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.
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.
Corporations,sports teams all on the government dole our taxes bail them out regularly in turn they recycle the money back thru politicians.