which the Sackler family knew full well throughout - not true- - and not prosecuted as a modern day form of mass murder? The Sackler family must be prosecuted for the thousands of people who have become unwitting addicted victims and many more who have died of overdoses. Sackler family members must be criminally prosecuted and their money seized and then used for addiction treatment and services.
5
Clawing back dividends made a decade prior to a bankruptcy is a bigger issue than the opiod crisis. Dividends are made every day by companies subject to not only contingent regulatory risks, but also actual known debts. Our economy functions because creditors can't attack the assets of shareholders of a debtor corporation except in extraordinary circumstances like insolvency or actual intent to hinder.
And all the states have a statute of limitations for such claims so shareholders can have a certain measure of finality, which presumably will time bar any claims for fraudulent conveyances made prior to 2014.
The Sacklers could tie this whole thing in up in litigation for years and in the end emerge with most of their billions intact.
This is News. But in a way, this is not news. Merely another feature of the American quasi-oligarchy. And Trump wants to make America into a country in which such things are not only normal, but essentially unmitigatable. I mean, if the "right" regulations are repealed, Congress writes the "right" laws, or a stacked Supreme Court interprets laws the "right" way, victims would have no basis for lawsuits. Money is power, and power is money.
8
Seize their wealth and sentence the Sacklers and their kin to live with and care for the drug addicted, in perpetuity.
5
They are/were drug dealer, kingpins, their actions caused death, they should go to prison for life.
11
The Sacklers should be in jail. I hope all that money makes them happy. I'd personally rather be poor than to be an anathema to society. I can't believe these people would be welcome anywhere in the world.
6
This is really sad that one family has made so much money off of Perdue Pharma by stacking the board and other things, this is nothing more that racketeering just like the mafia and they should be held accountable.
Really hope they are but I doubt that you can legislate this.
4
The opioid crisis claimed 42,000 lives in 2016, about the same number of deaths by firearms. Amazing how the government responded to the Opioid situation. Firearms.......you can hear a pin drop.
8
Sackler's knew of and profited off the suffering of addicts because of their product. Send them all to jail for a long time.
4
Can someone explain to me why the family is not on trial as drug pushers?
6
The legal acrobatics can be stopped in a moment. Just freeze every penny of every asset of the entire Sackler family and then they won't have a penny to pay any lawyer. Done! Although a fiction, think "Trading Places," only better.
1
@ggallo
"The legal acrobatics can be stopped in a moment. Just freeze every penny of every asset of the entire Sackler family..."
says the guy who knows nothing about the law. On what basis do you think you could freeze the assets generated by the sale of a legal product, approved and regulated by the Federal government?
To analyze a small piece of Sackler's empire/settlement:
The $200 million in opioid overdose treatment/narcan which Perdue manufactures creates questions. If it costs Perdue $3.00 to make one dose of narcan, is the settlement based on retail costs or wholesale? How much of my tax dollars pay my local library (who does purchase narcan) a pretty profit on their cost for narcan? And are those dollars now a tax write off for the Sackler family/Perdue?
What a dark family which is able to put dollar signs on the leading cause of death in the U.S. and while doing so, put those same dollars in off- shore accounts. I assume they take their own addicting drugs to sleep at night.
6
I cannot condone the metaphorical 'dragged out of their homes and onto the street' mentality, but I can understand how it might have occurred.
At what point do we decide that the big picture matters more than the individual? Do we really want a society with such extremes? Does that work? Has it been working so far? Dollars and cents over all? Forget about right and wrong; just ask yourself if it works.
2
I’m stuck on the $477,000 in cell phone bills the family reimbursed. Wow
1
The rich getting richer off the miseries of the less fortunate is the American way. After all, the rich are "job creators", so, apparently it's ok to lie, cheat and exploit everyone else for their personal gains...
5
400,000 plus. That is all we have to know. A mass murder of historic proportions. To resolve this without jail time is criminal in and of itself.
6
How is this not like a Russian oligarch skimming billions of dollars and sending it to banks in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands?
The Sackler family saw the walls closing in on Purdue Pharma and other opioid manufacturers and distributed the "profits" while they were still able.
5
This is another argument for a vigorous estate tax. The previous generation of Sacklers were the Makers, adding value to the United States of America. This generation of Sacklers are the Takers, living of the achievements of their parents.
Our one consolation is that when a family like theirs starts to run downhill, no measure of tax cuts will sustain them (Jared Kushner is still Jared Kushner, after all).
It is a pity, however to have missed out on all that tax revenue. The money the Sackler kids will spend on gold toilet seat covers could have gone the fix the MTA.
6
This is worse than what England did to China in the 19th century that lead to the opium wars. Yet Americans will not fight, and will likely re-elect the same corrupt politicians who enabled this.
9
The Sacklers were pushers, drug dealers in a national scale, dealing drugs they knew were highly addictive. They knew. Drug dealers selling bags of pot are in jail. Why aren't the Sacklers? Oh, yes, they are rich, they are beyond the law but in many homes where addiction and death have visited like a plague. There is no justice applied to the rich; they buy above the law.
12
They belong in the jail; made with small percentage of their stolen money and rest paid towards SS fund for futures of those who they helped killed.
3
These Sackler family creatures are a disgrace to the United States, their local community, race and religion.
As one who has suffered a death of a grandchild by their GREED I would hope the meet justice here on earth and not in the afterlife.
Discussed with our laws that permit this outrage.
Just what can be done about this in your face INSULT?
3
Certainly an thorough accounting and if necessary clawbacks from illicit trust transfers should be undertaken. However, we sometimes lose sight that the product was lawful and it was the entire ecosystem of researchers, manufacturers, marketers, regulators, prescribers and users none of whom had enough scruples to object when the going was good, too good. It is very similar to the mortgage meltdown where lenders, appraisers, brokers, borrowers, regulators and even home sellers were fattening at the trough of sloppy commerce and empty fiduciary practices.
3
No one is questioning the legality of their product. It was the pay offs and lies about the drug. The bribing of doctors and hospitals to push to over prescribe the drug.
Yes the Drs and hospital officials should also be held responsible for this epidemic.
8
I agree with you on premise. However there are many folks who comment that these folks are drug dealers and should be treated as such. They are perhaps corrupt and venal. Corruption takes two or millions to tango. Apply the laws that stand.
Gross example of Entitlement and Addiction, two sides of the same coin for the consumer and the producer.
3
The offer to pay 20% of their hidden funds would still let them be rewarded by over EIGHT BILLION DOLLARS for their actions. Some punishment!
6
Under RICO laws, all assets are seized when drug pushers are caught. What’s the difference here? That it happened in plain sight? Time to dismantle this cartel.
7
@Rmski77
For RICO, you need a "predicate offense," i.e., an illegal act. The difference between this and cases where drug dealers have their assets seized is that here the drugs sold were legal.
1
And the crime here is, what?
It's their company and their money.
You can't buy opioids over the counter at Quickie-Mart.
