The fact that the privileged, powerful and rich are able to 'negotiate' the law in this way is symptomatic of our sick democracies. It's little wonder that so many people no longer have faith in their governance or trust their public institutions.
I just hope sense prevails and this potential win doesn't come to pass.
Did the Sackler family commit a crime here?
Kaiser Health News has a good roundup of articles on this very topic.
https://khn.org/morning-breakout/documents-reveal-just-how-i...
There are such gems as:
"That email and other internal Purdue communications are cited by the attorney general of Massachusetts in a new court filing against the company, released on Tuesday. They represent the first evidence that appears to tie the Sacklers to specific decisions made by the company about the marketing of OxyContin. The aggressive promotion of the drug helped ignite the opioid epidemic.
The filing contends that Mr. Sackler, a son of a Purdue Pharma founder, urged that sales representatives advise doctors to prescribe the highest dosage of the powerful opioid painkiller because it was the most profitable."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/health/sacklers-purdue-ox...
"In a new 274-page memorandum, Attorney General Maura Healey details a chain of command that she alleges implicates eight Sackler family members, as well as nine Purdue board members or executives, in the nation's deadly opioid epidemic."
https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2019/01/15/healey-purdue-o...
Sackler family members seemed to have played a very hands-on role in the aggressive marketing of the drugs, and probably have their fingerprints all over internal company policies such as:
"...a copy of a confidential Justice Department report shows that federal prosecutors investigating the company found that Purdue Pharma knew about “significant” abuse of OxyContin in the first years after the drug’s introduction in 1996 and concealed that information."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/health/purdue-opioids-oxy...
Unless I misread your comment and you just mean did they commit a crime in accepting the plea bargain, and then no I guess not in the letter of the law. Certainly the spirit of the law was not honored here, however, as no member of the Sacker family seems to have been brought up on criminal charges. They just wrote a check and walked away admitting.."no wrongdoing and will remain one of the wealthiest families in America."
Thanks for raising them, it puts the matter into proper perspective.
It would be good to think they did because some family members might then be convicted and even, gasp, get to spend some time in prison. However my understanding of this development is that it's not related to criminal actions but civil actions.
Unsurprisingly there are a good number of people who would like to see some members of the Sackler family spend their latter years living under a bridge, the development described here is related to them using their wealth and power to ensure they get to hang onto the loot.
Arguably yes. It's not possible here to properly cover the many issues involved from longstanding narcotics law, international treaties on narcotics, etc. to the duty of care the Sackler family should have exercised for those who consumed its opiate products, and so on. That the Sackler family did this through its company Purdue Pharmaceuticals is immaterial, as they not only knowingly allowed widespread proliferation of these narcotics but also actively encouraged the pushing of said narcotics. Moreover, the Sacklers made many millions of dollars from the hapless and desperate consumers who consumed its addictive opioids—many of whom have died; the estimate of numbers is in excess of 100,000. (If anything, a confiscation of their wealth ought to be justified under proceeds of crime legislation.)
What's truly relevant here is that both the Sackler family and Purdue Pharmaceuticals not only had both access to expert knowledge about opioids, their addictive properties and the longstanding protocols for their control, administration and use thereof but also they were actually in possession of such expert knowledge.
(Note: this is a non sequitur, as it would NOT have been possible to be a manufacturer of narcotic drugs within the USA and NOT know these facts by second nature and yet they deliberately pushed these drugs onto the market in an extremely irresponsible way (in fact, people within Purdue casually and callously joked about the fact).
The fact that this was allowed to happen and that Purdue was allowed to continue doing so for so long is a separate matter, and for that, the FDA holds considerable responsibility.
Remember, the addictive properties of opioid drugs is extremely well known to the medical fraternity, the pharmaceutical industry and to many, many others and it's been so for a very long time. It's absolutely no secret—in fact, it's been very well documented since the Civil War (when hypodermic needles first became available and opioids were given I.V. to injured soldiers for pain relief many of whom became severely addicted). This knowledge resulted in International treaties in the early part of the 20th Century and it meant that many countries introduced severe penalties for peddling narcotics—from many decades to life in jail, and in some countries the death penalty.
For a company such as Purdue Pharmaceuticals to be little more than a street pusher of narcotics through its negligent misuse of its position of responsibility by not having most stringent protocols in place is about as irresponsible as it gets. As mentioned, upwards of 100,000 people have died as the consequence of the Sackler family and Purdue Pharmaceuticals irresponsible, negligent and reckless actions—actions that were committed out of sheer greed of absolutely the worst kind.
In my opinion, just confiscating their financial assets alone isn't enough, they too ought to be in jail along with the other pushers of narcotics.
That the Sackler family can actually negotiate its way around what's happened is also a travesty of justice.