There’s more fallout from the $8.3 billion Purdue Pharma settlement with the Department of Justice, with critics saying that the OxyContin maker will likely escape justice and pay little of the record payout—while the firm’s founding Sackler family will probably get away without facing any criminal charges.
An editorial in the Washington Post asks why no one from the company is going to prison, even after Purdue pleaded guilty to felony indictments for misleading federal officials, paying kickbacks to physicians, and defrauding Medicare and Medicaid, thereby helping fuel the opioid crisis. The Sacklers will pay $225 million in civil penalties, a tiny fraction of the profits they reaped from opioid sales prior to Purdue’s bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, New Scientist points out that the record payout won’t turn back the clock on the opioid epidemic, or deter other companies from pursuing similar behavior. The CDC, the magazine notes, estimates that the opioid crisis costs the country about $80 billion annually, in addition to more than 50,000 overdose deaths.
And finally, New York”s NYU Langone Medical Center will strip the Sackler name from its biomedical institute in light of Purdue’s guilty pleas. The move follows other academic and cultural institutions that have distanced themselves from the Sackler family amid thousands of lawsuits alleging Purdue helped fuel the opioid crisis.