Doctors have to prescribe them. The opioid epidemic begins and ends with Doctors over-prescribing and sometimes criminally so. In the exact same way antibiotic resistant germs have sprung up. That and patients still insisting that antibiotics will cure a cold. Which they won't.
Now, of course, Doctors don't have ten billion dollars lying around but the corporation does. So instead of going after who is truly responsible, of course, go after who has the money.
Pharmaceutical companies are no more responsible for people getting addicted to their product any more than a bar is responsible for some dunderhead getting drunk and drowning in a river.
But, in America, and particularly when there is money involved, someone else is always responsible.
We blame society but we are society.
7
@Raven
Sorry it's not that easy. Purdue know OxyContin was addictive, and they paid doctors to prescribe their product. Both the doctors and Purdue where complicit.
At no point did Purdue issue a warning of the long term addictive effects of OxyContin. That's irresponsible and negligent.
5
@Raven Purdue did exactly what the tobacco companies did: they knew the product was deeply addictive yet encouraged and enticed thousands of doctors to overload patients with opioids they didn’t need and in many cases did ask for, all while hiding evidence of it being deeply addictive. I remember going to the dentists for a root canal and getting a bottle of 30 oxys that I didn’t ask for or want!! They were getting free vacations in return for prescriptions and other bribes. Purdue got hundreds of thousands of people hooked on a drug known to change pathways in the brain permanently. They pushed the product as non-addictive, while knowing the truth. They clearly saw the problem developing over years, even as some states had many times more prescriptions than the actual population, yet they chose to rake in money while ignoring the ravaging, deadly effects on communities.
2
@Carl
All opiods are potentially addictive; that is why they are so highly regulated. And if it's all the fault of the drug, how come only about 3% of the users become addicted?
1
“We need full transparency into their total assets and must know whether they sheltered them in an effort to protect against creditors and victims.”
That's a rhetorical question, amirite?
Of course they are stashing billions. I mean, wouldn't anyone? What if they were forced to get by on a measly 1 or 2 billion? Won't somebody think of their children??
6
They are criminal drug dealers of the worst kind and they should be prosecuted as such.
11
The entire family -- every adult member over 18 -- needs to be facing hard jail time -- at least 20 years -- and be grateful it is not a lifetime sentence for murder.
They are a despicable pack of criminals.
$3 billion is a joke -- they clearly have 10 times this much.
Time to break up those "tax havens" in foreign countries....
12
why are the Sacklers not being charged with crimes?
17
This “medicine” is Heroin wrapped in a bow; patients listen to their doctors, who listen to the drug reps. Patients trust their doctors.
10
How much should the Sacklers pay?
Every penny OxyContin put into Purdue's coffers (gross, not net -- no allowance for expenses).
Why should they be allowed to keep any of it?
15
It's much easier to get rich when you have no conscience whatsoever and are willing to profit from the deaths of others. May the Sacklers receive their just reward in the next life, because in this life their money will shield them from everything.
"Behind every great fortune there is a crime." – Balzac
8
The Sacklers are no different than El Chapo. Actually, I can make a case they have killed many more than El Chapo and all Mexican, Colombian and other Latin American drug lords combined.
13
If this family is granted this golden parachute of capital transfers after destroying the lives of so many, with full knowledge and shameless marketing enthusiasm, in a tidal wave of opioid distribution, walking off filthy rich and scot-free, how can any parent look their child in the eye and tell them that capitalism is anything but evil?
283
The loser won't have to, Ralph Petrillo. The Court's sufficiently stolen.
3
@SR : if you mean "the Supreme Court of the United States"...even if you believe that, the High Court is a court of APPEALS .... it has nothing to do with this kind of hearing.
2
@Gowan McAvity - Being a 'super liberal capitalist," I think that at some point capitalism just turns into extreme greed and then out and out theft. I don't know at what point capitalism becomes evil, but it's somewhere along the road.
17
I guess people who died from Oxycontin didn't use it as directed.
1
Why is there no mention of arrests and prison terms? just settlements and payouts? The company was already found guilty in 2007... then the family has 9 years to continue siphoning out the cash? This country is just as corrupt as Russia. Why do we put up with this? Follow the money and put all of them in prison.
7
I read a profile in The New Yorker a couple of years ago about the history of the Sackler family and what they have done since coming to the United States. The three original Sackler brothers marketed Valium in the 1960s in exactly the same way the family marketed opioids in the 90s and beyond, with fake research. Every institution that has received blood money money from the Sackler family should return the funds. The Sackler family is disgusting, greedy and evil.
8
what I have a problem with is those medications that were taken away from those who have chronic pain problems. there are people who have chronic conditions such as mine. I was hit by a car crossing the street at twelve noon. early sept and sun was shining and 78 degrees out. I was crossing the street with my daughter hit by the same car. she stepped in front of a 5 yr old boy who most definitely would have been killed.
instead she hit the hood of the guys' car with her left side. I was hit and flew almost forty feet away. the guy kept driving and hit another car who hit a van and a nine yr old girl died.
my daughter was in the hospital for two wks I went home after a wk.
he was high on PCP and drunk. PCP is an elephant and horse tranqulizer. WHO DOES THAT.
I went off of my tramadol cold turkey in 2017 since the DEA in NY was crabbing at the docs and nurse prationtioners in NY. I also am on Xanax for around 20 yrs. I have nerve pain and any other pain you can't imagine. I had 34 surgeries in ten yrs. my daughter was more fortunate since she was barely 18 at the time. I get nothing for pain except CBD oil from Colorado. I now have terrible weakness in my arms plus a whole host of other ailments. this is horrible.
3
Who would want to be named Sackler anymore? They have effectively erased themselves.
Recently returned to my old haunts from my student days in London. The Tate Museums, the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery...in their various ways saluting Sackler generosity. All fabulously free like in the old days but the joy of reacquaintance terribly tempered by near retching all who died, are dying in the most impoverished places in our nation. The blood boils like with Epstein, Weinstein...the polluters, the destroyers of the Rain Forests, Apple, Google, Facebook...the hunters for the rarest metals are racing to offshore banks and children in the DRC and so many other places are poisoned, young lives destroyed. It's not only the Sacklers.
7
Is Facebook any less addictive than Oxy?
Is Facebook any less detrimental to the mind, to the soul, or to our society? Opium to the masses?
5
big money, big crime, no jail.
welcome to America.
i'd love to be upset by this but I just can't get riled over criminals while the law is the enabler.
6
Divide their assets in the name of the people. Sackler $ should not only cover treatment, but pain and suffering that addicts and their families have gone through. In addition, Sacklers are responsible for payments to schools, hospitals, police departments for helping with the epidemic. I don't think they're worth a penny, actually I only foresee a huge debt in their part.
4
The Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration are both under scrutiny for delegating too much authority to the manufacturers, Boeing and Purdue Pharma.
The increase in authority by the company owners with less regulation spells disasters as we have seen.
If this oligarchy trend is not reversed there will be more tragedies.
12
This story would have been better had it made clear what the nature of the payments was. Were they dividends paid to the Sacklers as owners? Were they fees or payments for services not rendered by the Sacklers, ie embezzeled funds? Were the funds "designated to pay taxes" withholding taxes on dividends? Is this company 100% owned by the Sacklers?
