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Sacklers–who made $11B off opioid crisis–to pay $225M in damages

arstechnica.com

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Re: Sacklers–who made $11B off opioid crisis–to pay $225M in damages

#41

Post by spaetzleesser »

wombatmobile wrote: post #19

Dupont made more than $30 billion profit selling Teflon for almost 50 years, polluting the environment by dumping untreated toxic waste from the manufacturing process into virgin West Virginia landscapes the whole time. In February 2017, DuPont settled over 3,550 lawsuits for $671 million. Dark Waters Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvAOuhyunhY

We really have to stop letting wealthy people and corporations buy their way out of legal problems. Fines and settlements clearly don't stop bad behavior as banks and polluters have been showing repeatedly. The whole thing feels like a protection racket where it's ok to do illegal stuff as long as the government gets its cut.

Either somebody has to go to jail or the fines have to be on a level that they lose all of their illicit profits and more. Not just a part as it is now.

Re: Sacklers–who made $11B off opioid crisis–to pay $225M in damages

#42

Post by isbjorn16 »

veb wrote: post #30
isbjorn16 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who uses both (irregularly, only as necessary), legal thc / CBD doesn't even remotely compare. I have to get so high to even approximate the pain relief from an opioid that I'm completely nonfunctional. I had my first back surgery at 18, my second at 25, and I've been staving off 5 separate herniated discs since. I'm in a good place now (barring literally today), but I can't stress enough how useless you e…

Just a warning, Tramadol reacts very badly in some people. Like myself, just a single pill will cause me to have tonic-clonic seizures leading up to a grand-mal seizure later on in the day. Tramadol also has a bunch of shit in it, I feel like it's a 'dirty' drug. For example, it's very closely related to the chemical structures of antidepressants. This can be helpful, but not when you need to stop it. You also can't…

I wish I had known about the serotonin part earlier; I destroyed my back today on the dumbest thing and took one so I could get some work done. I wasn't taking an SSRI when I used tramadol more frequently, but I am now, and I probably wouldn't have had I known.

Sigh. I really don't know what to do in these scenarios, it's nothing but bad choices :(

Re: Sacklers–who made $11B off opioid crisis–to pay $225M in damages

#44

Post by titzer »

wombatmobile wrote: post #19

Dupont made more than $30 billion profit selling Teflon for almost 50 years, polluting the environment by dumping untreated toxic waste from the manufacturing process into virgin West Virginia landscapes the whole time. In February 2017, DuPont settled over 3,550 lawsuits for $671 million. Dark Waters Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvAOuhyunhY

This is just the people who were caught. There are literally hundreds for more every case you ever hear about.

Re: Sacklers–who made $11B off opioid crisis–to pay $225M in damages

#45

Post by imcoconut »

enchiridion wrote: post #38

This 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.

Correct. I do believe what they did was quite evil, and they should be disgorged of all profits - and if that bankrupts them then all the better. While 8.3bn is still not the 11bn they made in profits, it's still significantly more than 225mn. The headline is misleading.

Re: Sacklers–who made $11B off opioid crisis–to pay $225M in damages

#46

Post by [deleted] »

BaronVonSteuben wrote: post #9

I 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…

[deleted]

Re: Sacklers–who made $11B off opioid crisis–to pay $225M in damages

#47

Post by horsawlarway »

ManBlanket wrote: post #25
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #7

The 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…

The only thing the public wants is a scapegoat. An evil face to jeer at, some one or group of people to blame for a problem before moving onto the next hyperbolic issue. Otherwise perception of a problem is too diffuse, complicated, and nuanced to process in an iota of thought. Don't bother considering the fact this company acted in good faith with the law, or the blind faith people put into a medical system fundamen…

I don't want a scape goat.

I want a justice system that is capable of approaching some approximation of justice.

For me, personally, I don't think it's just to intentionally and knowingly profit off of the suffering and despair of those in pain with a chemical you damn well know is addictive and then walk away considerably richer than you started after "justice" is meted out.

Now - I agree 100% that the issue is much more complicated than this one family, and this one company, and I'm damn well on board for pushing to restructure our current for-profit medical system (I believe it's abusive to both practitioners as well as "patients")

But we cannot allow criminals to walk into a bank, steal 100 dollars, fine them 10 and call it justice.

This ruined disenfranchised families and communities across the country. The least we could start with is some fucking jail time.

Re: Sacklers–who made $11B off opioid crisis–to pay $225M in damages

#49

Post by spaetzleesser »

rpgmaker wrote: post #39

Big 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?

Both should be held accountable. Unfortunately people like to identify single villains or problems instead of realizing that there are many bad players. this is the problem with the whole US health system. Pretty much all parties involved (except the patient) make a lot of money but when people look for a solution they always they to find the one root cause. In reality it's hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and many others that live well off this insane system.

Re: Sacklers–who made $11B off opioid crisis–to pay $225M in damages

#50

Post by randomfool »

enchiridion wrote: post #38

This 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.

No- the $8.3B settlement was against the company, but the Sackler family has already drained $10.7B in cash out of the company.

They've known this was coming and drained as much as they could- from Dec 2019: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/sacklers-siphoned-ne...

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