[HN Gopher] Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opi...
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Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement
Author : datadrivenangel
Score : 177 points
Date : 2024-06-27 18:13 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| ronnier wrote:
| > Purdue made billions from OxyContin, a widely available
| painkiller that fueled the opioid epidemic
| 7thaccount wrote:
| It's more complicated than that. They knew it was killing
| people and turning thousands (millions) into addicts and they
| kept pushing doctors to use it at all costs. I'd recommend the
| John Oliver special on it.
| hedora wrote:
| They also designed it to be more addictive. The recommended
| dosage and timing causes the patients to repeatedly
| experience minor withdrawal during normal use, which is a
| standard technique for conditioning someone into being an
| addict.
|
| All of this is documented in emails that were presented as
| evidence in court.
| elzbardico wrote:
| They learned it from the tobacco industry probably.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Is there a recommended dosage and timing from the tobacco
| industry?
| elzbardico wrote:
| It was in jest. But part of the problem with nicotine
| that helps to lead to addiction is its short half-life.
| If you are a smoker you experience several episodes of
| abstinence throughout the day, so you lit just another
| one.
| dns_snek wrote:
| Yes - sort of. Many of the additives found in cigarettes
| are designed to increase the rate of absorption of
| nicotine. This gives you a distinct rush within seconds
| of consumption, as well as a more pronounced crash that
| triggers intense cravings.
|
| That's very different from the effects of (freebase?)
| nicotine typically found in e-cigarettes which is slower
| to absorb and doesn't have a noticeable crash.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Designed it knowingly to be more addictive WHILE producing
| physician literature that denied or downplayed addiction
| risk.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Why are doctors so easy to manipulate? They learn about
| addiction in medical school. Why would they believe a
| pharmaceutical company saying "...oh but _this_ opioid is not
| addictive... "
| logicchains wrote:
| >Why would they believe a pharmaceutical company saying
| "...oh but this opioid is not addictive..."
|
| Because the pharma company offered them direct or indirect
| benefits for doing so. Doctors are just as human and just
| as susceptible to financial incentive as anybody else,
| that's why for decades there were doctors advertising the
| health benefits of smoking.
| LordKeren wrote:
| It's easy to overlook that OxyContin was very effective.
| Even a doctor acting in good faith was likely to prescribe
| the drug-- because it worked well. It really did help
| people struggling with pain management. The downside, of
| course, was that Purdue pharma was knowingly misleading
| doctors on the addictiveness of the drug. Also the amount
| of doctors that were willing to turn a blind eye to the
| clear signs of addiction is very worrying.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| > Also the amount of doctors that were willing to turn a
| blind eye to the clear signs of addiction is very
| worrying.
|
| No disagreement, but I think it's worth considering how
| stigmatized addiction is in our society. I expect many
| patients would hide any signs of addiction from their
| doctors - especially since it might result in losing
| their supply of OxyContin, or worse, their career.
| LordKeren wrote:
| Yes, whole heartedly agree. The social impact of
| addiction and the ostracism of those suffering with
| addiction has undoubtedly only made this situation worse.
| I was more leaning towards doctors/pharmacies that were
| operating as pill mills - I.e. the handful of regions in
| the Appalachias where there were more scripts for Oxy
| than there were people in the county
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Also Purdue themselves were pushing pain management as an
| outcome to manage, to sell more Oxy.
|
| Totally pain-free medical care is a bit misguided.
| alan-hn wrote:
| Because physicians don't get much if any training in
| evaluating evidence and research, they generally believe
| what they're told by scientists. Which is a shame, they
| should be taught critical evaluation of literature
|
| They also don't have time because of the artificial limits
| of physicians graduating every year, combined with more
| bureaucracy being pushed on them day by day
| tracker1 wrote:
| "trust the science"
|
| edit: it's meant in sarcasm, mostly.
| alan-hn wrote:
| We can trust the _process_ of science but we need to be
| mindful of how to critically examine a body of
| literature. When I see most lay people examine literature
| all they do is cherry pick what they like and discard the
| rest and ignore any analysis or methodological concerns
| tracker1 wrote:
| This generally seems to be true. It doesn't help that
| poor reporting methods exacerbate the issue.
| alan-hn wrote:
| Oh absolutely, science journalism is absolutely terrible
| for the most part. That's why I always try to find the
| original paper they're reporting on to see what's
| actually going on
|
| Most journalists don't understand research either and
| I've even seen some PhD science writers get things wrong
| too but usually less often.
|
| Science journalism is filled with incredible sweeping
| claims and jumps in logic that boggle the mind and are
| nothing like what's in the research being reported on, it
| truly makes me disappointed
| tracker1 wrote:
| I've seen a lot of research around nutrition, where the
| abstract/summary for the paper itself makes claims not
| reasonably backed in the paper itself. Then again, I
| think pharma, food and agriculture in particular have
| bent to financial forces over everything else.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| It's incredibly hard to do anything else, since it's
| pretty easy to cherry pick methodological concerns for
| any given conclusion you don't care for, since it's
| incredibly rare for a given body of work to be free of
| methodological flaws.
| alan-hn wrote:
| Something I have noticed is that non scientists don't
| understand the methods so when they do try and critique
| the methods those critiques don't make sense because they
| lack the understanding of the underlying principles
|
| There is a lot of basic science that is quite solid and
| is replicable yet people tend to throw it out with
| nonsense complaints
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > physicians don't get much if any training in evaluating
| evidence and research
|
| I find this surprising, if true.
| alan-hn wrote:
| Well I work at med school, grad students get far more
| training on research, med students can take an optional
| research elective. This elective isn't a formal course
| either, what happens is a med student comes to our lab
| and we put them on a small project as an assistant doing
| data analysis or a simple experiment. They don't get
| formally taught how to evaluate research
|
| You have to remember med students are training to be
| clinicians not researchers. They have to diagnose and
| treat patients based on information taught to them by
| clinicians and basic scientists
|
| This is also why it annoys me when lay people refer to
| the opinions of physicians on some new research that just
| came out, like with covid stuff. They are not research
| experts, they're clinicians. They treat people and make
| diagnoses
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| It is largely true. Evidence in medicine widely exists
| but most doctors arent keeping up with it. There has been
| a bit of a movement toward evidence based medicine in the
| last decade but most docotrs are still relying on what
| they learned in med school instead of keeping up with
| literature.
| alan-hn wrote:
| Many physicians also tend to be very conservative in
| terms of adopting new treatments. They tend to stick with
| what they know "works" and don't want to take risks to
| try something new
| bloopernova wrote:
| Because doctors believe studies and health system policies
| pushed aggressive treatment of pain.
|
| And our unequal society forces a lot of people to damage
| their bodies in the pursuit of happiness (i.e. earning
| money). That damage becomes chronic pain.
|
| And unfortunately, painkillers often have a euphoric
| effect. So people might use that effect to escape the
| grinding reality that they are trapped within. Consider how
| popular cannabis is, especially among older adults in
| states where recreational use is legal.
| iwontberude wrote:
| What a positively wonderful way to look at life.
| Y_Y wrote:
| I can't make sense of this either as sarcastic or
| earnest. I though GP was a fairly neutral (and imho
| accurate) appraisal.
| acomjean wrote:
| It seems that in the US there has been a trend to "de-
| regulate" or let businesses regulate themselves. It works
| for a while, but eventually it seems to go south. I think
| "regulatory capture" is the term. I think of Boeing being
| allowed to inspect there own planes.. I think drug
| manufactures submit there own studies, as the FDA doesn't
| have a budget to test all the things themselves.
|
| The opiod manufactures are organized too. They have trade
| groups and conferences.
| marcuskane2 wrote:
| De-regulation and regulatory capture are almost opposite
| things. De-regulation is a solution to the problem of
| regulatory capture.
|
| Regulatory capture is a central problem in America today.
| The big powerful entities- major corporations, large
| unions, special interest groups, etc have the time,
| resources and incentives to lobby for laws (regulations)
| to be written in their favor.
|
| The result is the American public is very heavily
| regulated, but in ways that are beneficial primarily to
| the powerful incumbents. This spans everything from
| copyright law favoring big hollywood studios to USDA
| regulations favoring the handful of major meat producer
| corporations to medicine, manufacturing, retail, real
| estate, etc.
|
| Regulatory capture is also why the divide between
| leftists saying more regulation and rightists saying less
| regulation are both often missing the real problem. The
| US already has millions of lines of text for regulation,
| the problem is that so much of the regulation is bad and
| written to favor whoever donated or could sway votes to
| whichever representative crafted the language.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Arguably, you have it backwards. Self-regulation _doesn
| 't_ work for a while, and then it works ultra well.
| Boeing got away with poor self-regulation for decades but
| now their business almost certainly will implode within
| decades and their market position will be taken over by
| those who were willing and able to self-regulate. They
| were rightfully punished and the US government was
| (theoretically) able to spend more resources regulating
| elsewhere.
|
| That said, the lag time between the beginning of failing
| to self-regulate and the beginning of consequences
| showing up are likely too far apart to make it a sound
| doctrine for the US government.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| What makes you sure doctors are "so easy to manipulate"? Is
| the general public more immune? Are there many professions
| that are more immune?
| bumby wrote:
| I read the OP as "professionals should be less easily
| manipulated than the general public because of their
| background knowledge on the subject".
|
| Consider whether most would think a mechanic is more or
| less easily manipulated into unnecessary vehicle repairs.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > whether most would think a mechanic is more or less
| easily manipulated into unnecessary vehicle repairs.
|
| That's different. This is closer to a mechanic using a
| part from Company X in the repairs of their customer's
| car, because a rep told them it was more durable.
| bumby wrote:
| You're right, that's a better example. But wouldn't you
| expect the mechanic to have a more discerning eye in that
| case as well? The more contextual knowledge you have, the
| better you should be able to tell legitimate claims from
| BS.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| A friend of mine recently died from cancer. I had looked up
| some particular things about it while he was still alive,
| and apparently some cookies got crossed and I was marked as
| an oncologist. I've had some ads on Facebook or Instagram
| telling me, the "oncologist," about particular cancer
| drugs. Of course, everyone in the US has probably seen
| regular ads for various cancer drugs.
|
| Doctors pretty much need to be intelligent and hard working
| to get through med school and residency. After that, they
| might not necessarily keep up with things. You'd think
| oncologists would know the best treatments for each
| patient, but if that were true those ads would be worthless
| - and I doubt those companies like to throw money away.
| sparklingmango wrote:
| Additionally, I recommend the book Empire of Pain for an
| excellent deep dive into the Sackler family and how they
| essentially created the opioid epidemic. You'll be infuriated
| as you read it.
| CaptainZapp wrote:
| +1
|
| An amazing read and I also highly recommend it
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_Pain
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Having read that, I still find it shocking when I see their
| names on various donor plaques in big British museums.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| What responsibility does the FDA have in this?
|
| (genuinely curious, not trolling)
| realce wrote:
| >The court on a 5-4 vote ruled that the bankruptcy court did not
| have the authority to release the Sackler family members from
| legal claims made by opioid victims. As part of the deal, the
| family, which controlled the company, had agreed to pay $6
| billion that could be used to settle opioid-related claims, but
| only in return for a complete release from any liability in
| future cases.
|
| Is this actually a positive outcome or a kick-the-can?
| cogman10 wrote:
| Positive outcome. They earned hundreds of billions from their
| actions which resulted in the deaths of thousands.
|
| Giving them permanent immunity was insane.
| ben7799 wrote:
| Definitely a positive income. These people bear some of the
| responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
| people.
|
| There is no way they should ever be immune from further
| punishments and get to live out the rest of their lives as
| billionaires.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It also makes sense to me. If someone didn't join the class
| action, they should not be bound by its settlement, and
| should be free to pursue damage claims on their own.
| delichon wrote:
| Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan
| and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.
| ajdlinux wrote:
| You mean John Roberts instead of Ketanji Brown Jackson.
| panda-giddiness wrote:
| Not quite. From the NY Times:
|
| > In a 5-to-4 decision, written by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch,
| a majority of the justices held that the federal bankruptcy
| code does not authorize a liability shield for third
| parties in bankruptcy agreements. Justice Gorsuch was
| joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr.,
| Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
| delichon wrote:
| My lineup was extracted from an AP story. Which is
| correct?
|
| https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-purdue-pharma-
| opioi...
| jcranmer wrote:
| The decision itself:
|
| > GORSUCH, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in
| which THOMAS, ALITO, BARRETT, and JACKSON, JJ., joined.
| KAVANAUGH, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which
| ROBERTS, C. J., and SOTOMAYOR and KAGAN, JJ., joined.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The NY times. The AP story seems to have just been
| corrected.
| mryall wrote:
| NYT was right and AP has now corrected theirs. Reload and
| check errata at the bottom.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > resulted in the deaths of thousands.
|
| The number the Supreme Court used in its decision was 247,000
| deaths over a twenty year period. That's the verified number
| and therefore almost certainly lower than reality.
| ericmcer wrote:
| deaths of thousands is a massive understatement. Just
| overdose deaths is probably getting close to a million. But
| they are also responsible for:
|
| The people who don't OD but have their lives destroyed by
| opiods.
|
| The family and friends who suffer because someone they know
| is an addict.
|
| The time, money and energy society has spent trying to help
| addicts.
|
| All the crimes, victims of crime and criminal justice costs
| that are a result of addiction.
|
| They didn't kill thousands of people, they killed millions,
| affected every single person in the country negatively and
| contributed to the destabilization of our society.