I'm not an accountant or a lawyer, but I think these are some basic facts missing from this article. Without them, you can't assess the legality of the payments. The immorality of Purdue Pharmacy and the Sacklers is clear, but facts would have been useful here.
The link to the report takes you to a page of opaquely named court documents. Why not link directly to the relevant report?
5
I lost several friends in the hills of West Virginia that fell to this plague. It was a real wrecking ball.
The whole value of the money that Purdue made on the trade, and all the wealth made from that wealth, AND the cost to the communities and states devastated by it, should be tallied and recovered from the owners of that company.
The other companies in the trade as well.
There are various other parties of course that made the plague- all the local clinics and doctors that cashed in.
They too should be held accountable.
Make this sort of crime an act that not only may put these persons in prison, but take their ill gotten gains from them.
Leave them destitute as their victims, perhaps it will serve as a deterrent to others.
10
One wonders if alcohol / tobacco / firearms executive suites are also filled with sanctimonious rage at Sackler death-dealing drug-dealing profits?
2
How were millions of pills prescribed in small towns for years and years?
Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers may have been pushing opioids but really..... there weren't ANY red flags over the amounts being prescribed? How could government have let this go on for SO long? How many of those prescriptions were paid for by Medicaid or Medicare?
Purdue made a fortune but it couldn't have happened without help.
11
Others suspected of dealing drugs have lost all of their assets through forfeiture seizures without even conviction. Now that the drug dealers under suspicion consist of big pharma oligarchs with lobbyists and political connections, their assets seem uniquely exempted. Can anybody really hear the statements "all are equal under the law" and "America is a nation of law" and actually keep a straight face at the hypocrisy communicated by such proclamations?
13
@Brown Dog
Yes, of course, that's easily done. The very obvious fact, which you ignore, is that the drug sold by the sacklers were not illegal. Indeed, they were approved by the FDA, regulated by the DEA, and distributed only with a doctor's prescription.
5
Good luck to investigators and prosecutors. The Sacklers are even better at hiding their assets than at hiding the highly addictive potential of their opiod products.
4
Put them into a room with a handful of parents who have lost children in this epidemic — morning and lock the door.
6
It’s all well and good to go after the Sackler billions, but the Sacklers, in control of Perdue, acted with reckless disregard for human life and many people have died or have otherwise been deeply harmed. Where are the criminal charges against Perdue and the Sackler family?
15
Capitalism is truly wonderful... and les regulation is absolutely necessary so that investors can ge the returns they deserve. We don't need single payer universal healthcare. We don't need a min8imum income. People must work for their SNAP. and Three strikes no matter what and you are locked up forever is sehr intelligent. California must not be allowed to set emissions standards and we will sue any automaker that complies with the California law... but we really cannot have socialism. Let's see.. Do I now understand the US economy?? which is called????
3
Why am I not surprised?
And how much money did they contribute to (presumably) the RNC and individual (Republican?) candidates for national office?
3
@Steve Singer
I guess you missed the part of the article where they say that OxyContin was approved by the FDA in 1995. As I recall, the head of the executive branch at that time was a democrat.
2
Many of the Big Bosses, like the Shackler family, look at their fellow citizens like they are swine to be rendered for profit. That's it and that's all.
When they're caught, instead of being taken out to a wall after being found guilty and shot dead, they "plea bargain" with their ill gotten gain, pay off as needed and lay low for a year or so. Then they do it all again, more carefully.
The corruption of America is complete. You want your country back you are going to have to vote for it and fight tooth and nail to restore it to good heath. Let's do this together and do it now.
12
With so many deaths and lives destroyed, billions should be clawed back to set up rehab clinics to help those who are alive and addicted to these drugs. The family members, CEO, board of directors and managers are a directly responsible for this epidemic should go to prison for the rest of their lives with no chance for parole.
5
As for locating the billions the family has hidden and probably laundered, I can think of one good place to look: Trump Corp. Don't they pretty much have their fingers into everything that smells of upper-crust finagling, corruption, and evasion? What about all those golf courses, now? I think there's a 1% of the 1% that are into the international dirty money game up to their elbows and helping each other out. Maybe the scheme will finally start to crack when the authorities get their hands on the Trump tax records. That is going to shed a lot of light into some pretty nasty little corners of a global racket -- IMHO, of course.
3
Call me a heartless contrarian if you will.
Since when do we blame the producers of our vices for our own weakness?
You should indict every producer of alcoholic beverages for their role in causing alcoholism and every manufacturer of high fat junk food for the obesity epidemic. And I note that tobacco products are still readily available.
If the opioids were properly made according to FDA standards then caveat emptor!
27
@KMEC -
The really big money was made by pharmacies and medical practices.
5
@KMEC Please take a little time and educate yourself about the opioid epidemic. It’s a significant issue affecting our society and much more complex than your comparison suggests. It’s also costing taxpayers Incredible amounts of money between the homeless crisis, social care, shelters, hospital emergency care, etc.
56
@KMEC
Oxy was marketed specially as non addictive and gained huge market share and lenient prescription oversight because of that. As it has been proven that members of the Sackler family on the board and in other positions at the company suppressed this information that is quite a bit different than a beverage company that sells alcohol for adult entertainment, not to treat pain in teens and adults as "medicine.'
70
In a non-related event, I withdrew only $10 from my bank account yesterday. Not quite close to $10bn.
10
As much as these drugs bankrupted local municipalities, in every town, and in every state, and destroyed the lives of countless millions of families..... then the AG’s of these petitioning states must bankrupt this greedy family of their ill begotten wealth.
An eye for an eye.........
7
This Crime Family should be Test Subjects, for testing their Company Drugs.
Seriously.
7
@Phyliss Dalmatian
That's fine. The facts show that statistically, less than 3% of the people who took OxyContin became addicted. Yet everybody blames the manufacturers of this drug, which has helped millions of people. But for some odd reason, nobody blames the people who abused the drug, or the doctors and pharmacists who facilitated them.
3
The dictionary Mariam-Webster should add a new verb. My brother got Sacklered. Meaning he died of an Oxycotin overdose.
18
@Betsy Scala
Is Sackler the name of the doctor who wrote the prescriptions?
2
So, what’s the difference between this company and a drug cartel?
15
@Armandol
Donations to political campaigns. That's the difference.
15
Define political donations.
One wonders what Jason Greenblatt thinks about it, particularly as the Sacklers are responsible for hundreds of thousands of Americans’ deaths. Will Trump have to issue another edict?
1
The Sackler family knew how to count and move money like an experienced cartel, while ignoring addiction, overdose and death. They knew the stigma of addiction would provide cover for them.....and it did.
12
Big surprise. Rich people who inherited their wealth are drug pushers and crooks?
Just think of the kid from hood who gets 60 years for slinging a few pounds of rock vs. the white collar criminals who kill a few million people, make off with $10 Billion, file for bankruptcy stiffing shareholders, suppliers and anyone associated with the company.
