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Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#581

Post by 0x00_NULL »

beaeglebeachedd wrote: post #567
0x00_NULL wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Where was America getting their opioids before The Sacklers? Go ahead and pull a chart of heroin deaths vs. years and draw a vertical bar on where Purdue launched their widespread marketing misinformation and disinformation. This is the largest and most deadly episode of addictiveness since the tobacco companies were marketing cigarettes as healthy. If this were a fire, you’d be arguing: “…

Didn't we also invade the religious nutsos stopping Afghanistan from producing poppies and then prop up a fake regime that let it flourish, massively increasing the supply of natural opiates? If I recall, the timing works out pretty good with illegal opiate use ramping up.

We sure did. About 60-70% of all of the world's opium was sourced from Afghanistan until 2022. That supply was used to make actual prescriptions in non-OECD countries - like India & China - as well as sold to make heroin in the US, EU, Asia, and Africa.

But be careful about confusing cause & effect. The cause of the Afghani farmers growing opium was the insatiable demand for opium that was developed through legal means. Then, when countries like the US started to restrict access to opiates, addicts and patients alike started to seek alternatives to the scarce prescriptions.

More to the point, why didn't patients use something else? Because there is nothing. Purdue's misinformation actively discouraged the discovery of new non-addictive compounds for decades. No one was looking, and the R&D pipeline ran dry.

By the time enough doctors sounded enough alarms to cause a change in the late 2010s, research in non-addictive pain management solutions was decades behind. No one engaged in it because there was no need for it. Now that we realize it was all a lie and these drugs have killed millions, there are no alternatives. Very few potential compounds are even in Phase 2 clinical trials right now, let alone the half dozen that would be needed in Phase 3 to ensure we have a single alternate choice for pain management in the next five years.

So, the outlook looks bleak. Today, in 2024, we don't have good ways to manage pain that is non-addictive, and certainly no good way to reach the millions who are hopelessly addicted to opioids for pain management. But, very little of this is the patient's fault - and a lot of this is directly related to the monumental efforts of Purdue to misinform for profit.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#582

Post by treflop »

janice1999 wrote: post #402
janalsncm wrote: post #398

Pound for pound, the Sacklers probably did more damage to America than any other drug dealers in history. More damage than any serial killer or mass shooter. In my mind they should be considered public enemies 1 through N. I sincerely hope they face civil and criminal liabilities for what they’ve done.

You're really underselling it if anything. Over a million Americans have died so far in the opioid epidemic. That more than any of their wars, including their civil war.

Not to mention creating more homelessness, increasing crime and deteriorating our cities, strengthening Mexican drug cartels, providing business to suppliers in China.

They have objectively made the world a worst place.

I thought the lead guy was bad.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#583

Post by tgv »

freetanga wrote: post #576
pembrook wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always cringe whenever I see people giving McKinsey credit for stuff (good or bad). It's a powerpoint factory of 20-somethings with zero experience executing anything. To suggest the virtuous, humble Purdue management could never have figured out how to sell oxycontin and bend regulators--without the insight of a few powerpoint slides--gives me a chuckle. It's not like Purdue, a drug company, had any experience mar…

You might be partially right, but McKinsey Senior Partners have a very long list of friends to call, many of them former McKinseys in positions of power. So while the shitty PowerPoint might seem as the product, the actual product might be trafficking influences and coordinating favors, getting insider information from a competitor, etc. In this case in particular, if memory serves, they were advising the FDA in para…

They also provide plausible deniability. "Look, we have independent research by a reputable firm."

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#584

Post by wyldfire »

Retric wrote: post #570
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where was the FDA? Were the doctors all innocent? Is stupidity a good criminal defense? They should be all in the same cell.

FDA has some culpability, but the fraud was so effective Medical Schools where teaching students to prescribe more opioids. Perdue Pharma effectively hacked the medical system. I think the real takeaway is there’s likely more of this going on than we realize. The common decongestant phenylephrine being no more effective than placebo comes to mind. Without the mass deaths there’s apparently little to stop modern snake…

> FDA has some culpability

They appear to have left the oversight up to two individuals - ones with whom there was an obvious quid-pro-quo [1]. It's a stain on the agency and they should take responsibility and make changes.

[1] https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/how-fda-failure...

