AP reporting deal made on the Pardue Phama case over OxyContin, but no executives going to jail, including the Sackler family, over their marketing that made OxyContin a household word and hooked Americans coast to coast in the opioid epidemic, causing 470,000 death since 2000, costing the US economy $2.56 Trillion Dollars between 2015 and 2018 (3.4% of GDP) according to White House figures. It also settle civil liability, while the Sackler Family keeps Billion$.
October 26 marked National Prescription Drug Take Back Day, which provided Americans an opportunity to prevent drug misuse and theft by ridding their homes
www.whitehouse.gov
WASHINGTON (AP) — Drugmaker Purdue Pharma, the company behind the powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin that experts say helped touch off an opioid epidemic, will plead guilty to federal criminal charges as part of a settlement of more than $8 billion, the Justice Department announced Wednesda
apnews.com
The figure is much more than was previously estimated.
www.forbes.com
Why would executives go to jail?
Did executives force people to take prescription drugs? Or did people make the choice?
Did executives prescribe Oxycontin, or did doctors?
Did executives start illegally selling it on the street? Or did people make that choice?
Why do we keep blaming everyone else, but the people who actually broke laws?
They should go to jail for criminal negligence and for setting up the marketing and kickback scheme influencing doctor, lack of control of product that got to the street level and a host of other reasons.
Doctor in many cases were willing accomplices for profit and many of them should be punished, as some have been.
Executive did not sell on the street, but they bear responsibility for their supply chain to a great extent.
It is white collar crime at it's finest and after all is said and done, nets the company over $3 Billion Dollar$. Not enough to say, free enterprise and capitalism is ok, no matter how you skin it, yet to settle the offenses you net a profit after fines like that. The trump administration limited their liability globally according the the DOJ document, I did not post, but likable from the articles. The Sackler are a drug cartel without the weapons, no better, but protected now to spend their ill-gotten profits for generations. It worked out well for them.
Kickback schemes exist absolutely everywhere in the entire world. You are really talking about sales commissions. Doctors are.... due to regulations and how prescriptions work.... sales people.
Most sales positions are commission based.
At my last job, U-haul gave out free gifts every 6 months, for us using more of their productions.
Everyone does this. Everyone.
Is it right? Debatable. But the fact is, it is legal. If you don't like it being legal, that's fine. But you can't throw people in prison, simply because you think it shouldn't be legal. You need to change the law FIRST... and then you can toss people in prison for violating it.
Not enough to say, free enterprise and capitalism is ok,
But this isn't free enterprise. Free enterprise, as the name suggests, means you need to deregulate the drug industry.
As long as you have prescription systems in place, there is going to be a black market demand. As long as there is a black market demand, people are going to find a way to sell the drugs.
Attacking the manufacturer is ridiculous.
The irony is, people seem to grasp this in other context. How many times have we heard "The war on drugs was a failure!"... which is true, but why? Because we didn't kill the drug users. We kept trying to stop the drug suppliers. Did that work? No.
So why do you think that is a solution here?
It's like we can even spout off the lesson... and yet still push that as the solution. We know targeting the drug suppliers doesn't work. We've been doing that for the last 100 years. Yet here we are screaming to attack the drug supplier again, as if we have never tried this.
We need to kill drug users. That would solve the problem.