They will never, ever be held accountable in the three tier justice system.
Level one - the poor... fined you death for minor offense to cover the cost of the court, throw away for life for stealing a cell phone.
Level two - moderately wealth - hire a lawyer get off minor drug charges and the like
Level Three - the Uber wealthy and connect - the professional criminal class - anything goes murder extortion, bribery, theft, zero tax rate and never ever jail. Even the most unlucky here end up in minimum security country club prison — why would the justice system ever prosecute one of their own
Rigged system
26
Readers recommend criminal charges and jail sentences but is that enough for mass murder?
Tobacco execs got away with deadly lies but we can stop white collar slaughter if we stop following Stalin's line that one death is a tragedy but a million deaths is merely a statistic.
7
@hank roden And the Sacklers are taking a page from Big Tobacco and going after foreign markets were both are very, very active today.
1
Let's not forget that the FDA approved Oxycontin etc. Whose pockets were those 21 physicians in?
4
@NOOK
Remind you of Boeing and the FAA cozy relationship?
1
What I don’t understand is that this was reported WEEKS ago ... and nothing has been done about it yet???? I couldn’t pay my income tax on the $16k I made and the IRS put Garnishment on my Social Security income!!! And guess who’s not going to be able to pay them this year either without becoming homeless?
Shame on the imbalance of justice based on money. Maybe they, or Trump could pay the opioid addicts who are suffering from the pain our nation has put on the 99% while people like the Sacklers have time to hide their assets!
7
nothing has been done about it because nothing has been done that is illegal. Taxes were paid on the money when it was taken out of the company, so I don't know why you are going on about unpaid taxes
@GMooG
I was trying to show the inequity the effort that goes into the minimal amount the govt gets from my garnishment which will not improve anything in the government to that of the Sacklers' billions which could alleviate some of the damage that was done that perhaps had the government had more regulation, could have been curtailed earlier.
2
@Mountain Dragonfly
Where's the inequity? You failed to comply with the law, while the Sacklers did comply with the law.
It begs the question how a corporate audit committee could approve billions transferred to the Sackler family over several years without raising any flags. Clearly, the board of directors were pawns of the Sacklers beholden to their plum payoffs. Clear justification for the importance of independent directors.
9
what's wrong with a company paying dividends to shareholders?
Only one question remains: when are the Attorneys General of New York and Connecticut and the US Attorneys for the District of Connecticut and the Southern District of New York going to file criminal charges against the Sacklers? Or are they indeed too important to pay for their crimes, like a 22 year old kid who sells a few dozen pills does?
12
All this but it won't undo the damage done by addiction to OxyContin, the lies that were told to get it approved by the FDA, the lives lost or ruined by what the drug did. And the Sacklers will continue to have wonderful rich lives while the people who were affected by the damage from OxyContin will not. Some people lost everything short of their lives. During that time the Sacklers were seeing to it that they got as much money as possible. What has happened is worse than criminal. It's amoral. It's one of the biggest reasons the FDA should be fully funded by the government and given the authority to enforce the laws and regulations concerning medications. The louder the pharmaceutical companies scream the better. Why should we be their guinea pigs?
14
$3 billion to settle all potential exposure to liability? Nonsense. Let's try $300 billion. But as stated earlier by NYer post, a good start would be to freeze all their assets, both here and abroad, until the courts have had a chance to assess the family's obligations to the society they so brazenly exploited.
17
Tobacco, Gun makers and Liquor sellers all destroy lives with impunity. Why shouldn't legal drug pushers think the same way? Are we going to go after the doctors who wrote these proscriptions? We only became interested in this Pharma produced epidemic when it stop being restricted to communities of color.
4
This is beyond sickening, but truly not surprising. The kind of people that will lie about the dangers of the drugs that they were marketing will take the money and run. According to what I have read the Sacklers knowingly lied about the dangers of Oxycontin. They lied to doctors and health care providers about the risks of addiction and death. Even when they became aware that people were dying they kept lying and making money. What does it say about our criminal justice system that these monsters are not charged with a crime like reckless endangerment. I want to see them lead out in handcuffs and spend the rest of their lives in prison. Some families will never recover from the pain inflicted upon them by their family members dying. These deaths happened because of addiction and the addiction was worsened by the lies from the Sackler family. Anything other than a life sentence is a mockery of our justice system.
10
Drug companies and the medical doctors are pushing billions of dollars worth of drugs onto the whole society . The Sacklers are just the tip of the iceberg. Corporations push drugs , alcohol , tobacco and now marijuana to make money and the population become addicts and alcoholics and die .
The Corporation only care about money and their investors and their profits .
2
This sounds like a PR campaign so as not to go bankrupt. "Temporarily" shut down production. Hmm until when? Until out of the public scrutiny? Simply shut down production and the whole design and move on to more responsible design and production. Also, we need to government regulation to take a more responsible and stronger stance on the vetting process. That is the consumer and citizen protection role they should be playing. We pay them tax dollars to do their job. In the long run, that security agency insures the public's trust in business and that is good for business too.
1
There is always this idea, that the rich, educated, and powerful can't be up to no good, and not have a conscience. Sadly, this is more than proved that they can do something like this. with this family. The headlines in the news, that is related to the Russian investigation, and the current President, and has been for over 4 years proves the point as well.
4
It's difficult to believe that a company with the ability to transfer more than $10,000,000,000 is bankrupt.
7
I am a family physician. Only when we have universal health care with robust and ethical oversight will our country and culture hold companies accountable and remove deadly products and practices. If E cigarettes, prescription opioids, and tobacco were infections , then they would be removed from the market or quarantined in a fraction of the time. But because corporations and 1%ers with insider connections to Washington and the establishment have too much control, we see countless suffer and deadly products remain. The effects of the opioid epidemic will reverbate for generations to come. The Sackler family should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
25
I was a drug rep, I sold a competitor to OxyContin, and I felt so yucky I quit without another job yet lined up.
I do know that where I peddled drugs the local Perdue rep made “bank” and I have often wondered how he fared.
While this is a unique situation and as it relates to the modern healthcare crisis, one way to curb prices would be to let the Feds set drug prices and to better fund research. More evidenced-based medicine and less Big Pharma influence in healthcare could have prevented much of the opioid crisis.
25
Another reason Elizabeth Warren is the right person for the presidency. Nibbling around the edges is not the solution to our money problems and corruption.
19
The US economy apparently "thrives on" light regulation of corporations. (This is, of course, as the GOP, with their unproven assumptions, would have it.)
Corporations have the wherewithal to hire sharp legal expertise, the expertise lying in how to get 'round the regulations.
Is it any surprise that corporate avarice goes unpunished, or, at best, is wrapped on the knuckles by class-action law suits?
A large part of the US still seems to assume a sort of frontier mentality: guns, confrontation, racism, sexism, legal battles (profit$ vs. fairness).
When will the country of my birth, rearing and education grow up? Is it any wonder we look "deeply confused, if not infantile" to much of the rest of the so-called "first world"?