| bbatha wrote:
| The recipients of the settlement are mixed about this. Some
| raised this suit because they felt the Sacklers were not
| sufficiently punished. Others felt that this was likely to be
| the best deal that could realistically achieved and dragging
| out proceedings in court for years and adding uncertainty of
| any settlement or victorious law suit was not worth the risks
| and emotional turmoil.
| piva00 wrote:
| US$ 6bi to be disbursed across hundreds of local governments to
| use for settlements over millions of individuals is nothing
| compared to the damage the Sacklers inflicted. On top of that
| having a sweet deal to never see any future liability case is
| an egregious misjustice.
|
| The minimum would be for them to be arrested, if we pushed
| drugs to someone who eventually dies from it we wouldn't be
| getting just a fine. At the scale they did it's simply
| inconceivable to me that paying a fine which is less than their
| profit is anywhere close to justice.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It really depends on what you mean by "pushed drugs". If you
| or I recommended that someone should get an oxycodone
| prescription from their doctor, and they eventually died
| after getting that prescription, I don't think we'd get
| arrested _or_ fined. (And the Sacklers were never getting
| criminal immunity in the first place.)
| relaxing wrote:
| That doesn't describe what happened.
| LordKeren wrote:
| It depends on what your personal views are here.
|
| If you wanted the outcome of the case to be at least some money
| going towards opioid treatment, then this decision could
| jeopardize that outcome.
|
| However, if you thought that the Sackler family being able to
| escape any personal liability despite the myriad of evidence of
| many of their involvement in stoking the opioid epidemic-- and
| they still got to keep a very sizeable amount of the family
| fortune-- is morally repugnant and legally dubious, then this
| court decision is a positive.
|
| I would personally prefer many of the executives and members of
| the Sackler family to be held liable, their assets seized, and
| formal charges brought against them. But that's unlikely
| wyldberry wrote:
| I wouldn't be opposed to similar outcomes as the Chinese baby
| milk scandal in the end.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| To save everyone the google, several people went to jail
| with terms ranging from 5 to 15 years (after reduced
| sentences). Two people were executed.
| Sander_Marechal wrote:
| From Wikipedia:
|
| > A number of trials were conducted by the Chinese
| government resulting in two executions, three sentences of
| life imprisonment, two 15-year prison sentences, and the
| firing or forced resignation of seven local government
| officials and the Director of the Administration of Quality
| Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ). The former
| chairwoman of China's Sanlu dairy was sentenced to life in
| prison.
|
| Yeah, that sounds nice :-)
| hinkley wrote:
| They should have their wages garnished until the end of time.
| LordKeren wrote:
| Many of the most high profile names involved in Purdue
| Pharma or the Sackler family have retired or have passed
| away, so garnishment wouldn't be as impactful as asset
| seizure (directly or from the estate of those that died)
| czl wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Harrington objected to the release of additional claims
| against the Sacklers, saying it would be unfair to potential
| future plaintiffs.
|
| > Purdue criticized Harrington's role, saying that groups
| representing thousands of plaintiffs have signed on to the
| settlement, which could not have happened without the Sackler
| family contribution.
|
| The concern is the set of current plaintiffs is incomplete and
| those plaintiffs who are missing are going to be hurt by this
| and the bankruptcy judge over this decision does not have the
| authority to approve this deal despite the current set of
| plaintiffs wanting it.
| Barraketh wrote:
| Negative outcome. Some important points that the article here
| did not emphasize: 1) The Sackler family was not actually a
| party to this litigation. They came to the table (with most of
| the settlement money) specifically to get these so called '3rd
| party releases'. 2) Purdue is basically broke. It's also an
| LLC. Thus, in order to go after the Sackler family's money, you
| basically have to claw back money that Purdue paid out to the
| family over the years. It's not impossible to do, but it
| requires a whole more litigation, the outcome of which is not
| at all certain.
|
| Now, 3rd party releases are a genuinely weird thing: a court
| ruling that a party that's not directly involved in the case is
| immune from future lawsuits. Partially the reason it went all
| the way to the supreme court is that there was a circuit split
| - they were allowed in some circuits, but not others. However,
| (and this is according to a friend who represented the victims
| in the settlement), it's really unfortunate that THIS is the
| case where they get struck down. If the Sacklers walk away from
| the settlement, it makes the victims getting their payout much
| less certain, and certainly delays that payout by many years.
| prepend wrote:
| > Thus, in order to go after the Sackler family's money, you
| basically have to claw back money that Purdue paid out to the
| family over the years.
|
| Or you can find them personally, directly, criminally liable
| and their profits the result from a criminal conspiracy.
|
| Personal crimes aren't protected by the "veil" of LLC, so any
| assets of the family could be liable, after criminal
| conviction, for any civil claims from victims.
|
| At least, I think.
| Barraketh wrote:
| IANAL, but I don't think this would help the victims (and
| incidentally, that could have still happened even with the
| settlement). If there were a criminal lawsuit of the
| Sacklers, and if that lawsuit was successful, the seized
| money would just go to the justice department.
|
| The only way the victims actually see any money is through
| civil litigation.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the seized money would just go to the justice
| department_
|
| The DoJ operates victims' funds [1][2].
|
| [1] https://ovc.ojp.gov/about/crime-victims-fund
|
| [2] https://www.justice.gov/enrd/environmental-crime-
| victim-assi...
| RavingGoat wrote:
| I would think civil forfeiture could be used to take all
| their assets if not then the drug dealers in my town need
| to each form an LLC.
| Barraketh wrote:
| Well, I don't think civil forfeiture specifically would
| work, but like I mentioned above, yes, if the justice
| department wanted to criminally charge the Sacklers, they
| could possibly win and get a judgement against some of
| the money. But then that money doesn't really go to the
| victims - it's just a way to punish the Sacklers.
|
| The bankruptcy settlement had a bunch of money going to
| families of the victims, and also to the states for anti-
| addiction programs, and also some money towards
| documenting the Purdue wrongdoings, so that the public
| would have better visibility just HOW this was allowed to
| happen in the first place
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Are the victims themselves getting anything? I thought it was
| States that were suing.
| Barraketh wrote:
| Well, it's a bankruptcy, so anyone can file a claim. The
| states have, but so have the victims and their families
| directly (as a class).
| hinkley wrote:
| My understanding is that Piercing the Corporate Veil has
| gotten easier over the years. The more egregious the robber
| baron class has gotten the less sympathetic the courts have
| been.
| newsclues wrote:
| If you rob a bank and can pay the bank off with interest from
| the money you stole, was justice served?
|
| If you sell drugs and use the interest from your profits to pay
| a fine, it doesn't sound like punishment.
|
| Part of the problem with this is that much of an old money
| wealth is from less than reputable sources (slavery, piracy,
| war, crime, smuggling, opium and alcohol).
| jimbob45 wrote:
| The next likely step to this will be how it affects the future
| hypothetical (but almost certain) trial of Boeing execs.
| Depending on what you want that to look like, then this was
| either positive or negative.
| duxup wrote:
| Link to ruling:
|
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-124_8nk0.pdf
| dataflow wrote:
| How is there such a big divide in the court on this? Is the law
| really this unclear on the matter?
| throwup238 wrote:
| IANAL but most contested Supreme Court decisions I've read
| (going all the way back to AP gov class) sounded like they
| could have reasonably been decided either way depending on who
| had control over the court. The law is ambiguous and complex
| enough that there's just so many logical ways to approach a
| decision and little in the way of prioritizing or
| disambiguating them. Whatever their bias, judges have lots of
| ways of reasoning themselves to their predetermined outcome.
| This is true up and down the courts but most judges are at
| least somewhat worried about their reputation and their record
| with appeals courts, which at least mitigates their biases but
| the SCOTUS is free to do whatever it wants.
|
| As much as each side likes to bloviate about originalism and
| activist judges, SCOTUS often decides at the whims of ideology
| and personal bias because the law gives them lots of room.
| rayiner wrote:
| Bankruptcy is a unique creature. It's created directly in the
| Constitution as a federal system. Bankruptcy is inherently
| "equitable," which means that judicial decisions are guided by
| case-by-case considerations of fairness rather than strict
| legal rules. Bankruptcy courts have wide latitude and
| discretion to basically do what makes sense in each context.
|
| Here, the majority overturned something the bankrutpcy code
| approved, because, in its view, the remedy of a non-consensual
| third-party release conflicted with the structure of the
| Bankruptcy Code. The dissent disagreed, pointing out there were
| no express prohibitions on the relief the bankruptcy court had
| granted, and explaining that, in their view, the bankruptcy
| court should have been given discretion to authorize such a
| release if ultimately it would make the creditors better off.
| Basically the majority was focused on the structure of the
| Code, while the dissent was focused on the practical fact that
| the creditors would probably get more money from the Sacklers
| this way than if they had pursued direct lawsuits against them.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > the creditors
|
| Thanks, that word helps clarify my major problem with
| handling this as a bankruptcy case. I don't see the destroyed
| lives as an issue of creditors, I see them as victims.
| Calling off the corporations coming after an individual for
| unpaid debt is a whole different issue than barring
| individuals from going after a corporation for actual
| injuries.
| jakewins wrote:
| The opinion and dissent are actually relatively approachable
| and lay out exactly what the disagreement is about:
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-124_8nk0.pdf
|
| It seems to come down to whether the sentence "[A chapter 11
| bankruptcy plan may] include any other appropriate provision
| not inconsistent with the applicable provisions of this title"
| means "A plan can contain anything anyone can imagine as
| reasonable as long as it isn't expressly forbidden" or "A plan
| can contain other types of provisions that follow the same
| general theme as the concrete list given just before this
| sentence".
|
| The Sacklers argued that the law says they can take away other
| peoples rights to sue them, since the law says these bankruptcy
| plans can include "anything", and the majority opinion of
| SCOTUS was that that's not the right way to read the law.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| It also seems to turn whether the Sacklers seek a third-party
| "release," which is precedented, or "discharge," which is
| not. (The Court also assumes Purdue's indemnification of the
| Sacklers will not hold, which would allow the Sacklers to
| drain Purdue as they fight the various claims against them.)
|
| Interestingly, the argument for is textual. The argument
| against is pragmatic. (Both argue history, in my opinion,
| unconvincingly. They're talking past each other on release vs
| discharge, a delineation neither side bothers to delve into.)
| The dividing line defies easy summary. (Gorsuch, Thomas,
| Alito, Barrett and Jackson concurring, Kavanaugh, Roberts,
| Sotomayor and Kagan dissenting.)
| erichocean wrote:
| > _the argument for is textual_
|
| And here's the language: "any other appropriate provision"
|
| The Sacklers: the law says we can take away other people's
| rights to sue us as part of a bankruptcy settlement.
|
| SC: Yeah, no, the text doesn't say that.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the law says we can take away other people 's rights
| to sue us as part of a bankruptcy settlement_
|
| As the dissent notes, third-party releases _are_ part of
| the law. The turn is on whether the Sacklers are having
| third-party liabilities discharged versus released.
|
| The solution may be in re-drafting the Plan so it's more
| clearly a release. That might mean the Sacklers can be
| sued for fraud, but not other things.
| erichocean wrote:
| If this decision was just about third-party releases, it
| wouldn't be before the court. And you know that.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If this decision was just about third-party releases,
| it wouldn 't be before the court. And you know that._
|
| What is the difference between a discharge and release as
| it relates to the SS1123(b)(6) "any other appropriate
| provision" power this case is about? You seem to have
| clarity the Court's members couldn't find.
| michaelt wrote:
| The law surrounding Chapter 11 reorganisation plans only covers
| the relationships and responsibilities between debtors and
| creditors. It doesn't say anything about third parties.
|
| But it _does_ include a term saying a plan "may" also "include
| any other appropriate provision not inconsistent with the
| applicable provisions of this title" - subject to the approval
| of a judge.
|
| Applying the broadest possible interpretation of this catch-all
| wording would produce absurd results - a bankruptcy plan would
| be more powerful than the constitution itself. So courts have
| to figure out just how broad an interpretation to apply.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _law surrounding Chapter 11 reorganisation plans only
| covers the relationships and responsibilities between debtors
| and creditors. It doesn 't say anything about third parties_
|
| Yes it does. It covers third-party releases--there is ample
| precedent for that. The Court held this isn't a release, but
| a discharge. (Idk.)
| legitster wrote:
| Chapter 11 bankruptcy law includes a "catchall" provision that
| "may" also "include any other appropriate provision not
| inconsistent with the applicable provisions of this title."
|
| Historically bankruptcy courts have wide discretion to make any
| "appropriate" provisions, and this document is an argument
| about what the limits of appropriate include.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| What really stuck out to me was how soft the opinions were.
| Especially the dissent. Rather than dry legal reasoning, it was
| argued much like a politician would. Maybe this happens fairly
| often, but usually when I read the actual decision from SCOTUS
| is is very specific and sober, even if I disagree with the
| conclusion.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| For those claiming the Supreme Court is a political institution,
| I'd like to note that this was indeed a 5-4 decision.
|
| But one with Justices in the majority who were appointed by
| Biden, Trump, Bush 43, and Bush 41, and in the minority who were
| appointed by Bush 43, Obama, and Trump.
|
| It was Jackson, Gorsuch, Barrett, Alito, and Thomas in the
| majority and Sotomayor, Kagan, Roberts, and Kavanaugh in the
| minority.
| bdzr wrote:
| Most decisions are mixed or more one sided than following the
| standard "political lines", but those cases never get spoken
| about.
