Hacker News Reader

Comment by mmm_grayons | Hacker News Reader

Is all that money tainted? While oxycontin holds a huge potential for abuse I know plenty of people who have taken it for real pain, been helped by it, and moved on. "Just take it all" doesn't sound like justice either.

View on HN

Taking it all seems fair to me. When someone steals from a retailer, we don't just make them pay for it and send them on their way, because that doesn't disincentivize stealing in the first place. The Sacklers/Purdue would need to be punished for the predatory, antisocial scheme to prevent others like it.

While an additional fine might be fair, again, just "taking it all" isn't. The Sacklers, while they might have played a small part, are being unfairly scapegoated for the whole of the opioid epidemic. This ignores the responsibility borne by states, physicians, and most importantly, those who choose to take the pills. This was also done with FDA approval.

More importantly, this is a part of the larger narrative that everything has been caused by overprescribed opioids. However, there's no correlation between increased prescriptions and increased illicit usage [0]. Rather, it seems there's been a large growth over time of illicit opioid use [1]. The only place this sort of thing has been effectively combated is in Portugal due to its decriminalization and attempts to make things safer. Politicians caused this with their stupid "war on drugs". They are now pointing and saying, "Look, the big bad Sacklers did it!" so their own failures are ignored. Stop scapegoating one family for a political and societal issue.

0: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330922982_Today%27s...

1: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180920161028.h...

I don't think they're being unfairly scapegoated. Oxycontin was an epidemic in itself. I've seen plenty of evidence from a variety of sources that their pills were aggressively and deceptively marketed as non-addictive, and that their wide availability led to an increase in opioid abuse. That includes knowing people who started on opioid addictions with brand name oxycontin and having heard countless anecdotes of the same. I'm having trouble understanding the motive for minimizing Purdue's role. The deception in marketing and all its consequences belong to them. It's difficult to imagine they merely made a mistake in trying to be effective marketers as opposed to knowingly misrepresenting what they sold in a way that was likely to harm the public.

All that said, I generally favor your stance that ending prohibition would yield the greatest harm reduction.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com