18
The article very clearly states that OxyContin was approved by the FDA in 1995. Remind me again which GOP, anti-regulation, President was in charge of the executive branch then?
1
I share the righteous indignation felt by the many commenters here at those who have made billions from selling supposedly therapeutic pharmacological grade drugs that are over-prescribed or used recreationally.
I've also written papers and argued since I was a precocious teenager half a century ago, long before it was fashionable, that it's not the state's role to criminalise the purchase, consumption, possession, manufacturer or sale of any drugs, therapeutic or recreational.
The federal prohibition of the purchase and sale of alcohol, a recreational drug, created modern America's organised crime families, syndicates and gangs.
The same organised crime in the USA created by Prohibition went on to traffic in other illegal recreational drugs, in guns, in women and children, in animals, in illegal immigrants, in ivory and other animal body parts.
Both alcohol (ethanol) and tobacco are recreational drugs. Recreational drug users in the USA fuelled the demand for legal alcohol before Prohibition, illegal alcohol during Prohibition, legal alcohol after Prohibition ended.
Recreational drug users fuel the demand for tobacco.
Recreational drug users in the USA created the illegal drug industry and the cartels in Central America.
Recreational drug users created a market for therapeutic opioids sold for dubious therapeutic outcomes and recreationally.
Tobacco and alcohol are best regulated through taxation. All recreational drugs should be regulated in the same way.
41
@Colenso" it's not the state's role to criminalise the purchase, consumption, possession, manufacturer or sale of any drugs, therapeutic " Actually, it is the state's role to protect the populace from lying vultures masquerading as "medical support professionals". You remember the quaint old "Rule Of Law" days back when the public good was a thing?
11
@Colenso
What you say is in large part correct and doesn't even mention the perversion of the justice system and growth of prisons or use of drug laws to target minority populations but recreational drugs are a choice, prescription drugs are sold as "medicine" and there are laws that regulate marketing claims for products for good reasons. If oxy had been sold as a recreational drugs with clearly listed possible side effects then your argument would make sense.
10
@Colenso
You pretend to say one thing and you say another. Your rather elementary take on the free market (which, oddly enough, you fail to notice we don't have in the US) is disingenuous since you stringently apply it to addictive substances and nowhere else.
It is explicitly government's job to regulate business. If you were actually a capitalist, you would insist upon it. As we are learning today, a market professing to follow capitalist principles that is poorly regulated is unsustainable.
You say the manufacture and sale of addictive substances must be regulation-free. OK. Terribly wrong-headed, but OK.
But the creation of false marketing, investing millions to convince customers and clinicians of outright lies. Suggesting properties for your product that do not exist. These things must be regulated.
I'm guessing you lean toward "customer beware", but unless you intend to require every US citizen to get a medical degree that will never work.
Just like our politics: Let the "voters decide" is meaningless fluff when, at the same time, you encourage lies, half-truths, and the influence of people who stand to make billions of dollars to deceive and withhold information.
US voters, most of them, are in no position to decide anything except makes them mad and who they hate.
15
"While the audit provides a range of detail, it leaves many questions unanswered. The money flowing to the Sacklers soared after the company’s 2007 felony plea, peaking at $1.7 billion in 2009, with about $720 million of that earmarked for tax payments that year. Oregon noted in a lawsuit filed in May that though the Sacklers typically voted to receive annual percentages of sales ranging from 4 percent to 15 percent, by 2007 it jumped to 25 percent and, in 2008, to 65 percent."
Yeah, they milked the company before the courts could get control. If the ones in charge, and all who profited, aren't punished with prison and the loss of their wealth, we might as well defund the Dept. Of Justice and the rest of our corrupt government, including Congress and the "regulators" who have failed to protect the public, time after time.
15
Someone knows the names of the Sacklers who benefited from selling the addictive drugs and ignoring the deaths they caused.Why are these names not known and released to the public.We know the names of people like Bernie Madoff who stole and covered up crimes-it is time to name specific Sackler family members-they may not all be guilty, but those who are need to have their names in the Hall of Shame!
25
So these utterly vile people "directed" money from their murderous company to themselves. There are stacks of dead bodies underneath all that cash, not that the Sacklers could smell them. I'd like to see them and the Walmart Waltons (literally starving their employees so that they needed food stamps to survive) in prison for crimes against humanity.
It's about time to start prosecuting the plutocrats.
26
How can they sleep at night knowing they raised their kids with blood money?
11
Absolutely the Sacklers must pay. But why is it that we only got an opioid epidemic when it smashed into poor, white America? For years before poor African-American neighborhoods were swamped by Sacklers poison. Just look and see where in the USA those billions of pills went in 2000-2008.
20
Suckler gave money to Eva Moskovitz for the sham Success Academy and he had his daughter make a documentary “film’ about the Academy’s “lottery,” with its bogus claims about school choice. Have these people no shame?
11
I sincerely hope the tax fraud investigation has begun along with the shareholders suit for restitution of the funds taken out, whether as loans, payments of their personal bills or direct cash withdrawals. Since money is all that matters to soulless people like this you have to hit them where it hurts -- their wallets. Disgusting.
21
An amazing sidelight to this is I have a certain respect for people who were able to get thru medical school. It takes a certain amount of intelligence and perseverance. Then they believed the Sacklers sales pitch and couldn't see what was sitting in front of them?
5
I lost both my mother and step-father to addictive prescription drugs. My step-father was a 3rd generation physician. My mother worked in his office. He died violently of a drug overdose. Several years later, my mother committed suicide while home for a weekend visit from a drug rehab program. After my mother's death I also went into health care.
I loved my work at a massive 3000 bed psychiatric hospital. Part of that job was to oversee our busy continuing medical education program. I saw no problem in allowing well qualified professional speakers to come into our hospital to tell us professionals about the latest and greatest new developments in drug therapy for pain and anxiety. Yes I was naive! Surely they could not go on record and lie about the safety and efficacy of these new drugs. I was wrong. I was deadly wrong! We were told that many of these dangerously addictive drugs were SAFE and that these drugs NOT addictive when taken as prescribed.
I deeply regret my part in the current drug epidemic. I trusted a system of public health safeguards like the FDA and our political/legal systems. Big Pharma includes Big Money.
20
@Big Mike
Great comment. I appreciate your candour and honesty. It’s terrible that your step-father and your mother killed themselves by overdosing on addictive prescriptive drugs.
But if it’s any consolation, in my extensive experience of those who kill themselves, even if finally they kill themselves with drugs, the drugs are the weapons but not the cause.
More than forty years ago, in Bristol in the UK, I tried to help a sixteen-year-old boy, Mike, who came up to me, a complete stranger, in the street. I was only a couple of years older than he was. I was about to catch a train that afternoon back home for the summer hols. So much for that.
Mike was desperate. He had just been released from a psychiatric ward that afternoon.
Mike had nowhere to stay. He had nobody to help him. He had come home one day from school to find his mother hanging from the stairwell.
I rang Mike’s psychiatrist at Bristol General Hospital demanding to know why she had discharged Mike when he had no person to help him. She told me she needed to give his bed to someone else. So much for NHS England back then. It’s no better today.