| LordKeren wrote:
| Hmmm, I'm not sure pointing to singular rulings like this
| really demonstrates that the Supreme Court isn't getting
| increasingly political.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Increasingly political compared to when?
|
| And I don't think it's a singular judgement. If anything, the
| "ideological split" types of decisions are rarer, so it's
| more accurate to say that a few decisions on hot political
| topics doesn't mean that the SCOTUS is increasingly
| political.
| rob74 wrote:
| I guess this is not a topic that is politically divisive, so
| the judges were free to vote as they saw fit. Which doesn't say
| anything about how they will vote on other topics, like
| abortion, environmental protection etc.
| rayiner wrote:
| The justices don't vote on "abortion, environmental
| protection, etc." They vote on the legal vehicles that have
| been used to address those things. And views on those legal
| vehicles map onto judicial philosophies that have nothing to
| do with the substantive issues.
|
| To use an analogy: there's people who think operating systems
| should be microkernels, and people who think they should be
| monolithic kernels. Windows NT was created to be a
| microkernel. But around NT 4.0 they shoved the GUI into the
| kernel space. If you're on the "Supreme Court of Windows NT,"
| how do you view that? One camp might say, "NT is supposed to
| be a microkernel, get that GUI out of there." Another might
| say, "yeah but here in the real world, customers demand a
| fast GUI so it's fine to cut corners."
|
| Constitutional law is basically that, except we're talking
| about cutting corners with the highest law in the land.
| relaxing wrote:
| > And views on those legal vehicles map onto judicial
| philosophies that have nothing to do with the substantive
| issues.
|
| There's no way you're really that naive.
|
| What kind of thrill do you get out of making these "well
| actually" strawman posts?
| hollerith wrote:
| He's a lawyer with a lot of professional experience. Are
| you a lawyer?
| relaxing wrote:
| No I'm better; I possess the critical faculties to
| identify self-serving bullshit.
| rayiner wrote:
| I'm trying to convey how legal conservatives think, as
| someone who is one. I am, on many policy issues, quite
| liberal. I think rich people should pay more taxes,
| people should drive EVs, etc. But ultimately I care more
| about the rules--especially the rules about _who_ makes
| decisions and where power is allocated--than I do about
| what people or outcomes. I 'd rather see 3C of global
| warming than administrative agencies operating contrary
| to the tripartite system of government the Founders
| designed. I care more about the Constitutional rules for
| allocating power to states than I do about what citizens
| of those states might do with that power. Etc.
|
| Issues like abortion and environmental laws just happen
| to map onto particular legal issues as an accident of
| history. If state-by-state legislation leads to widely
| legalized abortion, for example, I don't think most legal
| conservatives would support a _Roe_ -like judicial
| decision ginning up a "right to fetal life" (which
| actually exists in Germany). If Congress passed
| environmental laws itself, instead of outsourcing it to
| an executive agency, I don't think most legal
| conservatives would be looking for ways to second-guess
| Congress's judgment.
|
| You actually see this in Europe. The legal system in
| European countries tends to be pretty boring, because
| they have more social cohesion and can legislate things
| according to the rules, rather than hacking up the
| system. The equivalent of _Roe_ , for example, doesn't
| exist in continental Europe. In an irony, Emmanuel Macron
| criticized _Dobbs_ when it came down. But France never
| had anything like _Roe_. And after _Dobbs_ , France
| passed a constitutional amendment addressing abortion,
| which is exactly how legal conservatives would say you
| should handle the issue!
| relaxing wrote:
| > I'd rather see 3C of global warming than administrative
| agencies operating contrary to the tripartite system of
| government the Founders designed.
|
| You want to see millions dead to support your political
| philosophy?
| relaxing wrote:
| Nice edits. I'm going to assume your original remarks
| reflect your true beliefs on the matter.
|
| Too bad you took out the part about "no one will be
| talking about Dobbs in 10 years" because I was going to
| suggest you put that bet on one of those futures betting
| sites. That would be an interesting debate.
|
| Good point about France. Now do Ireland.
| rurp wrote:
| A single vote means little and being partisan doesn't mean 0%
| voting with the other side. By this logic Congress is not a
| partisan institution given that people from both sides
| frequently vote together, but anyone who remotely follows
| national politics knows that it's a deeply partisan time.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Four decisions were released today.
|
| We had a decision on the SEC vacating some of its enforcement
| powers, 6-3 with only the 3 liberal justices dissenting.
|
| We had this decision, which was 5-4, although it wasn't a clear
| ideological split.
|
| We had a 5-4 decision vacating an EPA regulation, with the 3
| liberal justices and one of the more moderate conservative
| justices dissenting.
|
| We had a 6-3 decision on the EMTALA-abortion decision, with the
| 3 most conservative justices dissenting. (Technically it's per
| curiam, and the "majority" opinion is unsigned. But every
| justice signed onto a concurrence or a dissent, so we know
| exactly how every justice voted in this case).
|
| Yesterday, we had a decision on social media which was 6-3,
| with the 3 most conservative justices dissenting.
|
| Yesterday, we also had a decision on bribery which was 6-3,
| with the 3 liberal justices dissenting.
|
| Out of the most recent 6 decisions, we have 4 decisions that
| clearly evidence a 3-3-3 ideological split between 3 liberal
| justices, 3 more moderate conservative justices, and 3 very
| conservative justices that would be able to pretty fully
| predict how they would vote on the cases, and there's another
| case that it's partially predictive on (a 5-4 that peels off
| either Roberts, Kavanaugh, or Barrett doesn't contradict this
| lineup). Furthermore, the one case that the ideological
| breakdown doesn't work on is the case that is the least
| politically charged (it's literally resolving a circuit split,
| as opposed to please-intervene-in-this-politically-charged-
| case).
|
| So yeah, this doesn't disprove the thesis that SCOTUS has
| become increasingly politicized over the past few years.
| jandrese wrote:
| Is there any corruption law that this court won't overturn?
| They seem extremely "pro" on quid pro quo.
| rayiner wrote:
| They didn't "overturn" this "corruption law." This was a
| prosecution under 18 USC 666, which is titled "theft or
| bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds." In
| this case, the question was framed to the Supreme Court
| whether 18 USC 666 applies to so-called "gratuity"
| payments. That framing was because the prosecution in the
| case below could not prove that the defendant had
| anticipated a payment in the future when he undertook the
| official act. (The defendant himself maintained that the
| payment was for subsequent consulting.) Federal law makes a
| distinction between those two things.
|
| You can still bring an 18 USC 666 case for bribery, you
| just need to prove that the payment had some ability to
| influence the official act.
| jandrese wrote:
| In this particular case a mayor rigged the competition
| for a garbage truck contract so that one particular
| company would win it. That company then overcharged the
| city and gave a kickback in the form of $13,000 to the
| mayor. The Supreme Court said this was fine and let the
| mayor off of the hook.
|
| If you can't prosecute with this level of evidence the
| law is effectively dead.
| rayiner wrote:
| That's not what the Supreme Court decided, and its
| _extremely_ misleading to suggest that.
|
| At trial, the government _alleged_ the mayor had "rigged
| the competition." But the government argued, and the jury
| was instructed, and the Seventh Circuit agreed, that the
| government _did not need to prove that._ Because, under
| the Seventh Circuit 's view of the law, it did not matter
| whether the subsequent payment actually influenced his
| official act. So on appeal, the Seventh Circuit upheld
| the jury verdict on the assumption the government did not
| need to prove that the competition was actually rigged.
|
| So the case that came up to the Supreme Court didn't have
| the issue of whether he rigged the competition. The jury
| was told it didn't matter, and we don't know what the
| jury would have decided had they been told something
| else. The question before the Supreme Court was only
| whether 18 USC 666 requires proof that the payment did or
| could influence the official act. It did not consider the
| factual scenario under which he rigged the competition
| because we don't know if the jury would have found he did
| that.
|
| Now the case goes back to the trial court to see if the
| government wants to retry the case, where they _actually
| have to prove_ corrupt influence.
| jandrese wrote:
| > The question before the Supreme Court was only whether
| 18 USC 666 requires proof that the payment did or could
| influence the official act.
|
| And the Supreme Court's finding is that it did not
| because the payment happened after the action. Certainly
| corrupt officials in the future will never figure out a
| way to exploit this loophole.
|
| This isn't the first corruption case before the court
| where the standard of proof seems to be "they need to
| write 'This is a bribe' on the notes line of the check
| for it to count".
| rayiner wrote:
| > And the Supreme Court's finding is that it did not
| because the payment happened after the action.
|
| It doesn't have to do with the timing of the payment. It
| has to do with whether the defendant had a corrupt motive
| _at the time he took the official act._
|
| The government could have prosecuted this case under the
| same statute by saying: "he knew he was going to get paid
| later so he steered the contracts to this company." They
| had the evidence to pursue that theory of the case. The
| jury could have inferred under the circumstances that the
| after the fact payment effected the official act. If they
| had done that this Supreme Court decision would've had no
| effect on the outcome.
|
| The government instead made the choice to prosecute this
| case by having the jury instructed that _it did not
| matter_ what the defendant was thinking at the time of
| the official act. That was the government's choice.
|
| This case just means that when the government brings a
| case under 18 U.S.C. 666-which is titled "theft or
| bribery"--they actually have to prove bribery, which
| requires corrupt motive at the time of the official act.
|
| If the government wants to target the appearance of
| impropriety that can result from payments for official
| acts that weren't corrupt at the time, there's different
| laws for that (18 U.S.C. 201(c)).
| rayiner wrote:
| Politicization and ideological polarization are two different
| things. Take _Dobbs_ for example. That was an ideologically
| polarized decision, not a political one. _Roe_ is the product
| of a judicial philosophy that conservatives think is
| fundamentally wrong, even if they don 't oppose abortion. For
| half a century, conservatives were unified in saying they
| would overturn _Roe_ , even though--as we have seen
| subsequently--there was a lot of intra-party conflict about
| what abortion law should actually be. _Dobbs_ hurt the party
| that appointed the justices that voted for it. Trump would
| probably be cruising to the election in 2024 if Biden didn 't
| have that card to play.
|
| Most of the cases you identify split along ideological rather
| than political lines.
|
| > We had a decision on the SEC vacating some of its
| enforcement powers, 6-3 with only the 3 liberal justices
| dissenting.
|
| What the case actually held was that the executive branch
| imposing fines without a court order violated the Seventh
| Amendment. It's a separation of powers case, and reflects the
| same ideological debate about separation of powers that we
| have had for 100 years. Do you believe that the
| Constitutional three-branch structure should be respected, or
| is it obsolete in light of modern society?
|
| > We had a 5-4 decision vacating an EPA regulation, with the
| 3 liberal justices and one of the more moderate conservative
| justices dissenting.
|
| This is an executive agency decisionmaking case. Again, same
| debate we've been having for 100 years.
|
| > We had a 6-3 decision on the EMTALA-abortion decision, with
| the 3 most conservative justices dissenting.
|
| This was probably the most idiosyncratic and ideological
| case, but it's not political at all. It's Thomas and Alito
| willing to die on an ideological hill, not caring that
| virtually nobody in their party wants to follow them t here.
|
| > Yesterday, we also had a decision on bribery which was 6-3,
| with the 3 liberal justices dissenting.
|
| It was actually a decision on whether someone could be
| prosecuted under a bribery statute for a payment he received
| after taking the official act. Where other parts of federal
| criminal law make an express distinction between bribery
| (which corrupt official acts) and gratuities (which create
| the appearance of corruption but can't directly influence
| official acts).
|
| This one is probably the most overtly political. Liberals
| voting to expand the scope of criminal law and conservatives
| voting to narrow it is weird. But it's worth pointing out
| that the Court's conservative wing has a strong libertarian
| streak these days, especially Gorsuch.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> Out of the most recent 6 decisions
|
| That is not a representative sample of Supreme Court
| decisions. This is one of the last few opinion days of the
| year, the opinions being released are the most contentious
| ones the court is dealing with.
|
| Of the first 6 decisions of the year, 4 were unanimous, 1 was
| per curiam, and one was a 6-3 split with the dissenters being
| Gorsuch, Sotomayor and Jackson.
|
| Those 6 decisions would also not be a representative sample.
| thetinymite wrote:
| I won't argue against the Supreme Court being a political
| institution. However, I do think the court is more nuanced than
| popular opinion realizes. The article below shows a nice
| graphic of how often justices rule together on non-unanimous
| decisions.
|
| https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/06/02/supreme-co...
| ben7799 wrote:
| That's really interesting, because it shows even the most
| liberal and most conservative justices still are in agreement
| the majority of the time.
|
| Just reading news articles I would never have thought
| Sotomayor and Alito ruled the same 63% of the time.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I weirdly track SCOTUS opinions. Most of them are
| incredibly technical.
| 12_throw_away wrote:
| > For those claiming the Supreme Court is a political
| institution, I'd like to note that this was indeed a 5-4
| decision.
|
| Is there a name for this type of fallacy, in which a single
| data point is used to argue that a global trend does not exist?
| (Another prominent example is "it snowed somewhere, therefore
| climate change is not real.")
| pessimizer wrote:
| Being a judge in the US is a political job. There's not even a
| universal requirement that one has to be a lawyer.
|
| However, "political" how liberals are using it currently is a
| euphemism for "current disputes between the Democrat and
| Republican party management." If you don't accept that framing,
| or assume that these people are wind-up toys set into motion by
| the Presidents that appointed them, things can be very
| political without this split that the punditocracy project onto
| the court.
|
| Whether bankruptcy courts can dictate a settlement for
| something this wide-reaching, and simply indemnify someone
| against future lawsuits is a very political question. What if
| the courts had settled with the Sacklers for $10, and
| indemnified them against future suits? Why are the bankruptcy
| courts allowed to improvise restrictions against what other
| courts and other victims are allowed to do?
|
| It's redolent of one of the most disturbing elements of
| Epstein's first conviction, during which they immunized
| _unidentified, unindicted co-conspirators._ In order to avail
| yourself of this immunity, you _had to be guilty_ of child
| trafficking with Epstein. Otherwise, you wouldn 't have been a
| co-conspirator. Can a court name a sacrifice to suffer for
| others?
|
| I'm not concerned in this case that some of the victims'
| lawyers were clamoring for it. Those lawyers could very well be
| paid for by people with another agenda. Why should the Sacklers
| be left with anything? The main guilty parties in their family
| are dead - now we're arguing with the people who are inheriting
| the proceeds of the crime. Why argue? Just seize it all; the
| damage far outstrips their worth, and their worth isn't even
| from their own labor, it's inherited.
|
| Meanwhile, the descendants of slaves are mocked over 400 years
| of stolen wealth. And we can't even take the proceeds of the
| most horrific crimes from people who don't even work for a
| living, and will likely be left wealthy if every dime of that
| inheritance is taken away.
| delichon wrote:
| Thank you. For my purpose as a reader it is editorial
| incompetence that the article neither provided that link, nor the
| name of the case to make it easy to lookup.
| duxup wrote:
| For SCOTUS related news I always hit up SCOTUSblog:
|
| https://www.scotusblog.com/
|
| They do a good job of linking to or posting quality articles.
| jcranmer wrote:
| At least it is for SCOTUS decisions to find the decision
| quickly (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/slipopinion/23
| has a list of all opinions from the current time, updated live
| as they are announced).
|
| It's really painful when you've got coverage of state court
| cases where you have neither the case name nor the court it was
| filed in nor the docket nor any document nor anything that
| would let you figure any of this out.
