"The lawsuit, which was filed in June by the Massachusetts attorney general, Maura Healey, claims that Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family knew that putting patients on high dosages of OxyContin for long periods increased the risks of serious side effects, including addiction. Nonetheless, they promoted higher dosages because stronger pain pills brought the company and the Sacklers the most profit, the lawsuit has charged." I get that pharma companies are publicly traded, but it is beyond jarring to see literal drug-pushing from the company-controlling family."Richard Sackler, a son of a founder of Purdue Pharma and its onetime president, told company officials in 2008 to 'measure our performance by Rx’s by strength, giving higher measures to higher strengths,' according to an email written by Mr. Sackler, contained in the filing.
There's a lesson to be learned here in regards to the legalisation debate. This whole thing was basically a nudge nudge wink wink legalisation of recreational opium in pill form, with basically no oversight or regulation. The drugs were legally produced by pharmaceutical companies, and sold to users by dealers who were so legitimate that they could even publicly advertise their businesses. It would be interesting to see some graphs of the effect this had on the dark economy versus the open economy, but of course such numbers will always be just estimates. I imagine a very significant amount of money were denied the cartels. Addicts paid sales tax, dealers paid income tax, and the Sacklers became billionaires instead of the Escobars. Millions of US citizens ended up addicted, thousands dead. It's one thing to legalise a relatively harmless narcotic like cannabis, something else entirely to legalise something with the harm potential of opium, at least without proper oversight and regulation.
I will find you a book in the morning. Basically what it did was give America a heroin epidemic because a conscientious doctor will cut you off, or your insurance benefits will cut you off, or you'll lose your job because you're an addict, and you discover that heroin is hella cheaper than Oxy. Purdue basically allowed for the creation of the Xalisco Boys and all that followed.
I do not. It's worth noting that Quinones was the person who did the investigative journalism to track down the source of the heroin; from a public safety perspective police forces weren't focused on incarcerating dealers because there was no crime wave to go along with it. Not only that but there was nobody "big time" so the typical DEA structure-hunt was worthless. I recommend the book. One thing I didn't realize is that this "OH SHIT WE'VE HAD AN OPIOID EPIDEMIC FOR THE PAST FIVE YEARS" wasn't the typical case of a slow burn of outrage that eventually boiled over until the news media gave a shit. It was a handful of public health officials that started to notice an uptick in "other" deaths in the vital statistics data and painstakingly went back through thousands of counties' reports to get medical examiners to standardize on "overdose". That took more than a year and once it was done, there was the stark evidence of an opioid epidemic in full tear. Realistically speaking, 2015 was the year we went "ohhhhh shit look at the data for the past few years". After that, everyone looked around for a Pablo Escobar to blame for killing America's Promising Young Quarterbacks & Prom Queens and when they didn't find one, they floundered around looking for an angle. It took a while to to settle on "well this whole thing started when we decided opioids were okay to prescribe like candy" at which point the blame game began anew. In the midst of all this, painting up a bunch of part-time ephemeral day-laborers from a province you've never heard of as Public Enemy #1 isn't particularly effective when Republicans are busy inventing MS-13 out of whole cloth and clamoring about El Chapo.
I dunno, man. This has an "extinction-level event" kinda vibe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purdue_Pharma#Oxycontin-related_lawsuits That's twenty two attorneys general coming for blood and they've already pleaded guilty and paid out $600m on federal charges. All that discovery, all that caselaw is like a Github for "build your company-killer" lawsuits. They do $3b in revenue a year. Maybe they can survive a bullet or two but this is kind of looking like the end of Bonnie & Clyde.