When people sell drugs like cocaine or heroin and the consumer dies, they dealer is prosecuted for their death. The Slacker family has assisted with more deaths than any single street dealer and are not held to the same standards. This show how much political and monetary sway they still have. Slacker family highlights how perverse the US legal system is towards such individuals and how people are still not equal under the law.

Slacker family should be in jail for lying to the FDA about how their product was not addictive and for all the deaths they assisted with.

The Sacklers have not been stripped of the fraudulent earnings that they have previously taken from the company.

> The Sacklers strip-mined Purdue to avoid billions in settlement

https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/going-straight-to-top-ar...

Oh no, they have to live in Palm Beach? The Florida punishment for murdering 5 people in cold blood is a needle in your arm. What should be the punishment for murdering a million?

More precisely, the FDA’s trust was betrayed by Dr. Curtis Wright IV who did not follow their ethical policies and allowed Purdue to write parts of his review, and then accepted a job with them:

https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/wp-content/uploads/20...

The FDA clearly did not have adequate internal controls but I think equating the two is misleading since their failure was in not detecting fraud rather than perpetrating it.

Didn't GM do this as well with their ignition switches?

As in, they knew it was a problem, but decided it'd be cheaper to deal with repercussions instead of fixing it.

You mean the Ford Pinto case that was actually real, and lead to 27 deaths?

https://medium.com/@GallowayJefcoat/tyler-durden-was-right-a...

Now imagine a version where the steering cuts out every hour in every Pinto and they still don't recall.

Have you ever seen an old lady become addicted to morphine? Regardless, "this is why we can't have nice things", because of people, because of addicts who die from drug overdose and we are all blaming the drugs for it and preventing people from having access to painkillers for their chronic pain.

It should not even to be said, but pain fucking sucks, and no one should wish it to anyone. Being "addicted" to opioids for pain (or depression & anxiety) is not good, but in the same vain that it is not good to be healthy for you to take NSAIDs on a daily basis, but that is just life for you.

Sure, I am all up for a physically harmless, non-addictive alternative, but until then, let people who have chronic pain (or acute pain, does not matter) decide.

Because that was the wrong decision and a disaster.

> Tactics used to persuade U.S. doctors that potent painkillers could be safely prescribed have been used abroad, an investigation shows.

They've been underprescribed for probably a decade now. We started overcorrecting long, long ago.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6626a4.htm#:~:text=....

> First, average daily MME per prescription decreased after 2010, both nationwide and in most counties. The largest decreases occurred from 2010 to 2012, following publication of two national guidelines defining high-dose opioid prescribing as >200 MME/day (15,16). ... Nationally, opioid prescribing rates leveled off from 2010 to 2012, and then decreased by 13.1% from 2012 to 2015. ... This pattern, along with the trends in overall numbers of opioid prescriptions, might reflect fewer patients initiated on opioid therapy after 2012...

Agreed

When highly addictive drugs with rapidly diminishing efficacy are readily prescribed for the treatment of chronic pain, people should absolutely be blamed - but not the patients.

It doesn’t sound like you’re familiar with the case and why it’s being brought against Purdue Pharma. There is a whole lot more to this than “the drug” and “the person”.

Fraudulent marketing was the least of what they did.

Among other things, they set the recommended dosage and timing to maximize addictiveness (by repeatedly making the patients high, and then putting them in withdrawal).

It's quite strange to me that business leaders love talking about how they are being rewarded for taking risks when it's used to justify disproportionate executive pay and stock buybacks for investors, but in all discussions of economic and even criminal regulation surrounding businesses, a business being made to accept some liability for putting others at risk is considered too risky for business. At present, large swaths of the business world are heavily subsidized by the government, can write off operating losses on their taxes, are often funded by hedge funds and investors who don't seem to mind them being deeply unprofitable for many years, and hold things like the IP rights produced by any worker they've employed as a treasure trove of potential value to sell off for the benefit of the owners should the business fail. On top of that, we must also believe that it's good and right that it is nearly impossible to prosecute any actual decision-maker within a company for criminal conduct done or harm caused by that company, or else business is just too risky and the economy might collapse?

To me this doesn't even warrant consideration, it's ridiculous on its face and perverts the notion of rule of law

Murderous intent seems like a pretty easy line...? If you know your product is unsafe and then proceed to sell it anyway, well, it's hard to have sympathy for your moral ambiguity.

I'm all for opening up new uncertainties for businesses. Especially when they involve criminal intent.

So some of the Sacklers' assets can be considered when settling accounts w Purdue's creditors?