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah SCOTUS is pretty good about putting their decisions out
| there. Sometimes too good at it ;)
| fock wrote:
| as a non US-person who recently wanted to look at some cases:
| is there a free way to do this? Or do you have to sign up to
| the weird ePACER?
| nickburns wrote:
| You do _not_ have to sign up for anything. SCOTUS opinions
| are freely-accessible public record.[0]
|
| [0] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/opinions.aspx
| jcranmer wrote:
| Every document at SCOTUS level is freely available,
| although you have to know the docket number to get all of
| the briefs correctly. SCOTUSblog in practice is a more
| accessible interface to the docket, since you can easily
| look up by case name: https://www.scotusblog.com/case-
| files/terms/ot2023/, e.g., the full docket for the case in
| this article is here: https://www.scotusblog.com/case-
| files/cases/harrington-v-pur...
|
| If you want to deal with non-SCOTUS federal cases, your
| choices are to use PACER or to use RECAP
| (https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/), where the documents
| may be available. E.g., the appeals court docket for this
| case is at
| https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67448481/in-re-
| purdue-p..., note that many documents aren't available
| because no one made it free via RECAP.
|
| If you want to deal with state courts... good luck! Every
| state has a different system with different level of pains
| to track down.
| squigz wrote:
| This is why I so often just go to the AP and look for their
| article - https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-purdue-
| pharma-opioi...
| dboreham wrote:
| Deliberate. Someone makes more money as a result.
| robxorb wrote:
| This is my gripe with regular news. Science paper? No link. New
| law bill? No link. Someone made an hour-long speech? 30 second
| cut, no link to the full speech. Is it almost as if they'd
| rather we _didn 't_ see their sources?
| heyoni wrote:
| All of those things take you away from their platforms. They
| don't want you to leave, period.
| dustincoates wrote:
| A more cynical take is that it isn't editorial incompetence,
| it's an editorial decision. Once you notice it, it's hard not
| to notice how often you aren't given the sources or ways to
| further confirm stories, especially those that might be
| controversial.
| dang wrote:
| (We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40811187.)
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Interestingly the same kinds of tactics used to push opiates on
| the general public are still being used to push amphetamine
| analogs - but the death rate from amphetamine addiction/overdose
| is much much lower (>1000X lower) than that from opiate
| addiction/overdose so it doesn't really hit the headlines, and
| arguably is not as much of a concern.
|
| From a libertarian point of view, mood- and mind-altering
| substance use should be the citizen's choice, but for this to not
| result in an epidemic of addiction, it would require a well-
| educated public who understands that whatever short-term apparent
| benefit a drug (including alcohol and nicotine and caffeine)
| delivers, there's always a tax that must be paid afterwards, and
| use must be kept below the addictive threshold, meaning if you
| start needing more of the drug to get the same effect, the only
| rational thing to do is to stop using the drug until your
| tolerance goes back to zero.
|
| This of couse goes against consumer society norms, where the
| concept of 'less is more' is almost a heresy.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I guess I'm not sure what the point of the comparison is. If
| the death rate from opioid addiction were 1000x lower, I would
| happily bite the bullet and say Purdue did nothing wrong.
| Chronic pain is real and terrible - it would be great to have a
| solution where the downside risk is no worse than an Adderall
| dependency.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| In my experience, people who use amphetamines (and cocaine)
| regularly start making very bad decisions, and heavy use
| leads to amphetamine psychosis. A very public example of this
| was the behavior of the SBF / FTX / Alameda operation, where
| by several accounts regular amphetamine use was the norm.
| That doesn't mean it should be illegal, but I'd avoid
| associating with anyone I knew had an amphetamine or cocaine
| dependency.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| The problem with mind altering substances is they can short
| circuit your rational thinking. So you can start with the most
| well-considered decision process ever and still end up
| addicted. In fact, this doesn't even require a substance.
| Gambling is plenty addictive to many.
|
| There's a kind of fallacy to thinking that sufficient education
| can counter biological human desires and impulses in all cases.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| That's the authoritarian view - people don't know what's good
| for them, so their behavior needs to be controlled by the
| state as informed by a small group of elites who themselves
| are somehow free from the influence of those biological human
| desires and impulses... which is why drug testing as a
| condition of employment was never implemented for political
| candidates, heads of bureaucratic government agencies, or
| corporate CEOs.
| roboror wrote:
| Another thing to note is that the scheduling of the substances
| you speak of (and other non-scheduled like ozempic for example)
| merely puts them behind a prescription paywall--the wealthy
| have easy access to beneficial medicine and few to no
| consequenses from their use, whether that be criminal
| (possession or behavioral problems under the influence) or the
| cost of resulting health and addiction issues. Resulting in the
| non-wealthy suffering exponentially more.
|
| It's very important that these societal and monetary debts are
| not only paid out, but go to the right people.
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| Difference is the death rate from prescription ADHD meds is
| zero, and they're not addictive like opiates.
|
| I'm open to discussing the underlying problems that push people
| to take ADHD meds. Like the insane work life required to just
| maintain the same standard of lives as our parents generation,
| or modern devices eating our attention spans.
|
| But limiting access to ADHD drugs is just going to affect the
| most vulnerable and the positive outcome is just for the
| benefit of Calvinist pushing their world view on the rest of
| us. Hey, while we're at it let's make caffeine a scheduled
| drug. It's actually addicting, it's long we half-life makes it
| more likely to effect sleep, and its vastly over consumed by
| everyone starting in middle school.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| The Sacklers want to have their cake and eat it. They want both:
|
| - To avoid filing for bankruptcy, and
|
| - For a bankruptcy settlement to release them from additional
| liability.
| nickff wrote:
| Are you talking about the Sacklers as individuals, a family
| unit, or in their capacity as decision-makers for Purdue? There
| seem to be a relatively complex set of incentives and options
| in each of these capacities.
| NickC25 wrote:
| And they'll get it - they stashed a lot of their gains
| overseas, and they'll keep those gains while continuing to live
| a lavish life amongst the elites of the world.
|
| I lost a very close friend to opoid addiction, and Purdue was
| based one town over from where I grew up. I hope the entire
| Sackler family gets fined and taxed to the point of genuine
| destitute poverty, and then some. Genuine scum.
| jandrese wrote:
| I think this is where the settlement went wrong. The Sacklers
| were going to remain billionaires after the $6B payout. In
| all real respects they were going to feel no pain. They
| already have way more money than any of them could hope to
| spend in their remaining years, and that really rubbed people
| the wrong way. With the immunity removed they will at least
| spend some of their retirement in court room after court room
| instead of sipping drinks on the deck of one of their many
| megayachts.
|
| It sucks for the victims who are realistically not going to
| get any help before they die, but it does send a message that
| you can't kill thousands (probably millions) and get off scot
| free.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Thursday blew up the
| massive bankruptcy reorganization of opioid maker Purdue Pharma,
| finding that the settlement inappropriately included legal
| protections for the Sackler family, meaning that billions of
| dollars secured for victims is now threatened._
|
| Does anyone find it strange that this is described as a loss for
| the victims?
| wtallis wrote:
| "is now threatened" is not characterizing this as a loss for
| the victims. It's characterizing this as opening up the
| _possibility_ of a loss for the victims, relative to what had
| been settled. That characterization seems accurate and
| relevant.
|
| (This ruling also brings a _certainty_ of delay for
| compensation, since negotiations for a settlement have to start
| anew, and with lower chances of success.)
| ahartmetz wrote:
| > Does anyone find it strange that this is described as a loss
| for the victims?
|
| Pay attention to the ads appearing on NBC, I guess... (cf.
| Manufacturing Consent)
| adastra22 wrote:
| Well, it is. The victims had a settlement agreement worth
| _billions_ of dollars, which the Sackler family was going to
| willingly provide in exchange for legal protections.
|
| Now that legal protections are off the table, it is very
| unlikely that any new settlement will be as generous, and in
| fact quite unlikely that any settlement will be achieved at
| all.
| qarl wrote:
| But also very likely that the case will go to court and the
| damages will be substantially higher.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Not really, it will be played out in a number of separate
| cases and each case is in a weaker position separately
| simply due to scale and resources. The Sacklers have an
| estimated $1bn _liquid_ available to fight these things.
|
| The $6bn ruling was significant and not an amazing outcome
| for either side (so, a compromise).
|
| Additionally most of the Sacklers are well into old age, so
| they'll probably die before losing $6bn.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _The $6bn ruling was significant and not an amazing
| outcome for either side (so, a compromise)._
|
| I find this framing extremely bizarre. A $6bn ruling
| means the family profits $5 BILLION. In no universe is
| that not an amazing outcome for them.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| It's a loss of ~1/2 of their net worth. That's
| significant.
|
| They are now likely to pay much less by settling smaller
| individual cases, which will take significantly longer
| and cost claimants significantly more to pursue.
|
| When they die (which will be soon, most of them are 75+)
| it'll become even more difficult to get anything.
|
| The deal that was overruled was certainly not justice,
| but reality will likely be worse. There's no outcome that
| will render them not billionaires within their lifetimes.
| qarl wrote:
| > They are now likely to pay much less...
|
| So then why did they choose to settle? That makes no
| sense. The only reason a defendant settles is to minimize
| potential losses.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| predictably, the end of a long campaign of bad pr, and
| government pressure (which is now fairly deflated)
|
| the settlement was also in the interest of the
| government, which may now end up with tens of thousands
| of separate suits to manage and $6bn less to help manage
| the crisis
|
| don't get me wrong, the sacklers could end up worse
| off... but it's a big _if_ and will take much much longer
| alistairSH wrote:
| Even if that's the result (which is questionable), the
| Sacklers are almost all overseas and their assets are
| "hidden" in complex schemes. So, collection is as big a
| hurdle as coming to a reasonable judgement.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Victory is not guaranteed, and even if the victims do win,
| going to court takes a lot of time and costs a lot of
| money. The victims agreed to the settlement because they
| preferred that option to going to court.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Does anyone find it strange that this is described as a loss
| for the victims?_
|
| As the dissent notes, this decision means the victims won't get
| money now. When is an open question, as well as whether it will
| be similar, more or less after litigation costs, and to whom it
| will be paid.
|
| What is certain is the Sacklers will be hurt more. (Unless a
| couple bizarre legal maneuvres pay off, _e.g._ the Sacklers
| extinguishing liability by way of a 2004 indemnification
| agreement.) So in a sense, this is deterrence and retribution
| winning over restitution [1].
|
| [1] https://open.lib.umn.edu/criminallaw/chapter/1-5-the-
| purpose...
| legitster wrote:
| > What is certain is the Sacklers will be hurt more.
|
| Maybe? They get all of the billions back and now have time
| and a reason to start building a defense.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _get all of the billions back_
|
| They never gave up any cash to my knowledge. The plan was a
| promise.
|
| We can conclude the Sacklers are worse off right now given
| they (and the creditors) accepted the deal. They may be
| materially better off in the future. But the rest of their
| lives will be about this.
| legitster wrote:
| ???
|
| The Supreme court case was specifically about the $6
| billion dollars the Sacklers committed to the bankruptcy
| fund. And this ruling says they are not allowed to
| contribute to it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Supreme court case was specifically about the $6
| billion dollars the Sacklers committed to the bankruptcy
| fund_
|
| Committed, not contributed.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| No, if it wasn't a better realization of the victims's goals
| than going to trial, why would the victims have accepted it?
|
| Its absolutely a loss for the victims.
|
| Not just them, but they are among those losing.