Eventually, I found Mike somewhere to live.
I still have his Penguin paperbacks that he gave me because he wanted to make sure they went to a good home. He had illustrated many of them himself.
Since Mike, I’ve tried to help many others who have killed themselves, including my best friend.
Not drugs, but unbearable mental pain, were the cause of their suicides.
1
@Colenso Survivors of those that commit suicide have a load to carry. i have mostly dealt with it. The purpose of my comment is to show how various drug companies promoted dangerous addictive drugs for profit. I was inadvertently a part of that plan. 10's of thousand of lives ruined and lost. All done to make a profit.
How about a memorial for the thousands killed with the names of the Sacklers responsible for this epidemic and the list of the drug pushing companies and pharmacies that sold millions of prescriptions not reporting this to the regulators so we never forget. About time we make greed a crime like hate crimes, how can greed not be a crime when people die as a result?
13
Who, name by name, are the Sacklers? The NYT should publish an easily accessible, feature spread with names, faces, hometowns, "occupations" (for those who work), etc, of each of those who benefit from this family's fortunes. Given the shameful technical "legality" of much of the capital movement that this country's laws support, a name-and-shame campaign is one of the tools of those on the side of some form of justice. It should be used.
26
Among other troubling points brought up in this piece, the tax haven nonsense makes me ill.
14
It’s so easy to find a scapegoat, tar and feather them in front of every one but fail to address the real problem of which addiction is merely a symptom.
As someone who has experienced loss from addiction I think all this finger pointing and discussions about the cost of addiction, as if a dollar will bring back the people we’ve lost, is such a waste of good intentions.
People turn to substances for a reason and our society seems to be the perfect incubator for addiction. I don’t know the answer but I’m sure a couple of billion dollars shared amongst various governments and trial attorneys isn’t going to help any of the people who need help.
If we take the logic of this thinking to it’s end, we have to fine the fast food companies, the beverage companies and convenience stores for all the problems that arise from people being overweight. It just doesn’t make any sense.
6
Ultimately, Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers should have no real liability. They manufactured a drug according to FDA regulatory requirements. The real sinners in this mess are #1 doctors who wrote outlandish and irresponsible prescriptions and #2 patients who #doctor-shopped", coerced their doctors to write inappropriate prescriptions (i.e. by threatening them with reputation-destroying reviews and/or complaints to the state medical boards), or simply committed fraud to obtain multiple prescriptions.
The reflex to blame Purdue for the opioid crisis is much like the reflex to blame banks for foreclosures. Americans always want to blame the rich for their problems when the core issue is irresponsibility and often outright fraud perpetrated by ordinary people.
7
Part of the settlement should involve taking their name off of any institution that has benefited from their blood money.
13
The Sackler family suffers from extreme moral bankruptcy. Here’s hoping the courts enforce their financial bankruptcy as well.
28
This saga is laugh out loud funny. Calling it a toxic mix of pure gall and shamelessness does not come close to what this group of people has created-
A company manufactures and criminally markets a deadly highly addictive drug which helps launch a catastrophic heroin epidemic, siphons off massive amounts of cash as investigators close in, uses the company to illicitly pay personal bills totaling in the scores of thousands, moves money in a byzantine series of transfers apparently to skirt tax, corporate and investigative laws, offers a fraction of its criminal wealth to compel a settlement or threatens bankruptcy, and piously offers the company to "the public" so it can keep its ill gotten gains. Tax-starved officials then calculate the future profits, agree to take over the toxic enterprise, and the public goes into exactly the same enterprise as the Sacklers.
"Your Honor, I did the crime, but if you let me keep most of the money and avoid jail, I'll give the victims some of it, and show them how to be criminals."
17
@AG
You summarize and narrate well.... but its not funny, its tragic. You should write the screenplay. And I agree with you.
I think the Sacklers should be stripped of all their assets and those assets put into treatment programs and compensating families for overdoes deaths related to their products.
That said, as far as the new public beneficiary trust that the new Purdue board says it is considering forming: if they become a public trust (or even if they don't) the State's Attorney General where the trust would be registered would have a lot of rights of oversight. Some oxycontin should continue to be manufactured as it has an appropriate use--carefully, and under strict supervision. An example is if you are crushed in an auto accident--you might be grateful to have synthetic opiods as an option instead of heroin as a pain killer.
But that nit-picky point aside: you are right. Go write the screenplay.
6
We need to know "where" they stashed their profits not "whether" they did. Then we can file a class action suit so the Purdue family can build free medication-assisted-treatment centers that provide "wrap-around" care that includes not only medications such as suboxone and others to quell the craving for opioids but also health care, dental care, and psychological care to treat the PTSD of drug abuse, especially in rural areas where people don't have access to that kind of treatment.
20
I don’t even go to museums anymore unless I know their entire donor list because too much of the donated money from the rich, like the Sackler family, is blood money.
17
That sounds like willingly embracing ignorance to me.
For some reason I’m reminded of President Lincoln’s second inaugural address. The part where the wealth of 250 years of unrequited toil and every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall have to be paid by another drawn with the sword.
The Sacklers got rich of the pain and suffering of others by their outrageous lies that OxyContin wasn’t addictive. They have proven again and again they cannot be trusted.
Now they should be shown the mercy that many addicted Americans received during this insane war on drugs ... none.
30
@spughie
Someone said this elsewhere, and I wholeheartedly agree: may the Sackler family be visited by problems money cannot solve for seven generations to come.
I doubt they think about the thousands of people that have lost their life to addiction. And I am sure they don’t think of the broken families and orphaned children.
20
El Chapo is going to die in prison and the Sacklers will die in mansions in Bermuda for the exact same crimes. Well done, Bill Barr.
124
@Aaron
Bill Barr? What's he got to do with it? Oxy was approved for sale in 1995, by the Clinton Administration. Oxy was prescribed and sold in this country for decades, during the administrations of Clinton, W, and Obama. But now it's Barr's fault? Riiiighht.
6
@GMooG The unholy crimes of the Sacklers only recently came to light. Simply because a family crime syndicate was able to operate for decades doesn't mean you shouldn't hold them to account when you find out the horrors they've done.
8
@Hypatia
They aren't accused of any crimes. The drugs they sold were legal, approved by the FDA, regulated by the DEA, and sold only by dr. prescription. So what do you think Barr should do that no other AG in the last 25 years could do?
2
This family is the poster child of what ails America -- from pushing drugs resulting in the deaths of thousands of Americans for personal profit, to hiding their assets abroad. It's all there.
Hopefully they are not also one of those rich families that walks free because they have the money to buy their freedom.
Things in this country cannot change fast enough.
370
@avrds
And disguising it all in a shell of philanthropy.
31
We have the chance to change things this election, if we all make it so. Be involved. Don’t take it sitting down anymore.
51
@Lilly Election schmelection. Don't be so naive as to think that the government (whatever form it takes) will actually be able to prevent a power much greater than itself from continuing to do as it wishes. Big business pulls the strings.
