‘We Need Prison Time’: Purdue’s Belated Guilty Plea Gets Skeptical Reaction

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From The Guardian: “‘Though only one facet of the sprawling opioid industry, Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family were directly responsible for inflicting immeasurable harm on communities around this country. With the guilty plea, the Sacklers lose their name, their company, and substantially more,’ said the lawyers for plaintiffs in the National Prescription Opiate Litigation case.

But Emily Walden, chair of the Fed Up! coalition of families harmed by opioids, said that with Purdue already bankrupt there is little chance of the money being paid to help the victims.

‘I was very glad to hear, finally, the federal government saying that this is a felony and what they did was absolutely wrong. At the same time, they’re already in bankruptcy. What penalty is there? There’s none really,’ said Walden who lost a son to opioids . . .

In recent months, the Sackler family’s representatives have attempted to paint the agreement to pay $3bn as part of a final settlement as evidence of their ‘deep compassion for people who suffer from opioid addiction and abuse’. But they continued to insist that people who became addicted to OxyContin are ‘abusers’ who only have themselves to blame.”

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5 COMMENTS

  1. If they were adults willingly taking it, and knew it was an opioid, then they do have only themselves to blame. But now we need justice for psychiatric drugs, which have NOT been voluntarily taken drugs for many, and have ruined many people’s lives, including since childhood. They, unlike opioids, were also not famously known to have such harms, so it was only the victims who could really tell, while society had somewhat of reasonable skepticism. But not really in children. There is a lot of social justice in demand right now in a country on the verge of civil war, but it looks like nobody is going to get it. Captalism taken advantage of by cheaters and unfair business, too many morons making up the masses, etc.

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    • Why are people who took drugs based on lies spread by corporations and doctors entirely to blame for the effects of those drugs? You should consider the cognitive biases that result in you blaming the victims instead of the people who caused the harm.

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      • When it comes to opiates/opioids, I just think there’s no way someone could be convinced that they are not addicting. Any person taking them gets the jones’ for them during the day, especially with oxycontin — which wasn’t as long-acting as they claimed — between doses. But I’m sure I’m wrong in some cases. I know I once saved my father from accidentally taking a “anti-depressant” that was prescribed to him for pain related to rheumatoid arthritis. Probably out of a subconscious desire to take a leap of faith out of desperation, he hadn’t even looked up what the drug was. Considering what we went through with my childhood, it really hit him hard when he found out, to the point that I wish I could go back in time and put some thought into how I notified him. Since I’ve always been my own doctor as far as I’m concerned, working with people I will always treat as nothing better than collaborators, I can only imagine what it feels like to simply just trust another person like that.

        Desperation can certainly lead to recklessness, and blame for those who take advantage of it. People can certainly be tricked, too.

        I’m not trying to be right or wrong though. Just about everything that comes from me is a knee-jerk rant.

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