| bradford wrote:
| > Does anyone find it strange that this is described as a loss
| for the victims?
|
| I can see it going both ways, yes: this means that 6 billion
| dollars are not immediately available for compensation.
|
| On the other hand, certain states (Washington was one, if I
| recall) argued that 6 billion dollars was such a pitifully
| small amount (relative to the damage done) that they declined
| to accept compensation in hopes that future lawsuits would
| yield more.
|
| I view this decision as rejecting the immediate compensation,
| but opening up possibility for greater compensation in the
| future (with obvious risks and delays).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _certain states (Washington was one, if I recall) argued
| that 6 billion dollars was such a pitifully small amount
| (relative to the damage done) that they declined to accept
| compensation_
|
| As the dissent notes, "all 50 state Attorneys General have
| signed on to this plan." The holdouts were "a small group of
| Canadian creditors and one lone individual."
|
| I always thought of the Sackler carve-out as a scam. But the
| dissent gives me pause. This ruling trades restitution for
| retribution. In all likelihood, many classes of victims--such
| as small victims, small states and local governments--won't
| see a penny, at least for years.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > This ruling trades restitution for retribution
|
| IMO the money is a pittance, sounds like a lot but it's
| just a fraction of what the federal government spends on
| any given day. We can afford to carve out the financial
| resources to help victims. The retribution is totally worth
| it, because it needs to be understood that behavior like
| this will get punished. It should be _painful_ , not just
| the cost of doing business.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I agree, but absent John Stewart taking it up [1] were
| not paying out the victims, and I'm not a victim, so it's
| easy to discount their desire for the $3,500 to $48k.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/nyregion/jon-
| stewart-9-11...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| You may find the money a pittance, but the victims
| decided otherwise.
|
| It seems the case that the interests of the
| victims/plaintiffs (e.g. compensation) may be different
| than the public at large (e.g. punishment).
|
| If so, perhaps the interests of the public should be
| pursued by a different avenue than the civil case of the
| victims, which requires superseding the agency of the
| victims.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > You may find the money a pittance, but the victims
| decided otherwise.
|
| When you say 'the victims' are you implying they all
| agreed to this? So they are all okay with giving up their
| individual right to sue for damages? You make several
| points which imply that this is some kind of consensus
| position that everyone is okay with. That's the root of
| the problem, though -- this settlement in no way
| addresses the damage to all the victims.
|
| Perhaps renegotiate the agreement so that it only
| immunizes Purdue/Sacklers from further civil action from
|
| In any case, when I say pittance, I was clearly talking
| about relative to the financial resources of the US. This
| is a national problem, we can afford to solve it at a
| societal level without being forced into accepting an
| unjust settlement.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The case and settlement has almost nothing to do with
| solving the problem at a societal level, with either
| outcome being negligible.
|
| Real progress would involve systemic changes to the
| treatment and causes of drug addiction, as well as
| medical treatment philosophy.
|
| To hang the opioid epidemic on perdue is a gross
| oversimplification, essentially a scapegoating of a
| multifactorial problem. Perdue sold the same pills in
| Europe, but the US has an overdose rate 2,000% higher.
| blkhawk wrote:
| I think that was because they could more effectively
| market their "pain is bad mkay" strategy in the
| culturally and politically more homogeneous market that
| is the US. The European healthcare market is completely
| different for each country in multiple dimensions. Be it
| political, the way insurance is structured, laws are
| setup and governmental agencies handle them. That means
| while it is entirely possible to sell the pills in Europe
| they won't be prescribed in the amounts necessary to jump
| start the "vibrant free market" for them the US has. So
| they are just an opioid that is prescribed in extreme
| cases.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I dont think the idea that patient pain is bad was unique
| to perdue and their drugs. Many European countries have
| private health insurance, with reimbursement quite
| similar to the US.
|
| Like I said above, I think it would be extremely shallow
| thinking to claim that there is a single reason.
|
| If I were to pick a leading difference, I would say that
| the US has embraced trained consumerism to a greater
| degree than most European countries. As such, the idea
| that a simple pill/product will make a problem go away
| has more traction, both with prescribers, patients, and
| abusers.
|
| You see this difference manifest in many cultural and
| social forms, where people in the US are especially prone
| to "quick fix" marketing and products that offer escape
| and excitement through consumption.
|
| This is one thing that leads into higher rates of
| substance abuse in the US than Europe. For example, the
| US has a higher rate of alcohol use disorder than most
| European countries, despite most of the countries having
| more permissive laws around alcohol and more consumption
| of it on average.
| richwater wrote:
| > To hang the opioid epidemic on perdue is a gross
| oversimplification
|
| The only sane comment here. It's laughably ridiculous to
| call for retribution against a single family as if they
| were personally responsible for every overdose the
| country has seen.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I don't excuse their unethical and potentially criminal
| behavior, but I do think they way people talk about it is
| detached from reality. The corporate choices likely had
| some effect on the margin, but I dont think the
| appropriate disclosure around addiction potential and
| would have moved the needle much.
| bradford wrote:
| > As the dissent notes, "all 50 state Attorneys General
| have signed on to this plan."
|
| Thanks for the correction! I must have read about
| Washington States objection a while ago, and been unaware
| of a change in their position (since I first read about it)
| tadhgpearson wrote:
| Well, not a loss for the legal profession for sure :D Will the
| victims come out with more in their pockets than they would
| have from this settlement? I guess we'll find out...
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| I blame the doctors too. I was a teen in the early/mid 2000s and
| even I knew about the addictiveness of oxycodone. It wasn't
| called hillbilly heroin for nothing.
| inasio wrote:
| Matt Levine has covered this several times in the past, worth
| reading. From memory, the Purdue family had put away their money
| in legally sheltered arrangements, so even an unfavorable
| decision (to the Sacklers) would likely not be able to claw back
| much money. The previous deal traded the risk of trial for a
| perceived as decent compensation. My read is that the majority in
| the supreme court disagreed that you can always financial-
| engineer your way out of trials
| legitster wrote:
| They were (apparently) sheltering money specifically to pay for
| personal legal damages, and they voluntarily offered it back
| during the bankruptcy proceedings in exchange for giving up
| their liability.
|
| The court ruling is not about the legality of their financial
| shenanigans, but the authority of the bankruptcy court on
| deciding such matters.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Lawyers are fixated on the money for obvious reasons, but the
| money will never really fix what the Sacklers did (particularly
| for the _many_ victims who are now dead.) Restitution is
| largely a farce and we should be focusing on retribution.
| DANmode wrote:
| Removing the profitability angle mildly dissuades this sort
| of behavior in the future.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm really not sure what other retribution you're suggesting.
| There's always public lynching if that's what you're after,
| but we've kind of decided that is not a good idea in modern
| society
| wmf wrote:
| They could be imprisoned.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Really unclear how knowingly creating a scenario where
| people die of overdosing for profit isn't criminal.
| Spivak wrote:
| Because car manufacturers exist, and this isn't
| theoretical or a jab at cars themselves. We are 100%
| certain that people will die while using cars, and by
| cars. Vehicular manslaughter even has a high bar for real
| punishment precisely because driving a car has an
| inherent risk of killing others and that risk is legal to
| take on.
|
| Knowing that some people using your product will die, and
| even that selling more of your product increases the
| deaths is something we're okay with. It's true of guns,
| red meat, skateboards, alcohol, lawn mowers, and
| industrial equipment -- all sold for profit.
|
| I very much dislike cases like this because while yes,
| opioids were overprescribed and Purdue sales people did
| go out and sell often times not in legal ways, doctors
| still prescribed them and _we knew that people dying was
| necessarily an outcome._ So while the crime they actually
| committed was about kickbacks, not doing the DEAs job
| enough for them, and lying with statistics they get
| blamed for the actual deaths which is silly. I take
| stimulants that double my risk of heart attack and are
| also known to be addictive, neither outcome is the maker
| 's fault if those happen. It's the tobacco settlement all
| over again where when bad thing happens the proximate
| deepest pockets get blamed. I couldn't care less about
| the government taking money from rich people because
| reasons, have at it, but I think they're the scapegoat.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Except Purdue clearly stated that addiction was not an
| issue with their product. Car manufactures never say that
| death is no longer possible with their product. They
| blatantly misrepresented the dangers of their product in
| ways none of the other examples you listed come close.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Isn't that a form of punishment instead of retribution?
| lostdog wrote:
| Jail. Jail would be reasonable for purposefully poisoning
| tens of millions of people.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Point of order.
|
| Jail is for people not convicted of crimes.
|
| Prison is for convicts.
| dylan604 wrote:
| To those in jail, I doubt it matters
| legitster wrote:
| This is a more complex case than I thought, and the dissent
| argument is actually very powerful and convincing:
|
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-124_8nk0.pdf
|
| Basically, the original judge did a good job - the settlement
| plan was reasonable and widely popular. And the Sackler family
| being released from liability by putting billions of personal
| dollars into the payment fund meant more victims would get more
| money immediately.
|
| With this ruling, the Sacklers are personally legally liable
| again - which may make you or I more happy, but this means that
| victims have to pursue a much harder and more expensive set of
| lawsuits to get money from the Sackler family. It also means the
| victims of the deal don't get a voice in the proceedings, and it
| may also make future payouts and bankruptcies harder if there is
| no reason to cooperate with the state.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _victims have to pursue a much harder and more expensive set
| of lawsuits to get money from the Sackler family_
|
| They also have to litigate away a 2004 indemnification
| agreement extended by Purdue to the Sacklers in 2004, which
| could result in litigation and liability draining the pot
| before pay-outs can begin.
|
| Definitely more complicated than I first appreciated.
| nox101 wrote:
| why would it be harder? wouldn't it just be the next family
| that tries to get away with crap like this will be scolded
| sooner?
|
| it seeem like if you want people stop doing bad things you
| can't let them get away with bad things. here, the family was
| trying to get away with billions. The bankruptcy court said,
| "yay, ok". The Supreme Court said "no, not ok"
|
| I don't understand the dissent. unless the dissent is friends
| of the family trying to spin.
| LordKeren wrote:
| It's harder because it requires piercing the veil of
| protection of an LLC, a legal construct that is explicitly
| designed to limit liabilities. There are simply more legal
| hurdles to this.
|
| Though I do agree with the conclusion that the bankruptcy
| court should not be able to grant immunity to the Sackler
| family. It feels deeply, deeply immoral
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _harder because it requires piercing the veil of
| protection of an LLC_
|
| Source?
|
| It's harder because they're indemnified by Purdue, and
| their individual liability is far from established. (The
| opinion and dissent both refer to a monolithic "Sacklers,"
| but they're individuals and trusts and whatever.)
| prepend wrote:
| I think the argument is against the Sacklers personally and
| their actions, not based on their ownership stake of the
| LLC. So this wouldn't involve piercing the veil.
|
| Only if suitors were going against Sackler assets to pay
| off Purdue corporate stuff.
| legitster wrote:
| If you want money from the Purdue bankruptcy entity: you just
| file a claim while they still have money.
|
| If you want money from the Sackler family: you need to lawyer
| up, prove a bunch of personal liability claims (which are
| very, very hard cases to win), and wait a long time. And hope
| they still have money.
|
| While it may feel nice to eventually, _maybe_ , be able to
| throw the Sackler family in jail, it basically just blows up
| the ability to do mass tort arbitration.
|
| From the dissent, which even includes Sotomayor and Kagan:
|
| "As a result of the Court's decision, each victim and
| creditor receives the essential equivalent of a lottery
| ticket for a possible future recovery for (at most) a few of
| them. And as the Bankruptcy Court explained, without the non-
| debtor releases, there is no good reason to believe that any
| of the victims or state or local governments will ever
| recover anything."
