Unfortunately, unjust settlements like this are common place in our country, and after the outrage cycle dies down, this will be forgotten like the others. Nothing changes. What can we possibly do?
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Sacklers–who made $11B off opioid crisis–to pay $225M in damages
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Re: Sacklers–who made $11B off opioid crisis–to pay $225M in damages
#32The Sacklers engaged in unethical behavior to get people hooked on something that made them money. Easy opioid prescriptions created thousands of (mostly) functional addicts who were getting their fix in a high-quality control form via their doctor on a monthly basis. That's bad but that's not an opioid "crisis". You don't get a crisis because of a few evil billionaires. More things have to go wrong. What really turn…
So since the market created functional drug addicts that’s ok and the government caused the problem by trying to stop the market from creating drug addiction?
If somebody tried to stop a train that was speeding along a wrong way by putting a wall on its way, it would end in a trainwreck.
If you care about the passengers, that won't be a responsible thing to do, though technically the train would be stopped.
So, a trainwreck is what we see :(
Re: Sacklers–who made $11B off opioid crisis–to pay $225M in damages
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
What happened to all that money they made? I find it hard to believe they can spend that much money.
No no, they still have the money, they just didn't want to pay a big fine so they paid a small one instead.
It's "The War on Drugs Sold by Outsiders", commonly shortened to "The War on Drugs".
Any confusion is intentional.
Re: Sacklers–who made $11B off opioid crisis–to pay $225M in damages
#34It pays so well to be the bad guy. I imagine this fact would be an extra sting to anyone that lost a loved one and there is nothing anyone can do in their lifetime to change the system to prevent it. Been this way since the dawn of time.
Re: Sacklers–who made $11B off opioid crisis–to pay $225M in damages
#35I know everybody loves to hate on the Sacklers, but my life was dramatically better when I had access to opioids. Because of the "crisis" it has gotten really difficult to get them, even for people who need them. There are days when it's difficult to do much more than lie in bed in agony, but nobody beyond a small community of other pain sufferers seems to care. I'm at least grateful for the few good years I did get…
I both think that opioids should be more legalized/available and that if people break the current law, they should face consequences for doing so. If we have a punishment/deterrence-based society, then it seems like the deterrent is not working well for many large corporations. Giving a fine that is a tiny percentage of their money doesn't seem to penalize the behavior much, and more importantly, may not lead to behavioral change. I believe some people need to be held criminally liable and go to prison to stop some of the harmful behaviors.
I think the challenge is that even if someone saves 100 lives, if they kill 1, they face criminal consequences. Maybe coming from the assumption we're supposed to do things to help people, I dunno.
Re: Sacklers–who made $11B off opioid crisis–to pay $225M in damages
#36I know everybody loves to hate on the Sacklers, but my life was dramatically better when I had access to opioids. Because of the "crisis" it has gotten really difficult to get them, even for people who need them. There are days when it's difficult to do much more than lie in bed in agony, but nobody beyond a small community of other pain sufferers seems to care. I'm at least grateful for the few good years I did get…
While you're clearly in pain and vindictive for lack of access to effective treatment, putting "crisis" in quotes like it's a manufactured epidemic with no real impact is extremely disingenuous.
In 2018 ~130 people died every day in the US overdosing on opioids[1]. I'm sure they're effective for you but if people are not responsible enough to be trusted taking them without killing themselves then you might as well be arguing to legalize heroine for treatment as well. It would probably be even more effective.
And for the record I do think it probably should be legal for treatment anyway.
[1] https://www.drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/opioids/opioid-overdos...
Re: Sacklers–who made $11B off opioid crisis–to pay $225M in damages
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hear what you're saying, but it feels like you should be placing your blame on the sacklers too - if they hadn't pushed opioids on people who didn't need them, fueling the crisis, then there would not have been this backlash you describe. Like, we shouldn't be mad at opioids, we should be mad at drug pushing profiteers.
That's a reasonable point, although if they hadn't helped make doctors more comfortable with using them, then I may not have ever gotten them in the first place as they would be stingy with them like they are now. Hard to know where I would have landed.
“make doctors more comfortable with using them” is a bit of an understatement.
Re: Sacklers–who made $11B off opioid crisis–to pay $225M in damages
#38This is a misleading headline. It is part of an $8.3B settlement.
Edit: I should have read the whole article. The $225M is against the $11B the family has siphoned from Purdue.
Re: Sacklers–who made $11B off opioid crisis–to pay $225M in damages
#39Big Pharma is an easy villain to hate (and there's a lot to hate) but why aren't the doctors who prescribed all these drugs being held accountable as well?
Re: Sacklers–who made $11B off opioid crisis–to pay $225M in damages
#40I know everybody loves to hate on the Sacklers, but my life was dramatically better when I had access to opioids. Because of the "crisis" it has gotten really difficult to get them, even for people who need them. There are days when it's difficult to do much more than lie in bed in agony, but nobody beyond a small community of other pain sufferers seems to care. I'm at least grateful for the few good years I did get…
I think that maybe then you too should be mad at the Sacklers.
They intentionally and knowingly deceived the market that opioids were safe. Had they not done that maybe the opioid epidemic would not have happened and you could still have access to the medicine that you are grateful for.
Please do read up on how horrible they are.