A federal bankruptcy court judge on Friday said he would approve OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma’s latest deal to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids that includes some money for thousands of victims of the epidemic.
The deal overseen by US bankruptcy judge Sean Lane would require some of the multibillionaire members of the semi-reclusive Sackler family who own the company to contribute up to $7bn and give up ownership of the Connecticut-based firm.
The new agreement replaces one the US supreme court rejected last year, finding it would have improperly protected members of the family against future lawsuits. The judge said he would explain his decision in a hearing on Tuesday.
To use this court case as an example, the issue wasn’t that the drugs were addictive. The issue was that the company lied through their teeth about it. The company already knew from the medical studies that the drugs were horribly addictive, but decided to lie to doctors and tell them that the drugs were perfectly safe. They had massive advertising campaigns aimed at doctors, to get them to prescribe increasingly high dosages, and to write prescriptions for much longer periods of time. The company actively worked against any kind of safety nets or support to help people come off of the addictive drugs, in order to keep a lid on the addictive properties as long as possible. Because the company wanted to sell more drugs, and the executives realized that getting people hooked would sell more in the long term.
That doesn’t mean the drugs should be illegal. Criminalizing the drugs only pushes them underground, where addicts will be left without any kind of support or safety nets. Instead, they should be available in controlled environments, with drugs that were manufactured in regulated lab settings to ensure purity/avoid lacing. They should be administered by staff who are knowledgeable about the full suite of potential side effects, overdose symptoms, and withdrawal effects. Staff who can monitor the addicts and ensure they don’t overdose, while also being able to provide resources, support, or even alternative medications (to control the withdrawal effects) for those who are looking to quit.
The drugs you mentioned are actually a great example, because very few people started with those. Those aren’t something that the first-time user sought out. They likely got a laced batch of something else, (because the drugs are illegal, the production is not done in controlled lab settings with guaranteed purity), which fucked them up hard.