13
"appropriately and legally....(distributions)" What are the laws that allow these funds to be hidden in tax havens. What can be changed, and how much is the payout to legislators to prevent this--for example is this in the billions or hundreds of millions of dollars? Perhaps Romney would know. 50% for taxes sounds fishy.
How many pills dispensed does $10 billion represent? How does this compare with any legitimate use of the drug?
4
The name Sackler may rightfully become a verb to describe the act of profiting on the graves of those who never realized the cost of pain relief.
47
The Sacklers should be rendered penniless for their propagation of a drug they knew was addictive while advertising non-addictive.
69
all opioids are potentially addictive. That's where they are so tightly regulated by the FDA and DEA, and why you need a doctor's prescription to get them.
1
@DENOTE MORDANT-Penniless, then forced to swallow their own addictive opioids.
Freeze their corporate and personal assets -- ALL of them -- until a court can determine the extent of their liability for all their illegal activities! Allowing anyone to shield assets from clear, possibly criminal, misdeeds is contrary to the law, fairness, and human decency.
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@NYer
they can't freeze what's overseas in a tax haven.
4
@D : no, but they can put the whole family in JAIL doing hard time.
A few weeks in a maximum security prison will have an amazing effect on their ability to withdraw monies from a tax haven.
12
@NYer
House them in a homeless encampment for a year, that will sober them up fast.
4
Get every penny they have. They caused so much destruction with their policies. I think if it can be proven that they deliberately vacuumed their company while causing so many deaths they should face the death penalty. Their wealth given to anyone in their family including their grand children should be taken away from them. They deliberately caused undue pain and suffering to hundreds of thousands. Do not settle until they are imprisoned.
238
@Ralph Petrillo YES,YES,YES. They are unrepentant mass murderers.
21
@Ralph Petrillo
of course if they had been black drug dealers, they would have been imprisoned a long time ago
further evidence of our double standard in this country
as well as the literal worship of money vs any better choice
worried we're not a democracy, but a hypocracy
24
@djs
If Republicans are so desperate to use the death penalty on a single doctor administering an abortion to a single woman requesting it, then they should see no problem in going after these blatant murderers and destroyers of families with equal vengeance. Don’t even talk to me about “saving babies” until you’re consistently putting stone cold corporate murderers of thousands like these behind bars first.
12
The Sacklers and their opioids are just a slightly more extreme example of what happens when government policy allows human suffering to be exploited as a profit opportunity. It is more obvious, but not so very different, as pharma companies pricing insulin at levels that are unaffordable to many Americans who are, in their way, "addicted" to the stuff. Same as smokers. This is the reason why Adam Smith, unlike the GOP, recognized the need for capitalism to be regulated.
214
@Maggie I suppose I could agree with the insulin reference if you'd agree that we're "addicted" to oxygen.
5
@Maggie
I don't quite get comparing insulin to tobacco.
3
@Maggie as a type1 diabetic, I need insulin to stay alive. This type of dependence is not an addiction.
4
These people make and push drugs which has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. That sounds like Mass Murder to me. They're worse than El Chapo.
They should be charged, tried and, if found guilty, they should spend the rest of their lives in prison. Their wealth, including the wealth which they have stashed abroad, should be confiscated.
I know they give to museums. I stay away from museums who have accepted blood money from these people.
343
@MIKEinNYC
I agree. The roster of major donors to museums and all other cultural institutions, and colleges/universities, etc, would curl your hair. The Kochs slapped their name on the NY State Theater (Lincoln Center) and on the fountain in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, so can't go there anymore.
12
In fairness the one who gave to museums was the one who died before Oxycontin, Arthur Sackler. He sold his share of the business upon death. His heirs, including his daughter Elizabeth who is on the Brooklyn Museum board, has publicly stated that she has not benefitted from Oxycontin money.
4
You do realize that a large proportion of the money that was given by the Sackler family was given by the founding generation, and decades before OxyContin was developed. I believe that it would be a mistake to boycott institutions that received funding prior to the invention of OxyContin. And perhaps check what other products Purdue developed that actually benefited the public.
2
What about criminal charges? A guy selling loose joints on a street corner gets rousted and spends time in a cell. These people killed thousands of Americans and offer to share a small fraction of their billions. At the very least this should point to their knowledge of their liability and hence it uncovers their intent to continue to sell Class 1 drugs to the public despite the clear indications and evidence of the danger each prescription represented. They knew it and still kept selling. People were dying and they were just sitting there counting their profits. Kind of parallels the ‘Too big to fail’ concept doesn’t it.
422
jail,
simple
60
@Rick A guy selling a single ‘loosie’ cigarette was murdered by the police. If you have money, no laws apply.
15
At this point of our human history, there is neither heaven nor hell on this planet - only purveyors of pain and greedy, duplicitous robbers.
The Sacklers found thousands of people to do their bidding and, as a result, drug pushers became a respectable industry. Now, that industry, on a dime, is switching to pushing remedies to cure addiction.
As the world turns...
Disgusting doesn't even begin to describe how I feel.
As you all watch the debates, watch for candidates who will not only talk about the "opioid crisis," but who will commit to jailing these criminals. Nothing less than that should be acceptable.
276
I would prefer candidates talk about what it actually is, the Deliberate Opioid Attack (which has left so many DOA indeed). Calling it a "crisis" removes responsibility, and "epidemic", as though it were some disease that just suddenly naturally happened, is right out.
The vile GOP uses powerful words; we must, too.
38
@Rima Regas If you sell a single ‘loosie’ cigarette you get murdered by the police who could not care less if you say “ I can’t breathe”. Do we stand a chance of growing into a caring, compassionate society?
6
@Rima Regas and then when I think of the lives ruined or lost because of what they did I think that they ought to sit in jail for a decade or three.
5
Car manufacturers kill more people than drug makers.
4
@PaulN Not the same. People can’t get addicted to driving or their cars.
6
@Galfrido
but cars, unlike Oxy, do not have to be prescribed by a physician
5
@Galfrido but people are dependent on the cars and shoddy infrastructure if no other alternative. On interstate 35 driving for 4 hours, I counted 10 cars - the rest were 18 wheelers and trucks- too many to count. On a 2 lane interstate that kills many people
I look forward to no member of the Sackler family ever suffering any sort of real consequences ever for dealing drugs to tens of millions of Americans and sending countless people to their deaths.
1
@Randall
Do you mean that you predict that outcome, or that you actually "look forward" to it? I presume the former.
This is horrifying and disgusting. The Sackler family all deserve a lifetime in prison after murdering so many people with their evil drugs.
16
Talk about a drug cartel! Do you suppose the Sacklers will be labeled terrorists?
Just unbelievable!
33
This literally makes me want to vomit. To think that anyone could be so selfish to profit off of someone else’s harm, AND THEN withdraw cash and effectively make sure they cash in on their inhumane operation before it crashes or gets shut down, just makes me shudder. As someone who nearly lost a family member to an OD, I just can’t even fathom inhabiting a consciousness in which such destruction of human life can be overlooked.
