Why Don’t We Put the Head of the Sackler Family in Jail for Life?

Why Don’t We Put the Head of the Sackler Family in Jail for Life?

For two decades Purdue Pharma peddled the falsehood that OxyContin, the painkiller at the heart of the deadly opioid epidemic, was safe and non-addictive.

“More people in the United States died from overdoses involving opioids in 2017,” in Nature’s account, ”than from HIV- or AIDS-related illnesses at the peak of the AIDS epidemic.”

“Nearly 500,000 [Americans] died from overdoses involving any opioid, including prescription and illicit opioids, from 1999-2019,” according to the CDC.

Those hundreds of thousands of deaths were fueled in large part by Purdue’s lie-fed pushing of OxyContin on doctors and patients alike. The company — which is owned by the Sacklers, one of the richest families in the U.S. — made tens of billions in the meantime.

While further waves of opioid-overdose deaths continue to surge, more than 600,000 claimants are seeking justice. The Sacklers have agreed to give up ownership of Purdue and contribute $4.5 billion to a collective settlement with the claimants.

But the terms of the settlement are far from fair. “Besides protecting the company from further legal action over opioids, the plan includes a blanket release from civil lawsuits for Purdue’s owners, members of the billionaire Sackler family,” as reported by The New York Times.

This is a blatant miscarriage of justice. The calously criminal Sackler family simply cannot be absolved from further legal responsibility in exchange for cash. That’s bald-faced bribery — and a gargantuan insult to the dead and grieving.

For the hundreds of thousands of lives they ruined, there’s only one place for the Sacklers.

And that’s behind bars — for life.

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