That just sends the message that the rich can get rich by ruining the lives of however many thousands of people and will just seek new ways to get rich by ruining the lives of however many thousands of people.
that is, the important thing is directing resources at preventing and treating opioid addictions and ODs, and if there's any justice the entire Sackler family fortune would be used to do so. Fortunately, these two goals are not in conflict, the Sackler's have a net worth upwards of $13 billion, which would be quite helpful resources to direct at preventing and treating opioid addiction and health effects.
13 billion won't be nearly enough. The damage to people, to families, and to communities has been extensive. And it's a big problem in most counties across all 50 states.
But also the Sacklers are only like 8% of the problem. All the rest of the opioids, (92%), came from other companies. So, theoretically, if we confiscated all of the wealth of all of the owners and stockholders in all of these companies we'd get the money we need to at least ameliorate some of the carnage. Because we'd have at least 90% more than we'd have by just confiscating the Sackler wealth alone.
All that's just theory though. I don't even know if it's possible to hold ownership responsible? Because wouldn't that put people who buy stock in whatever company at risk if the company was doing something sufficiently untoward?
Purdue never prescribed opioids to anyone. They only sold them to hospitals and doctors, after the FDA let them do it. Not sure what message punishing them is supposed to send?
But I get it. Someone dies and it’s the drug dealers fault, and punishing them will make everyone feel better. Except it doesn’t do anything about the actual problem (opioid addiction).
It feels to me like the elation here is because the Sacklers are rich and people really don’t like that, rather than any sort of victory in combating opiate addiction.
Please remember that Purdue were the ones who marketed Oxycontin on the premise of one dose for 12-hour pain relief.
When they learned doctors were prescribing it for eight hours, they tried to "re-train" them to use the "proper" (read: their) dosing recommendation, because there were cheaper drugs with six of eight hour doses.
Sure, the doctors made the prescriptions, but you, and I, and everyone who thinks honestly about it for two and a half seconds realizes that no matter what the recommendation is, enough people who are in bad enough pain to be prescribed oxy will take it when they need it, recommendation be damned, that to have issued that recommendation in the first place was an act of bad faith.
They marketed the drug on a lie in order to get doctors to prescribe it, which fueled — if not created — an epidemic, which has killed tens of thousands of people. Their hands are not clean, here.
We should be. We should also be going after the distributors who were shipping millions of pills a year to small towns with a population of 6000. This is not an either/or situation, there is plenty of blame to go around.
> that recommendation in the first place was an act of bad faith.
This seems a bit of a stretch to me.
The doctors prescribed it, even given readily available research, the FDA approved it, knowing full well this was a risk. Those are the guilty parties here. Purdue filled their role just fine, they just happened to be making an opiate and so they're getting chased for it now because China is dumping fentanyl. Pretty ridiculous really.
I do not agree with him, but I think you're making a much more salient point indirectly.
Public policy that can be readily manipulated by bad actors (as the drug industry is certainly full of) should not be used as the final say for anything. Systems need to be able to tolerate: corruption, false information, and true but misleading information. Our regulatory systems in general seem to struggle with any of the above. If "health authorities" (to avoid naming any particular organization) can only effectively screen out good actors inadvertently engaged in bad behavior, then they're effectively useless - because bad actors do exist, and they're vastly more dangerous than the former.
I think you underestimate the size of the problem.
But again, the Sackler's are only 8% of the problem. So if you go after them, and the owners and stockholders of the companies that provided the other 92% of opioids, and the doctors who wrote the prescriptions in bad faith, you probably come up with an amount of money that could make a dent.