31
@JTG And this is just one drug and horrible family of pushers we know about.
3
The rich get richer and get away with it. The poor died from opioid addiction.
Is is that simple
50
Vote for democracy and money out of politics. Vote for Bernie and help create a just, civil, sustainable society, which doesn’t reward amoral psychopaths who profit from mass murder with billions.
2
@Hazelfern
Every class of folks have died. Poor rich young older all colors. Their premeditated acts were targeted at everyone
1
Thank you Massachusetts and New York! They need to pay all of their ill gained money to the victims and the victim's families, and to set up HONEST, nonprofit rehabs.
19
Hire the lawyer who got a lot of the money back from Bernie Madoff. He seemed to do a good job of recovering ill-gotten gains from a scoundrel.
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@Scottapottomus
Nobody got ANY money back from Bernie Madoff. The money that was recovered by the trustee in the BLMS bankruptcy was recovered from INVESTORS who had taken money out of their Madoff investments
@GMooG
And who got the money that was "recovered from the INVESTORS"?
Imagine if Pablo Escobar were alive and well and liking on Park Avenue, attending galas and having buildings named after him.
The Sacklers must be brilliant people to have done what they did and still be free.
17
Purdue isn't the only greedy pharmaceutical in our "free" country. Sanofi, Eli Lilly, and Novo Nordisk also have blood on their hands. Our T1D son, WITH insurance, and coupled with insane and bloated deductibles, has no choice but to go to Mexico for his insulin. He is incredibly fortunate in that he CAN go to Mexico. Other T1Ds have died rationing their insulin. It is well past time for this country to put the brakes on profits over patients. ALL of them: the pharmas, the PBMs, hospitals. . . it is criminal.
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@TooMuch here here. From this story and comments here you'd think Purdue is an aberration. No industry closer to the national welfare is less regulated and out of control today. Indeed, pharma sector underwrites a chunk of the FDA payroll to grease the skids and ensure faster new drug approvals. And even as the American Medical Association calls for an end to direct to consumer advertising of drugs--big pharma continues to push for the same unconstrained marketing campaigns in Europe. Justice should deal with the Sacklers, to be sure. But use this case to clean up the entire industry once and for all.
1
Why are we not putting these people in prison?
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@Stephen
"Why are we not putting these people in prison?"
Laws?
Consider that this is just the money we KNOW about, held and moved in secret by ONE family of corporate criminals. Consider that NUMEROUS companies supported either Purdue or the anti-regulatory vile GOP, themselves (e.g. Traffic Problems Christie) friends, beneficiaries, and legal fixers of Purdue and themselves offshore hoarders and tax evaders without exception.
Now tell me, without breaking into laughter or second thoughts, that we can't afford free college. Or Medicare for All. Or UBI. Or $15+ minimum wages. Or all of the above, with fully-funded regulators, without ever going any deeper into debt, national or otherwise.
Go on. I dare you.
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I agree with many of comments so far.
At least get back ALL their money but also indict them for criminal charges.
These people clearly knew what they were doing and the harm it was causing for many years.
83
this family needs to lose all it's money as pay back for the many who have died as a result of their evil
49
Why aren’t the Sacklers in jail?
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@JJ
"...for family members, including $17 million for their legal fees from 2018 to part of this year, as lawsuits escalated against family members."
1
Is there no member of the Sackler family willing to break ranks and speak out clearly about this egregiously immoral, unethical and greedy behavior? Amazing the family themselves have refused to get out in front of what will eventually be their ruin.
9
What, speak up and renounce the jewels, the Gulfstream, the haute couture, the house in London, the apartment in Paris, the chalet in St Moritz? None of the Sacklers will blow the whistle because they're all gorging at the OxyContin trough.
25
Over $12 billion in blood money on the books and likely some significant amount that the Sacklers have hidden. Considering the cost of healthcare in the US, this news is truly obscene.
76
No way to get that money back now for opioid claimants, state & federal governments or insurance companies. Bravo to their lawyers and accountants. Well done!
Ah, hold that thought.
Don't want to cast aspersions on the good family Sackler but from my couch, we in the hinterlands, those of us with no brains to speak of, call that acts apparent fraud upon creditors, apparent fraud upon the bankruptcy court; apparently hiding assets in anticipation of litigation; apparent R.I.C. O. violations; etc.
No worry Sacklers: take an Oxycotin- it'll calm you right down and soothe those aches & pains about to come your way! If you don't get addicted first.
17
@AG That sounded remarkably like an aspersion.
1
10 billion hidden in the Cayman Islands. Criminal behavior should be punished. The Sackler name is rightly being removed from museums and other cultural institutions.
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We need to claw that back. Then, if its decided they should keep some, we'll give it back to them.
They must know they are at the mercy of the justice system.
Anything less invites smarter, bolder, more deadly copycats.
Although their $3 billion offer sounds pretty hefty, if they offered it they know they can afford to give it away and never notice its gone. And $3 billion is nothing compared to the expense of caring for some of the victims, and their families, for the rest of their lives.
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@oogada
4 words:
Racketeer Organization Corruption Act
But I anticipate the Jello-like Trump Justice Dept will bend its knee to Big Pharma and sign settlements that 1) require no admission of guilt; and 2) collect a goodly sum but not treble damages or attorney fees or anything close to actual disgorgment.
That 10 B will reduced to a mere 7 Billion for the Sacklers, plus all the billions over the years salted away, isn't a bad haul at all for these legal heroin sellers! If your scam makes enough $, you can pay the fines and still keep the rest.
To the Sacklers: May each rotting drug overdose victim you intentionally created, by the scores of thousands, haunt your waking hours and your dreams down through your generations.
15
@AG
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO)
But we get your point!
The Sacklers would have to be certified psychopaths to have known they were causing hundreds of thousands of brutal deaths and have no conscience to bother them in the process. These are the kinds of mentally ill people this capitalist system rewards.
1
They took nearly 11 BILLION dollars. This should be a bar to any civil settlement unless and until the Sackler family disgorges the entirety of their profits.
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@cwppros
it's not a crime to take dividends and distributions from a profitable, solvent company
1
When that company is responsible for mass murder, it is not a legal entity in a civil and just society.
1
Every single penny should be given to the families of the victims of their greed.
31
They should pay all of it.
They should not profit one penny on the opioid crisis they helped create.
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How does this heinous criminal who sold this poison that killed thousands, walk around scot free with all that money while Eric Gardner received the ultimate sentence for selling loose cigarettes for a dollar ?
49
@Still Hopeful : while Gardner is a poor example (he wasn't executed, he was killed by accident) -- lots of people have gone to jail and done hard time for less.
If you or I stole something worth $2500...that would be grand larceny and we'd be in jail. Nobody would give us mercy or shrug and say "oh well".
There'd be no tax shelters in island paradises for us.
How does these evil people get away this -- right in front of the eyes of judges and regulators? HOW?
5
Revolutions have started for less.
70
This is exactly as we would all expect. What a pity investigations can't be kept secret, or failing that, have the assets kept frozen while the investigation goes on.
18