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If you want money from the Purdue bankruptcy entity: you
| just file a claim while they still have money_
|
| And as the dissent notes, this class includes the Sacklers
| per their 2004 indemnification agreement. So we first need
| to nullify that to avoid draining.
| nickff wrote:
| How would you propose the agreement be nullified? Was it
| fraudulent, or performed without shareholder approval?
| tzs wrote:
| An important but frequently overlooked aspect of the law is
| that by the time the courts are involve it is often too late
| for there to truly be justice. Things have often happened
| that cannot be undone. Often parties that are at fault do not
| have the resources to pay their share of damages.
|
| No matter what the court does in those situations _someone_
| is getting screwed.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| > no reason to cooperate with the state
|
| The idea of the rule of law + the state's monopoly on violence
| is that you WILL cooperate with the state if the law says you
| should. It may even be worth some losses to keep that up.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you WILL cooperate with the state if the law says you
| should_
|
| As the dissent notes, we don't yet know what the law says
| about the Sacklers' liability.
| raizer88 wrote:
| If I had lost a family member to drug abuse I would want
| justice (ie. jail time) not money.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I would want justice (ie. jail time) not money_
|
| Retribution not restitution [1]. "Justice" in this context is
| ambiguous.
|
| [1] https://open.lib.umn.edu/criminallaw/chapter/1-5-the-
| purpose...
| 1024core wrote:
| What's the point of "restitution" if it came from the
| victims anyways? The Sacklers would have kept all of their
| ill-gotten gains under this settlement. The amount they'd
| be paying is practically just the interest from their
| earnings.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What 's the point of "restitution" if it came from the
| victims anyways?_
|
| The difference between having money and not.
|
| > _amount they 'd be paying is practically just the
| interest from their earnings_
|
| Not disputing, the majority almost admits as much, but
| source?
| a2dam wrote:
| Restoring what was taken from the victims is literally
| the definition of restitution.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Except if all you have is restitution, there's no
| punishment.
|
| "Hey, I stole this money from you but since I gave it
| back - after a court ordered me to - we're all square,
| right?"
| tunesmith wrote:
| I have a hard time with the concept of retribution alone,
| but I think if it is phrased in terms of modeling societal
| standards and demonstrating to others that this behavior is
| unacceptable, it is still valuable to society. I guess you
| can mark that under "deterrence", but it's less about
| sending a signal to future would-be criminals, and more
| about communicating and demonstrating societal standards to
| the entire society at large.
| richwater wrote:
| justice from whom? Just because they got a prescription
| doesn't mean they lost complete body autonomy. The lack of
| personal responsibility regarding drugs around here is
| insane.
| ericmay wrote:
| I'm not sure about the justice aspect, but I wouldn't
| underestimate how powerfully addicting some of these drugs
| can be to the point where it can override your "personal
| responsibility". Same thing with any substance like alcohol
| or cigarettes, gambling, over-eating, etc. It's very easy
| to slip into abuse and an addictive response and
| susceptibility isn't universal.
| emaro wrote:
| Opioids are highly addictive. If you're vulnerable and your
| doctor eagerly prescribes them because it feeds their
| wallet, you can easily loose control.
|
| Don't blame the victims.
| richwater wrote:
| > Don't blame the victims.
|
| Expecting some personal agency is now victim blaming?
| Detoxing from opioids is not fatal. It sucks. But it's
| doable. You don't need to take your entire prescription.
| Take it while you're in pain.
| causal wrote:
| If you were prescribed heroin and proceeded to take it,
| you would end up addicted and unable to quit. Full stop.
| It is exceedingly rare to overcome opiates, you
| underestimate them greatly.
| causal wrote:
| The whole basis of this suit is that a Purdue subsidiary
| went out of their way to market these pills as non-
| addicting. "Personal responsibility" in this case clearly
| lies on those actors, not the addicts.
| poopbreath5000 wrote:
| It's really not that complex. The question is NOT whether the
| plan was a good idea or reasonable. The question was whether
| the Bankruptcy Code authorized the bankruptcy judge to approve
| the plan. It doesn't. It's really not more complex than that.
|
| Courts cannot legislate from the bench. Why not? Because the
| Constitution says so; i.e., Congress gets to say what the
| statutes say, while the Judiciary gets to say what the
| Constitutions says. That's the balance of power under the
| Constitution.
|
| To me...the waaaaaaay bigger and more intriguing thing is: the
| story underlying this split 5-4 decision.
|
| I mean this spit the "right" justices and the "left" justices.
| J Jackson came out of nowhere and sided with four "right"
| justices. Like, what?
|
| Also, I can't for the life of me understand how J Sotomayor and
| J Kagan could ever come to the conclusion that this sweetheart
| deal for rich billionaires, who made their money killing $247k
| humans, was a good idea and totally fine. Again, what? But no
| the efficacy of the deal doesn't legally matter and is
| irrelevant.
|
| Nevertheless, we don't know that the victims will be harmed by
| this decision. However, we DO KNOW that the rich billionaires
| would have benefited if this decision went the other way.
|
| Remember that.
|
| There's gotta be a Pulitzer worthy story behind this split.
| dwallin wrote:
| I disagree. The dissent focused way too much on emotional
| appeals. It shouldn't matter if the remedy was popular amongst
| the primary parties if the law doesn't allow for such a remedy,
| "it was popular" is not a solid legal footing.
|
| If we want to make sure that the victims of people like the
| Sacklers can get some justice then let's actually write some
| laws for that purpose. Let's remove the loopholes that let them
| make a ton of money at the expense of a nation, and them take
| it all offshore. Let's add transparency to corporate
| structuring. Let's fully pierce the corporate veil for
| egregious situations such as this.
|
| What we shouldn't do is allow the powerful yet another tool to
| escape consequences. Whether or not this particular deal was a
| net-positive for victims is besides the point. It gives too
| much power to bankruptcy judges and is a ripe avenue for
| corruption. Go to a "friendly" judge and have them absolve you
| of any personal liability, then send them a nice gift basket
| full of Benjamins, now fully legally (Thanks Supreme Court!).
| dmix wrote:
| > If we want to make sure that the victims of people like the
| Sacklers can get some justice
|
| This isn't just about the Sacklers either, this could
| potentially impact a lot of other important cases in the
| future once the law is more well defined.
| ein0p wrote:
| There will be people like Sacklers until we start putting them
| away and throwing away the key. We do need to put rich people in
| jail at least every now and again, if for no other reason than to
| demonstrate we're not a banana republic.
| nickff wrote:
| > _" We do need to put rich people in jail at least every now
| and again, if for no other reason than to demonstrate we're not
| a banana republic."_
|
| And to that end, the USA must demonstrate that it's
| totalitarian and abuses people's rights?
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Is rule of law totalitarian? Wealth is not be a get out of
| jail free card, and imprisonment is not inherently an abuse
| of rights. While the US prison industrial complex is vile and
| abusive, the cushy white collar prisons aren't where those
| abuses are happening.
| squidbeak wrote:
| I think the poster means those rich who have committed
| offences, but enjoy softer penalities thanks to their wealth.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith._"
|
| (squidbeak's reply is a nice example of following this
| guideline - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40812196)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| 1024core wrote:
| Unfortunately, vermin like the Sacklers have access to top
| lawyers. The two founding brothers are dead, so you won't be
| able to put them away; they are already put away, permanently.
|
| However, their despicable offspring managed to flee the country
| with their ill-gotten gains; good luck finding them now.
|
| My biggest beef with this case has been that people should not
| be allowed to just "buy" themselves out of jail. The US does
| not have a concept of "blood money" in its legal code (at
| least, not yet anyways). This agreement amounted to blood
| money, practically. Blood money != justice.
| oezi wrote:
| Three brothers! The dynasty origin and eldest brother is
| Arthur Sackler.
| legitster wrote:
| > We do need to put rich people in jail at least every now and
| again, if for no other reason than to demonstrate we're not a
| banana republic.
|
| ... you do know that banana republics did this exact thing all
| of the time?
| EnergyAmy wrote:
| I suspect you misinterpreted what they said. We should be
| putting guilty people in jail, even if they're rich and
| powerful.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| chasil wrote:
| Unfortunately, this is no longer possible to a great extent.
|
| "Purdue flourished under brothers Mortimer and Raymond Sackler,
| who died in 2010 and 2017, respectively."
| ein0p wrote:
| I'm sure it was a lot more than just two people
| dang wrote:
| We detached this from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40811921.
|
| It's best to avoid generic tangents in HN threads, especially
| generic flamewar tangents. They tend to make discussion more
| repetitive and therefore more tedious and eventually more
| nasty. This particular one has been repeated hundreds if not
| thousands of times in the past.
| legitster wrote:
| I find the Supreme court decisions to be fascinating reads and
| overall much more interesting and complicated than most news
| services make them out to be.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Yes, indubitably. It's easy to lose sight of (if one doesn't
| read the rulings regularly) the fact that SCOTUS's job is to
| come to rational and deliberate rulings grounded firmly in
| textual and common law dating back over a thousand years. Even
| when one doesn't agree with the conclusion, one rarely sees a
| ruling that isn't reasonable (though sometimes seeing the
| reason involves entertaining a fact pattern other than the one
| you believe to be true!).
| voidfunc wrote:
| Lol, they're also quite ideological. Don't fall for the trap
| that these people are enlightened philosophers. They have a
| lot of flaws in their own right.
|
| Ask good lawyers about their thoughts on SCOTUS Justices,
| it's not always peachy.
| legitster wrote:
| Even if they are ideological, they are not _usually_
| political hacks ( _cough_ Thomas _cough_ ).
|
| Honestly though, for as much flak as this current court
| gets, there is at least a certain consistency where they at
| least mostly stick to arguments about the letter of the
| law. In previous courts you would see some truly _wild_
| written arguments about how, like, a specific word in the
| Commerce Clause or whatever could mean whatever you wanted
| it to.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Haha. Sure. Like when they make up Qualified Immunity which
| is a completely made up special status/protection given by
| the Courts, not by law or common law but abusing the concept
| of Judicial immunity and expanding it to all governmental
| officials.
|
| See Pierson v. Ray (1967)
| dang wrote:
| Please make your substantive points without swipes (like
| "haha sure"). This is in the site guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| My bad. I can no longer edit/delete my comment to fix it.
|
| I haven't responded that way in the past but was
| responded to that way a couple of days ago and guess it
| took hold. I can see why you have to clamp down on it, it
| easily spreads.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > one rarely sees a ruling that isn't reasonable
|
| Not so true of this incarnation of SCOTUS. It's amazing when
| they dont delay or rule (by majority) via ridiculous
| interpretation.
| bee_rider wrote:
| This is going too far I think.
|
| There are some partisan hacks on the bench and the
| institution's legitimacy is in pretty bad shape.
|
| But in this case they got an issue that didn't have as much
| partisan alignment so maybe they did some good work.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| Yet, during oral arguments they use some of the most juvenile
| thought experiments to prove their 'slippery slope' opinions
| lupire wrote:
| Nonsense.
|
| Oral arguments are the lawyers making arguments. The
| justices ask questions and collect answers. Their proofs
| are in their opinions.
| dang wrote:
| Please make your substantive points without swipes or
| calling names. This is in the site guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| Your post would be fine without that first bit.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Especially since this 5-4 decision didn't follow the
| "conservative" or "liberal" split at all.
| legitster wrote:
| And honestly, while we like to lump them into "conservative"
| and "liberal" camps for simplicity, it's easy to get the
| correlation wrong. Like anyone else, their moral and legal
| philosophies might make them lean one way or another
| politically, not the other way around. Even for the most
| extremely political justices, to hear them expound on the
| legal principles of federalism or human rights is very
| fascinating.
|
| It's easy to forget that, while they are political
| appointees, they have to have fairly long careers as acting
| judges to even qualify for the appointments.
| timemct wrote:
| Save for at least one current sitting Justice: Amy Coney
| Barrett. They only had ~3 years of experience being a
| judge, Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (2017-2020), before
| being nominated to the Supreme Court. Yes, they have
| experience in other law related roles, however your comment
| explicitly stated, "...fairly long careers as acting
| judges...," so that is what I'm speaking to.
| legitster wrote:
| Fair point!
| OrigamiPastrami wrote:
| > It's easy to forget that, while they are political
| appointees, they have to have fairly long careers as acting
| judges to even qualify for the appointments.
|
| This is objectively false. There are no requirements like
| this and there have been several appointees throughout
| history without many, if any, qualifications for the role.
| buildbot wrote:
| Amy Coney Barrett only served 3 years as a judge - that
| doesn't seem very long at all.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Liberal vs. conservative has always been the wrong take.
| The stronger dividing line is textualism vs pragmatism.
|
| In fact Scalia famously said this coming from a textualist
| perspective which I think most people can agree with even
| if they hate him: " If you're going to be a good and
| faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact
| that you're not always going to like the conclusions you
| reach."
|
| This seems absolutely correct, but when is the last time
| ypu ever saw a commentator observe this? Critique has been
| reduced to "i dont like the effect so the interpretation of
| the law is wrong." Put the other way, a fair observer must
| eventually say "i really hate the conclusion but they got
| it right."
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| The country gave up on change through legislation a long
| time ago so now it's down to trying to sway the court.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| >The stronger dividing line is textualism vs pragmatism.
|
| They should be doing what is right for the American
| _people_. There are clearly laws on the books today which
| infringe on individual freedoms (abortion), harm society
| as a whole (citizens united), etc.
|
| The 'justice system' is _supposed_ to be the government
| branch protecting the little guy from powerful elites. I
| 've not often seen that. I see the opposite. If the legal
| system won't deliver justice, well, people are going to
| take things into their own hands whether that's 'justice'
| or not. If you bury your child, and you see the people
| ultimately responsible get away with it, I'm not sure I
| could really blame them.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _The 'justice system' is supposed to be the government
| branch protecting the little guy from powerful elites_
|
| The justice system. Not necessarily the courts. Our
| courts definitely weren't designed to be a political
| body.
| legitster wrote:
| Strong but respectful disagree from me. Justice is
| supposed to be blind. And if right and wrong were so
| clear cut there would no need for democracy at all.
|
| The court is not a democratic institution and exists to
| uphold the textual rule of law as determined by
| lawmakers. If a pragmatic ruling by the court can
| circumvent a politically logjammed congress, so be it.
| But the courts deciding what is right or wrong for the
| American people is a very slippery slope that leads to
| disaster. And a court that just rules against the
| (existing) elite every time is a junta.
| legitster wrote:
| This is exactly it.
|
| Both sides have their merit, but some people want to have
| it both ways - do you want pragmatic judges or more
| democracy? They can often be mutually exclusive.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > The stronger dividing line is textualism vs pragmatism.
|
| Except when it came to "textualism vs pragmatism", I've
| seen that the "textualist" judges have, in many cases, no
| problem being "pragmatists" when it suits their desired
| outcome on an issue.
|
| For example, when Scalia dissented in some famous gay
| rights cases (I'm thinking of Lawrence v Texas
| specifically) his basic disgust at the thought of same
| sex relations was laid bare. Ironically, in Lawrence v
| Texas his dissent was basically correct - striking down
| laws against sodomy _was_ a step towards gay marriage -
| but the gist of his argument was that gay marriage was
| such a god awful, horrible, unthinkable thing that any
| decision that allowed it must be prima facie wrong. He
| was basically warning "This decision will force us to
| allow gay marriage" as if, instead of that being a good
| thing, it was akin to allowing the apocalypse.
