`Dopesick:’ How billionaires get away with murder
Event scheduled Tuesday at Glens Falls Senior Center
The Front Page
Afternoon Update
Monday, November 8, 2021
By Ken Tingley
If you want to know the real cost of politics, of corporate greed, of lobbyists who buy off politicians, then you need to study the makers of OxyContin - the Sackler family.
If there is any justice in the world, a judge would order their family portrait be published in every dictionary under “drug pushers.”
I first wrote about the Sackler family in September 2019. But I was already a decade late to the problem.
Purdue Pharma developed the opioid painkiller OxyContin in the 1990s, telling doctors it was not addictive. The FDA then approved unprecedented labeling that Oxy was nonaddictive. The person who made that decision later went to work for Purdue Pharma.
The Justice Department later learned that Richard Sackler, president of Purdue Pharma, was told in 1999 that drug abusers were crushing and snorting the drug and stealing pills from pharmacies while doctors were being charged with selling prescriptions to addicts.
Purdue kept selling.
The opioid epidemic took root in rural Appalachia first and spread all across the country, including locally. It led to The Post-Star series on the local drug problem on 2015.
It is estimated that more than 500,000 people died between 1999 and 2019 as a result of the opioid epidemic that the Sacklers created and profited from.
Purdue Pharma eventually pled guilt to a felony charge of “misbranding” OxyContin in 2007, and the Justice Department recommended three executives be indicted on felony charges.
Somebody was going to go to jail.
It was later learned that officials within the George W. Bush administration weighed in with the Justice Department and each of the Purdue Pharma executives were allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor “misbranding” charge. The company and executives paid a combined $634 million in fines.
And the opioid epidemic continued .
At the same time in 2007, a local doctor was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison for selling prescription painkillers. Court records showed he issued at least 248 fraudulent prescriptions for OxyContin tablets between May 2011 and April 2014 (59,520 pills).
The doctor repeatedly sold the pills to people who had no legitimate need for them. They were drug dealers. You have to wonder if he was also addicted.
By 2018, the documentary film “Heroin(e)” chronicled the toll the opioid epidemic had taken on Huntington, W.V. Its overdose rate was 10 times the national average.
By the time I wrote about the Sacklers in 2019, communities and states were signing on to lawsuits to hold Purdue Pharma accountable, including Warren County. The Sacklers eventually relinquished ownership of Purdue Pharma - valued at $10 billion at the time, but closer to $11 billion now - to settle with 24 state attorney generals for about $4.5 billion. It then declared bankruptcy.
The attorney general of the state of New York did not settle with Purdue Pharma and found that the Sackler family had wire transfers of more than $1 billion to overseas bank accounts.
When I wrote about the Sacklers the first time, I noticed a Hudson Falls man had pled guilty to selling opioids. He was expected to serve two years in state prison. I wonder if he was also addicted to the pills. I said at the time that it was doubtful anyone felt sorry for him. In retrospect, he is the one that needed help.
It is the Sacklers who should have gone to jail.
In recent months, the Sackler family won sweeping immunity from opioid lawsuits as part of a bankruptcy settlement approved by Federal Judge Robert Drain.
“This is a bitter result,” Drain said. “I believe that at least some of the Sackler parties have liability for those claims. I would have expected a higher settlement.”
In return for the release from liability, the Sacklers agreed to pay $4.3 billion while also forfeiting ownership of the company.
Communities across the country will get a piece of that settlement, including Warren County.
In another settlement with drug maker Johnson and Johnson, Warren County will get anywhere from $150,000 to $350,000. At the time of that reward in August 2021, there had been 21 overdose deaths in Warren County this year.
It is hard to imagine the money going that far in addressing the problem.
The Sacklers admitted no wrongdoing in the recent settlement and will remain one of the wealthiest families in the world.
The story of opioid crisis and the Sacklers’ role with OxyContin was chronicled by Roanoke (Va.) Times newspaper reporter Beth Macy in her best-selling book “Dopesick.”
The book was made into a 10-part series on Hulu by the same name and stars Michael Keaton.
I urge you to see the dramatization on Hulu.
I also urge you to ask your local Congressional representatives how much money pharmaceutical companies contribute to their campaigns, but maybe even more importantly why is it allowed at all.
Book signing
Some special young people stopped by Northshire Books in Saratoga on Saturday because of their interest in journalism. It did my heart good. Our small communities will need journalism more than ever in the future, so it is great that some still want to consider a career in the field.
Happy anniversary
One couple stopped by my book signing in Saratoga while celebrating the anniversary of their first date. I was honored to be a part of that.
Glens Falls event
I will be speaking on Tuesday at 1 p.m. at the Glens Falls Senior Center on Glen Street. I’m looking forward to talking about life, newspapers and “The Last American Editor.”
It is on sell in a dozen or so local outlets, including the Chapman Museum, Ace Hardware in Queensbury, The Silo in Queensbury and the Warren County Historical Society near the Gurney Lane Recreational Area.
Tweet of the Day
Glens Falls’ Joe Girard III opens his junior year as Syracuse’s starting point guard tonight at the Carrier Dome.
