Analysis

The Sacklers Got A Fine And Govt Immunity For Killing Your Relatives. This Is America

ANALYSIS
FILE PHOTO: Bottles of prescription painkiller OxyContin, 40mg pills, made by Purdue Pharma L.D. sit on a shelf at a local pharmacy in Provo

REUTERS/George Frey

Gage Klipper Commentary & Analysis Writer
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The Sacklers, the billionaire family that owns Purdue Pharma, will receive government immunity for their role in sparking America’s opioid crisis. The immunity is part of an agreement approved by a federal appeals court Tuesday.

With its decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit paved the way toward finally putting an end to the Sackler family saga. In exchange for immunity from current and future civil suits, the Sacklers will pay out $6 billion from their personal fortune. The settlement will finalize Purdue’s bankruptcy filing that has been stalled since 2019, the Huffington Post reported.

While $6 billion might sound like an astronomical sum, it’s not. It is but a drop in the bucket of the damage that this family has done. (RELATED: American Cartel: Billionaire Family Behind OxyContin Apparently Spends ZILCH Rehabbing Addicts)

Purdue’s “highly aggressive” marketing campaign began in 1996 and helped convince doctors to prescribe OxyContin to non-terminal patients that otherwise would not have received addictive opiates.

A hearing in the House Oversight and Reform Committee summarized how and why the family instructed Purdue to target “high-volume prescribers,” ignore “safeguards” against opiate abuse, and “deflect blame” away from themselves onto those suffering from addiction.

“Purdue Pharma created false advertising documents to provide doctors and patients illustrating that time-released OxyContin was less addictive than other immediate release alternatives. Furthermore, they sought out doctors who were more likely to prescribe opioids and encouraged them to prescribe OxyContin because it was safer. They did this because OxyContin quickly became a cash cow for the company,” a Committee on Oversight and Accountability press release read.

In the 20 years since the campaign began, OxyContin brought in $35 billion in revenue for the company. Unsurprisingly, opioid overdose deaths increased by 850% between 1999 and 2020 — over half a million people in total. Fueled by the relatively recent introduction of fentanyl, the opioid epidemic started by the Sacklers is now worse than ever.

For all this, the Sacklers will pay out less than half their $14 billion net worth, according to a “conservative” 2015 estimate by Forbes. Given their $1 billion real estate portfolio and prolific art collection, it is likely the family has maintained assets far exceeding this estimate.

Half of the $6 billion settlement is likely to go to the plaintiff’s attorneys, further enriching predatory, elite Americans. (RELATED: American Cartel: Nonprofits Unapologetically Accepted Millions In ‘Blood Money’ From Opioid Profiteers)

Even more gauling is that only $750 million of the $6 billion settlement will go to the plaintiffs, according to the Huffington Post. Divided up, that comes out to between $3,500 and $48,000 per plaintiff.

That’s it. Mom’s dead but here’s $3,500.

Yet it is about more than just the money. It is impossible to calculate a monetary value for the damage the Sacklers have done to the American spirit and way of life.

Americans have prided ourselves on the endless pursuit of human potential. It is that spirit of adventure that brought us here in search of a better life and drove our Westward expansion. It is what built the railroads, the skyscrapers, drove the quest for scientific discovery and built the most powerful economy the world has ever known.

Along the way, we built communities conducive to human flourishing. None of these feats could have been achieved without the social cohesion and trust that gets built through community support systems. Americans took pride in being actively involved in their communities, which created a sense of collective responsibility to our neighbors that helped us persist through the harshest adversities.

This ethos was a constant for generations of Americans throughout most of our history, but it no longer exists for many Americans in large part due to the opioid crisis. The new constant for modern generations is the vicious cycle of addiction. (RELATED: American Cartel: Secretive Sackler Family Exposed As Opioid Profiteers)

Those suffering from addiction often struggle to maintain stable employment which then leads to financial instability. This decline in socioeconomic status often comes with an increase in financial dependence. As a result, once prosperous communities have descended into poverty.

As opioid addiction tore through communities, families were shattered and trust eroded. It has caused social isolation, particularly during the COVID pandemic, as individuals withdrew from their loved ones and communities at large. The resulting breakdown in cohesion has undermined the traditional American spirit of neighborliness — the sense of collective responsibility sacrificed to addiction or abdicated to government.

The “intergenerational persistence” of addiction ensures the cycle continues, decimating the American way of life built on hard work, resilience and prosperity for generations to come.

After all this, the Sacklers will likely continue to be honored and held in high regard within elite society. While their name will come off buildings as part of the settlement agreement, their sins will soon be washed away in the news cycle. They will still be invited to red carpet charity events, museum galas, and society fêtes. Their names will reappear on new medical centers and art exhibits, and they will repair their reputation as wealthy benefactors.

Given all this, it is no wonder American politics have turned upside down and institutional confidence is at an all-time low. This is America now, and the Sackler family has played no small role in bringing us here.