|
| Scalia also authored the 5-4 decision in District of
| Columbia v. Heller, a major second amendment case that
| held, for the first time, that individuals had a private
| right to own guns (not just "a well-regulated militia").
| Read up on that case, as tons of "conservative" judicial
| scholars argued that it was "pulled from thin air" just
| as much as Roe v Wade was. From the Wikipedia page:
|
| > Richard Posner, judge for the United States Court of
| Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, compares Heller to Roe
| v. Wade, stating that it created a federal constitutional
| right that did not previously exist, and he asserts that
| the originalist method - to which Justice Antonin Scalia
| claimed to adhere - would have yielded the opposite
| result of the majority opinion.
|
| >> The text of the amendment, whether viewed alone or in
| light of the concerns that actuated its adoption, creates
| no right to the private possession of guns for hunting or
| other sport, or for the defense of person or property. It
| is doubtful that the amendment could even be thought to
| require that members of state militias be allowed to keep
| weapons in their homes, since that would reduce the
| militias' effectiveness. Suppose part of a state's
| militia was engaged in combat and needed additional
| weaponry. Would the militia's commander have to collect
| the weapons from the homes of militiamen who had not been
| mobilized, as opposed to obtaining them from a storage
| facility? Since the purpose of the Second Amendment,
| judging from its language and background, was to assure
| the effectiveness of state militias, an interpretation
| that undermined their effectiveness by preventing states
| from making efficient arrangements for the storage and
| distribution of military weapons would not make sense.
| subsubzero wrote:
| How they voted(Name and the party of the administration that
| picked them):
|
| Majority
|
| Neil Gorsuch (Rep.)
|
| Samuel A. Alito Jr (Rep)
|
| Clarence Thomas (Rep)
|
| Ketanji Brown Jackson (Dem)
|
| Amy Coney Barrett (Rep)
|
| =======
|
| Minority
|
| John G. Roberts(Rep)
|
| Sonia Sotomeyer(Dem)
|
| Elena Kagan(Dem)
|
| Brent Kavanagh(Rep)
|
| Whats really surprising is how Gorusch is quite the wildcard,
| he also authored the majority decision that said that 1/2 of
| Oklahoma belongs to Native Americans -
| https://www.npr.org/2020/07/09/889562040/supreme-court-
| rules...
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Its almost like they arent just a political body.
|
| Nah... thats unthinkable
| brookst wrote:
| Either that, or it's almost like politics have more
| dimensions than party affiliation.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Kavanaugh can also be a bit of a wild card. Been surprised
| by him quite a few times. many of the others are entirely
| predictable.
| ortusdux wrote:
| I added the SCOTUS oral arguments to my podcast feed. They are
| a great listen!
| curiousgal wrote:
| Try listening to the audio recordings of the arguments on
| https://www.oyez.org/
| balozi wrote:
| I totally agree. I have also been captivated by the oral
| arguments. To the extent that I find myself pre-researching
| some of the cases' background beforehand. Makes for compelling
| entertainment when you have a sense on why the justices
| approach questioning the way that they do. Beats any podcast I
| know.
| stavros wrote:
| They're also eminently readable, which (to me) shows the
| massive skill of whoever writes these. The fact that I, a
| layman, can easily understand them speaks to the quality of the
| writing.
| kristopolous wrote:
| Or to how unexceptionally average most of the judges actually
| are.
|
| If you're willing to entertain these are skilled brilliant
| jurists with some kind of mystical levels of elucidation,
| maybe they're actually just people who failed upward into a
| job with a fancy robe
| stavros wrote:
| The difficulty of understanding a text isn't proportional
| to how skilled the person is at their job (I think it's
| inversely proportional, if anything), but to how familiar a
| field is.
|
| It doesn't take a good developer to describe a system in a
| way that nobody can understand it. It does take a great one
| to describe a system in a way that a layman can understand
| it.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| You mean articles with headlines like " Supreme Court Nukes
| Hunter Biden Laptop Conspiracy in Brutal Ruling" arent actually
| substantive? https://newrepublic.com/post/183140/supreme-court-
| hunter-bid...
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| I'm surprised that wasn't
|
| "Supreme Court NUKES Hunter Biden Laptop Conspiracy in BRUTAL
| Ruling" (with "NUKES" and "BRUTAL" in obligatory red font.)
| standardUser wrote:
| I studied international politics in college and as a result I
| read not only a ton of news, but often the primary sources they
| were based on, and I was shocked by the amount of omissions and
| oversimplifications. I've never understood people who don't
| "trust" the news given that it is provably accurate and factual
| nearly all of the time. But I've long despised the arrogance
| from mainstream media wherein they confidently decide what to
| print and what not to print with no explanation or
| accountability on those decisions.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40811187. Nothing wrong
| with your post but I wanted to pin
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40811187 to the top of the
| thread, and this subthread is a bit generic.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I could see shielding from future civil liability as an option,
| but only after a true bankruptcy has occurred. Liquidate
| everything, and by that I mean _everything_ , and then you can
| move on with your life. Definitely no shielding money in offshore
| accounts.
|
| If you're not willing to do that ... well, see you in court. Over
| and over, because every individual you hurt should have a chance
| to come at you with a liability claim.
| chasil wrote:
| One problem of which I was unaware is that the Sackler family
| has largely fled the United States.
|
| Pursuing their assets introduces vast complexities of
| international law.
|
| "In a brief filed on behalf of the relatives of Mortimer
| Sackler, most of whom are based overseas, lawyers warned of
| "significant litigation costs and risks" in seeking to enforce
| any foreign court judgments against the family if the
| settlement were thrown out."
| lycopodiopsida wrote:
| The US are proud of getting some terrorist in the middle of
| Pakistan or putting pressure on whistleblowers
| internationally but when big money is involved getting a
| criminal scumbag responsible for ~1m deaths is suddenly a
| huge problem.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Listen, we can't spend like we did going after Julian
| Assange on this. It's just business people doing business.
| wmf wrote:
| El Chapo is crying.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| El Chapo was free to form a corporation and then create
| an indemnification agreement between that company and
| himself. That he chose not to is on him.
| csdreamer7 wrote:
| > "In a brief filed on behalf of the relatives of Mortimer
| Sackler, most of whom are based overseas, lawyers warned of
| "significant litigation costs and risks" in seeking to
| enforce any foreign court judgments against the family if the
| settlement were thrown out."
|
| I understand your point, but basically they are saying: "We
| hid all our assets to evade the law. Give us immunity from
| criminal money laundering evasion and we will only pay part
| of what we likely would have owed."
|
| Can you imagine a member of Congress or the President saying
| this? Forgoing immunity is a scorched earth tactic, but it is
| also one that will dissuade future abusers. We have those
| overseas money reporting laws that make it difficult for
| Americans to get bank accounts overseas. Let's use them!
| sillywalk wrote:
| > "We hid all our assets to evade the law. Give us immunity
| from criminal money laundering evasion and we will only pay
| part of what we likely would have owed."
|
| > Can you imagine a member of Congress or the President
| saying this?
|
| Yes.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Well, we haven't gotten to that part just yet. Right now,
| we're still in the stage of deny deny deny even in the
| face of evidence and convictions. They are still in the
| deny stage.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > "We hid all our assets to evade the law. Give us immunity
| from criminal money laundering evasion and we will only pay
| part of what we likely would have owed."
|
| > We have those overseas money reporting laws that make it
| difficult for Americans to get bank accounts overseas.
| Let's use them!
|
| This is conflating two things.
|
| It is not criminal to move money offshore, and nothing
| suggested any money laundering occurred, because it is not
| necessary to launder money to move it offshore. And it is
| also not money laundering to obfuscate money's origin or
| destination. Money laundering requires a criminal origin
| and then obfuscation.
|
| Despite how much the US has convinced its entire culture to
| stigmatize the concept of moving money, the US is operating
| in its own bubble of hubris to suggest money has to stay
| within its ecosystem. It doesn't make any sense at all when
| you say it out loud does it?
|
| To your second point, the US has reporting laws on money
| held offshore legally, for US citizens. For banks, this is
| merely an additional compliance burden that disincentivizes
| them from dealing with small accounts because its not worth
| it. But at Sackler money, it is worth it. It is not hard to
| find someone to bank you as an American. And at Sackler
| levels of money you don't have to remain a US citizen,
| hence absolving the reporting requirements if they went
| that direction.
|
| Or when you have a second citizenship, you can just not
| tell the US about it, and you can just not tell the foreign
| bank about your US citizenship. Prosecute that on its own,
| if you find out.
|
| and finally, there are gaps in this reporting framework.
| FATCA treaty was a broad expansion of a country's power, to
| the limit of our global society in the continuum of
| history. And its not completely as omnipresent as the
| American psyche imagined. Just like the global sanctions
| attempt on Russia showed, its a nice try but now everyone
| can see how much is hubris in plain sight.
| armada651 wrote:
| > And at Sackler levels of money you don't have to remain
| a US citizen, hence absolving the reporting requirements
| if they went that direction.
|
| Renouncing your citizenship because you owe the US
| government money is generally not seen as a valid reason
| by the US government to renounce your citizenship.
| fuzzylightbulb wrote:
| Nor should it be. These people are leeches whose very
| existence is antithetical to a healthy and just society.
| They've done immeasurable damage and then hide behind the
| courts to avoid any repercussions. Disgusting, the lot of
| them.
| chasil wrote:
| Consider a few issues:
|
| - the foremost among the perpetrators are dead
|
| - the rest of the family is culpable, but less so
|
| - the settlement money will now be entirely repurposed for
| legal defense
|
| - meanwhile the victims get nothing
|
| Does justice demand punishment or compensation?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Considering the patience the US has with getting justice
| against other individuals who have fled our jurisdiction, we
| could do the same here. We also have an enormous amount of
| influence in the financial sector in other western nations,
| so we could at least make their lives less lavish and
| comfortable.
|
| Throwing up our hands and declaring it an unsolvable issue
| just encourages others to misbehave and then escape the same
| way.
| nickff wrote:
| The question is whether to allow a smaller settlement
| immediately, or pursue a less-likely and possibly larger
| set of judgements in the future. It's not clear that it is
| possible to get more money out of them.
| hyeonwho4 wrote:
| The EPA values one human life at $10M. A conservative
| estimate of the number of people killed by the Sackler
| family's companies (testified in court) was ~~245,000~~
| Edit: probably at least 100,000, see below. So if opiates
| were environmental pollutants, the Sacklers would be on
| the hook for $1T in damages. Their immediate settlement
| was $6B.
|
| Roughly three orders of magnitude too small.
| richwater wrote:
| Attributing every single opioid overdose to solely the
| Sackler family is so laughably ludicrous it's hard to
| take this comment seriously.
| ygjb wrote:
| ok, so now you are just arguing percentages. What is an
| appropriate amount of the harm to be apportioned to the
| Sackler family?
| hyeonwho4 wrote:
| The number of opioid overdoses between 1999 and 2021 was
| 645,000, according to CDC. Purdue Pharma brought in $35B
| in OxyContin revenue from 1995 to 2017. OxyContin was
| prescribed to 6.2 million people in 2002.
|
| I'll edit the number above to ~100,000 as an estimate of
| the number of victims, since it looks like I
| misremembered 645,000 as the number of Purdue-related
| deaths. Still, that's assuming only 1.6% of those 6.2
| million people taking OxyContin in 2002 developed an
| addiction, which seems low.
| dylan604 wrote:
| If we can seize Russian oligarch's money, why could the US
| Gov't not seize assets of a US citizen even if living
| abroad?
| whycome wrote:
| Hey, it's not like they shared copyrighted movies on a
| server or something.
| snapcaster wrote:
| We just need to convince people they leaked a couple videos
| of the war state doing bad stuff
| tcmart14 wrote:
| With that first sentence, I thought this might be doing
| down the road of, "boy, there sure is a lot of 'democracy'
| that needs to be spread."
| brookst wrote:
| I think you're mixing up the Purdue bankruptcy and individual,
| personal bankruptcies for the Sacklers. This case was about the
| corporate bankruptcy.
| qarl wrote:
| Seems like the justices missed a great opportunity here to rule
| in favor of the settlement and then receive $$$$$$ next year as a
| thank you gift.
|
| Because buying government officials is now entirely legal.
|
| https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-limits-scop...
| petesergeant wrote:
| > Justices Kavanaugh, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Roberts disagreed
|
| Fascinating split
| tunesmith wrote:
| Strong language, too, against the majority that includes
| Jackson ("Brown Jackson"?).
| jpalawaga wrote:
| This is the only reasonable outcome... you can't deny some people
| justice just because other people think it's fine.
|
| The sacklers have done immeasurable damage to the country. All of
| their wealth should be removed. Their foundation should be
| dismantled and used to fund damage and mental health services for
| addicts of the opioid crisis that they went on to create.
|
| And perhaps some of the individual pushers/purveyors of the
| drugs, too.
| petesergeant wrote:
| Yes, although in theory the justices are ruling on what the law
| means, rather than ruling on what they think it should mean for
| justice to be served.
| robnado wrote:
| Agreed, they should be made an example of. Everyone involved in
| the fraud of getting this medication approved and then marketed
| to millions of people should face a fair trial and should be
| made an example of if found guilty. There is no reason that
| this medication should have been approved or marketed the way
| it was, especially considering what the medical community
| already knew about opioids and the harm they can cause.