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#585

Post by sneak »

janice1999 wrote: post #402
janalsncm wrote: post #398

Pound for pound, the Sacklers probably did more damage to America than any other drug dealers in history. More damage than any serial killer or mass shooter. In my mind they should be considered public enemies 1 through N. I sincerely hope they face civil and criminal liabilities for what they’ve done.

You're really underselling it if anything. Over a million Americans have died so far in the opioid epidemic. That more than any of their wars, including their civil war.

7x as many people in the US die from cigarettes every hour, day, week, month, and year as from all opioids combined.

Cigarettes don’t even require a prescription.

If there is an opioid crisis, there is a 7x larger tobacco crisis, too.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#587

Post by sneak »

shawndrost wrote: post #435
doctorpangloss wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was prescribed a month's supply of opioids without a single comment from the doctor on their addictive nature. Is this really what the question was about? Reflections on a personal experience? Those are perfectly valid concerns. Nobody is stopping you from asking any of the professionals you interacted with about addiction, if you are worried, go and ask!

No, my question is about how people judge our opioid status quo: a medical system that prescribes addictive opioids for routine and low-grade pain.

Correcting in the other direction is way worse. I had a huge surgery last year in Germany and 8 days later when released from the hospital, bones still not yet fused, I was given no industrial-grade painkillers whatsoever.

I had to cop on the black market to keep from going insane from insomnia and screaming, until I could check myself into an inpatient clinic that would dispense them legally.

There is more harm in making them difficult to get.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#588

Post by soraminazuki »

rootusrootus wrote: post #209
chasil wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem of which I was unaware is that the Sackler family has largely fled the United States. Pursuing their assets introduces vast complexities of international law. "In a brief filed on behalf of the relatives of Mortimer Sackler, most of whom are based overseas, lawyers warned of “significant litigation costs and risks” in seeking to enforce any foreign court judgments against the family if the settlement were…

Considering the patience the US has with getting justice against other individuals who have fled our jurisdiction, we could do the same here. We also have an enormous amount of influence in the financial sector in other western nations, so we could at least make their lives less lavish and comfortable. Throwing up our hands and declaring it an unsolvable issue just encourages others to misbehave and then escape the s…

Come to think of it, it's mind blowing when you compare the slap on the wrist of a punishment the Sacklers have received against what Julian Assange had to endure. One is responsible for the deaths of more than half a million people while the other is responsible for zero. The justice system really needs to get its shit together.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#589

Post by locallost »

harry8 wrote: post #560

Matt Levine at Bloomberg gives an excellent explanation of what happened, the ruling, why etc without telling you what you should think is the right thing or right outcome. His explanations from first principles covering ground you already know are just excellent. Worthwhile reading for anyone who has to explain detailed, complex & technical subject matter. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-06-27/purdue…

As a layman, I find the dissenting opinion strange -- for a judge. Sure it might be more pragmatic and beneficial for the victims of this particular case to take the deal. But a supreme court can't possibly cover all cases, so IMHO it must deal with the law on a higher more principled level. The argument that the bankruptcy court did ok in this case and should be allowed to do this in general is iffy because it fails to take into account various realities of life, e.g. corruption. Limitless authority is for me not a good idea, and I think the decision of the majority makes more sense.

> A bankruptcy court’s powers are not limitless and do not endow it with the power to extinguish without their consent claims held by nondebtors (here, the opioid victims) against other nondebtors (here, the Sacklers).

But again, this is my regular Joe view on the matter. And it's true that the majority of victims in this case might be in the end worse off, but the decisions of a supreme court are relevant for a long long time.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#590

Post by jhgvh »

sneak wrote: post #585
janice1999 wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're really underselling it if anything. Over a million Americans have died so far in the opioid epidemic. That more than any of their wars, including their civil war.

7x as many people in the US die from cigarettes every hour, day, week, month, and year as from all opioids combined. Cigarettes don’t even require a prescription. If there is an opioid crisis, there is a 7x larger tobacco crisis, too.

Tobacco companies have paid out countless nine figure sums, smoking in public has gone from universal to mostly illegal, cig taxes have skyrocketed, etc…

Tobacco has been treated as a crisis, and I have no doubt that if cigarettes had been invented by one specific family, that family would be hated.

Weird that you don’t know any of this.

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