Massive lawsuit says Sackler family broke laws to profit from opioids

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

A group made up of more than 500 cities, counties and Native American tribes across the United States has filed a massive lawsuit accusing members of the Sackler family, who own the maker of the opioid painkiller OxyContin, of helping to create “the worst drug crisis in American history”.

The lawsuit represents communities in 26 states and eight tribes and accuses Sackler family members of knowingly breaking laws in order to enrich themselves to the tune of billions of dollars, while hundreds of thousands of Americans died.

“Eight people in a single family made the choices that caused much of the opioid epidemic,” the lawsuit, filed earlier this week in federal court in the southern district of New York, states.

The same eight members of the family had recently been added to a small number of lawsuits that are underway against a string of opioid-makers, including the Connecticut-based pharmaceutical company the Sacklers wholly own, Purdue Pharma, but they have not been sued as individuals on anything like this scale before.

-snip-

Joanna Walters in New York
Fri 22 Mar 2019 05.00 GMT


Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/21/sackler-family-500-cities-counties-and-tribes-sue-oxycontin-maker

[New Hampshire Man]

1. Treat them like drug dealers

take everything they own.

[Hotler]

2. Kick their front doors open in the middle of the night and

drag their asses out in the street and make them lay face down and then seize everything they got.

[Faux pas]

3. Kickin' with gusto!

[mountain grammy]

5. Go get em! This is the evil in America..

Capitalism at it's worst..lie, cheat, steal and murder.

[diverdownjt]

7. Don't ask a repug to get onboard with this pushback against the rich...

As long as someone is making money off of it "It's Capitalism" our one and true GOD............


I'm with ya MG...

[Gothmog]

6. This lawsuit will be fun to follow

The Sackler family are scum

From Sam Bee

[Power 2 the People]

8. They make Pablo Escobar look like an amateur

Drain them of every dollar and piece of property they own. Nothing but drug dealing thugs.

[ck4829]

10. Indeed!

[ck4829]

9. K&R

[TexasBushwhacker]

11. I have a friend who ODed on Oxy

She was disabled with rheumatoid arthritis. May they burn in hell.

[ck4829]

13. Good to know

[Gothmog]

14. This museum does not want this family's blood money

Link to tweet

[Maxheader]

15. Meh..

Court documents accuse the eight family members of purposely playing down the dangers of the prescription painkiller OxyContin, which is more potent than heroin or morphine. They are accused of deceiving doctors and patients and directing sales and marketing techniques that drove huge over-prescribing and ever stronger doses for many patients who should never have been prescribed the pills in the first place.

They'll have to prove all that...'playing down the dangers'..'deceiving doctors and patients'..Why would the family members be working with the patients?...Over prescribing? Doctors call there..

[Jedi Guy]

16. I think it's more that they marketed OxyContin as a safe, non-addictive option for pain management.

They pushed it to physicians as a "safe" alternative to regular oxycodone with a lower abuse and addiction threshold. In its original formulation, that was a crock of shit. The later formulations were modified so it couldn't be crushed and then snorted/injected, but even so it was possible to get around that for people who were sufficiently determined.

At bottom, they knowingly lied and misrepresented the risks of the drug, and in doing so raked in billions and billions of dollars, all while people were becoming addicted and overdosing. They chose more zeroes in their bank account over the lives and well-being of their fellows. Those decisions started at the top and filtered their way down through Purdue Pharma.

Now, that being said, they didn't force the pills down anyone's throat. The responsibility diffuses somewhat to the users, who ultimately made the decision to put the drug in their bodies. But they did so without knowing the true risks of the product, because of Purdue's lies and manipulations.

[Maxheader]

17. Its all about chemistry with the docs now days...

They know all about the drugs they prescribe...the chemicals involved..how they affect you.
Nobody is going to convince me they didn't know exactly what the affects were...If nothing
else the patients would talk to to them about its affects...And as usual this is imho...