| polotics wrote:
| Considering the three strikes rule and other extremely
| punitive judgement against drug offenders, how are the
| sacklers still not in solitary?
| ensignavenger wrote:
| The immunity deal on the table here was for civil litigation,
| not criminal trials. The Sackler family can still declare
| bankruptcy on their own, they just can't use the bankruptcy
| of their company to extend protection to themselves- which
| does make sense. But nothing that was proposed would have
| shielded them from criminal prosecution.
| legitster wrote:
| The Sacklers were absolved of financial liability, not
| criminal. A DA that thought there was a strong enough case
| could have brought charges this whole time irrespective of the
| settlement agreement.
|
| > Their foundation should be dismantled and used to fund damage
| and mental health services for addicts of the opioid crisis
| that they went on to create.
|
| Part of the settlement agreement was that they were going to
| turn Purdue into a treatment organization. But right now it's
| back to the drawing board and plaintiffs will have to pursue
| separate and much harder cases to get reparations directly from
| all the individual members of the Sackler family.
| saghm wrote:
| > The Sacklers were absolved of financial liability, not
| criminal
|
| I don't understand how this changes anything; why would it
| make any more sense for the subset of the victims who settled
| to absolve the Sacklers of financial liability towards to the
| victims who didn't settle? The type of liability doesn't
| change the fact that victims not part of the settlement
| shouldn't be restricted by the terms of it; being able to
| push their own case separately is the entire reason why
| people are allowed to opt out of class action settlements.
| legitster wrote:
| As the dissent pointed out, getting voluntary concessions
| from parties is generally considered a _good_ outcome in
| bankruptcy court and part of the reason it exists in the
| first place. Any time you can take a million lawsuits and
| turn it into one saves a lot of legal fees for everyone and
| frees up our court system.
|
| Another thing the dissent pointed out is that anyone who
| doesn't participate in the group settlement is only going
| to get the money first-come/first-serve. In bankruptcy
| court you can split the money more or less evenly. If
| everyone litigates separately, only the people with more
| senior claims get their money before the funds run out.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Last time I looked into things, the fines they were going to
| pay is a tiny slap on the wrist compared to the obscene money
| they made. They can put the billions in an account and use
| just some of the interest for the fines. The biggest hit to
| them so far was having their name removed from some museums.
| Let that sink in. They've lost some slight prestige with
| other wealthy folks.
| legitster wrote:
| They took in something like $11 billion and were going to
| fund something like $6 billion.
|
| As far as purely pragmatic solutions go this was not a bad
| deal for victims. There are a lot of members of the Sackler
| family and a lot of them have a lot of money despite
| personally not being connected to the Purdue business in
| any way.
|
| Even if they could all be connected to wrongdoing actually
| getting money from, like, the second step-grand-nephew who
| lives in Copenhagen is going to be really, really hard.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| $6 billion dollars is a _lot_ of money, but it 's also
| just half of what they profited from what was effectively
| mass murder. Is that really something you want to let
| people buy their way out of for less than they profited?
| legitster wrote:
| Think of it this way - if you found out your great-grand-
| uncle was a Nazi official, and that the house you grew up
| in or the favorable college you got into or whatever
| lifestyle you had growing up was initially partly funded
| by his misdeeds? Could your assets be targeted by
| descendants of the victims and you personally be made
| bankrupt?
|
| That's a bit of an exaggeration, but a lot of the wealth
| of the Sackler family is distributed this way. The
| original brothers have died, there is a huge lump of
| easily gotten money from the direct family, and then
| there is a lot of money that has been spread around 2 or
| 3 generations removed. At a certain point if you want the
| full $11 billion you are going to have to go into the
| weeds.
| lesuorac wrote:
| I don't think "partly funded by his misdeeds" is an
| accurate description.
|
| Members of the Sackler family ran Perdue Pharma and they
| aren't dead. Sure, a relative of the Perdue Pharma
| executives should be off limit for liability. But there's
| still plenty of actual executives that should be held
| accountable.
| hyeonwho4 wrote:
| 645,000 people died due to opiate abuse while their
| company was promoting opiates, and their prescriptions
| peaked at 6.2 million prescription users pee year. Under
| EPA standards for damages they would be liable for
| trillions.
| lokar wrote:
| More narrowly, a judge can't impose an outcome or settlement on
| someone where the law does not allow for it.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| Discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40810767
| dang wrote:
| (we merged that thread hither)
| esd_g0d wrote:
| What share of the guild do the medical providers that prescribed
| the opioids to their patients have? There would be no opioid
| crisis if none were willing to do it.
| legitster wrote:
| Scott Alexander had a very interesting writeup about his
| experiences: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/16/against-
| against-pseudo...
| nickff wrote:
| I just read it (because of your link), and commend it to
| other people in this thread; quite a well-described and
| interesting position.
| esd_g0d wrote:
| The US is the only place in the world AFAIK where you will
| get prescribed opioids for something as trivial as a wisdom
| tooth extraction (kind of like one of the cases cited). It is
| also the only place in the world AFAIK going through the
| opioid epidemic.
|
| Every other country in the world has got the problem of
| painkillers figured out. So it can't be that complicated.
| loeg wrote:
| Wisdom teeth extraction is far from trivial and opioids are
| a very reasonable prescription for pain from that surgery.
| esd_g0d wrote:
| Literally does not happen in two countries that I know
| of, and I bet in many countries of the world (developed
| ones even).
| saint_fiasco wrote:
| Objectively, opioids are prescribed much less often
| outside the US.
|
| Subjectively, I got four wisdom teeth extracted in two
| sessions of two extractions each. Both times I only
| needed generic acetaminophen to manage the pain.
|
| Perhaps an US surgeon have insisted on doing it all in
| one session, in which case I would have found the pain
| and discomfort intolerable and opioids would have made
| more sense.
|
| In any case, they should probably figure out why their
| patients are in more pain than the patients of foreign
| surgeons and fix that. It could be something silly like
| them being less gentle during surgery because they are
| used to their patients being on opioids.
| legitster wrote:
| Wisdom teeth was actually one of the safer use cases. You
| would only get a short run so it was hard to build
| dependance.
|
| The opioid crisis was really defined by people with chronic
| long-term pain being given it for years at a time.
| esd_g0d wrote:
| The point is that people are overall too cavalier about
| opioids in the US.
|
| I don't think it's necessary to get into the details of
| how much pain is enough pain, how acute is acute enough,
| etc... because this is not a problem essentially anywhere
| else in the world -- and not because they thought really
| hard about it.
| xeckr wrote:
| I don't understand the hatred directed at the Sacklers. Oxycodone
| is, just like all other opiates, highly effective at suppressing
| pain, potentially addictive, and deadly in large enough doses.
| This has been common medical knowledge for millennia. Why do so
| many people believe that they are responsible for overdose
| deaths?
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Because they marketed an opioid as an "extended release" form
| when they knew from their own internal studies that the pain
| relief only lasted the standard 6 hours instead of the 8 hours
| that were claimed. As a result, people would find themselves
| taking more to stay on top of their symptoms and the resulting
| ramp in use would leave people debilitated.
| lokar wrote:
| It was also pitched as abuse resistant (something about it
| being hard to grind up the pills), which they also knew to be
| untrue.
| esd_g0d wrote:
| Exactly. It took the collaboration of many different people,
| all of which also profited from it, to bring about the opioid
| crisis.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| The vendor who sells many different things seems to be at
| least a bit less culpable than the provider who sells just
| their thing while lying about certain effects of it. Yes, we
| can examine how we got into this situation where doctors take
| drug advice from the people who make the drugs but the people
| who lied for profit deserve the lion's share of the
| criticism.
| esd_g0d wrote:
| In practice, even many of the general public knew that what
| the vendor was selling was addictive and dangerous -- there
| are some reports even in this thread. So it's hard for the
| vendor to claim ignorance, even more so when often they
| also stood to profit from the lie (repeat customers).
| sanktanglia wrote:
| because the way they encouraged doctors to push it to everyone,
| regardless if they needed it or not. they aggressively marketed
| and pushed the drug in situations that didnt call for it
| ta_9135049 wrote:
| Because they marketed it as a non-addictive opioid because it
| was extended release and encouraged doctors always to prescribe
| the maximum amount despite internal testing showing the
| extended release was bogus and it was still addictive?
| KerrAvon wrote:
| https://www.britannica.com/science/opioid
|
| > Although a different formulation of oxycodone, manufactured
| by Merck & Co., was removed from the market in 1990 because of
| a high risk of addiction, members of the Sackler family
| downplayed the dangers of OxyContin, deceiving doctors into
| thinking that it was weaker than morphine and convincing them
| to prescribe the drug liberally
| cowboyscott wrote:
| This provides a good overview of how Purdue accelerated opiate
| marketing: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-
| sackler-familys...
|
| > A recent study, by a team of economists from the Wharton
| School, Notre Dame, and rand, reviewed overdose statistics in
| five states where Purdue opted, because of local regulations,
| to concentrate fewer resources in promoting its drug. The
| scholars found that, in those states, overdose rates--even from
| heroin and fentanyl--are markedly lower than in states where
| Purdue did the full marketing push. The study concludes that
| "the introduction and marketing of OxyContin explain a
| substantial share of overdose deaths over the last two
| decades."
| xeckr wrote:
| This is a correlation study--I understand that increasing
| marketing efforts leads to an increase in physician
| prescription, but those overdose deaths were caused by a tiny
| fraction of patients refusing to follow the script as issued
| by their physicians. Whose fault is that?
| legitster wrote:
| It's especially tough for me because they clearly pushed their
| sketchy marketing and sales tactics because they honestly
| believed they were helping people, and in their lifetimes the
| medical industry lauded them as heroes for "safe" and
| affordable ways to ease suffering.
|
| Right now people have no problem suppressing research they
| don't like about the negative effects of marijuana or anti-
| depressants or whatever their de jour personal treatment is -
| in 20 years if something bad really comes to light everyone is
| going to pretend that they knew all along and that everything
| was a smoking gun. Hindsight is 20/20 and history is written by
| the victors.
| tacticalturtle wrote:
| How much of this issue have you investigated already?
|
| It's worth skimming through the Massachusetts AG complaint
| about their actions, and the strategies employed by Purdue (of
| which the Sacklers always held the majority of board seats)
|
| https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/assets/u...
| louwrentius wrote:
| Without proper context, it's not clear to me if this is good or
| bad. It bad for the victims because there's no settlement. It's
| good for justice as people with a ton of money shouldn't be above
| the law.
| lokar wrote:
| It's good if you think judges should follow the law more or
| less as written by congress. The whole concept of a 3rd party
| release in bankruptcy is simply not in the law. Congress could
| add it, but they have not.
| dang wrote:
| I changed the URL from
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/06/opioid-settlement-to...
| to an article that has more information and a less baity title.
| If there's a better (more accurate and neutral) article, we can
| change it again.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Thanks Dang!
| strathmeyer wrote:
| Seems impossible to read Washington Post articles without
| opening them in incognito mode.
| dang wrote:
| I know that's annoying but it's allowed ("paywalls with
| workarounds" has been the rule for a long time on HN - see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html). Not that we like
| the annoyances any more than anyone else does, but it's the
| lesser of two evils.
|
| But we can change the URL if there's a better one.
| rc_mob wrote:
| i vote link to the ruling itself
| dang wrote:
| I almost agree but I think probably the best place for that
| is as a link in the comments, with the best accessible third-
| party report at the top.
|
| I don't know what the best accessible third-party report is
| though...
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Court skipped an opportunity to quote Franklin, since "Those who
| would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary
| Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" actually referred to
| a legislature entertaining a very similar Faustian bargain (i.e.
| value now in exchange for perpetual promise to remove
| responsibility from a family).
|
| ... but probably the correct choice, as that was a legislative,
| not judicial, circumstance and their decision in the time has no
| bearing on jurisprudence.
| shawndrost wrote:
| I understand people who think the Sacklers are villains who
| destroyed lives, Purdue should be shut down, and we should
| transform the legal regime around opioids.
|
| I understand people who think Purdue should continue, the status
| quo is OK, and the Sacklers are not [simply] villainous.
|
| I don't understand people who think the Sacklers are villains who
| destroyed lives, but Purdue should continue operating more-or-
| less as-is. Which is, I think, the conclusion from this
| settlement. If this is you, can you help me understand? Do you
| think there is/was a realistic way to prescribe opioids routinely
| and safely?
| legitster wrote:
| The settlement was not at all about Purdue operating as is.
| Purdue was going to be turned into a legal fund and treatment
| provider as part of the settlement agreement.
| shawndrost wrote:
| Under the bankruptcy settlement, Purdue will continue to sell
| opioids. The ownership will change (profits will be used to
| fund the causes you listed) but the operations will not.
| Right?
| legitster wrote:
| You know I can't actually find a lot of details about what
| the "new" Purdue was supposed to operate like - my
| understanding was that it was going to turn into a
| receivership under the court.
|
| But that's kind of the weirdness of all of this - at no
| point was OxyContin itself banned or been made illegal.
| yostrovs wrote:
| I understand there's fraud and bribes and such, but it seems to
| me that in the end it is doctors and the medical system, with a
| bit of help from government regulators, that decide
| prescriptions, dosages, limitations and such. Purdue could have
| been making pure poison, but they don't prescribe anything.
| mcguire wrote:
| Is it fraud if the pharmaceutical company falsely claims that
| the addiction rate is very low? If the company aggressively
| pushes a dose regimen that is almost designed to produce
| addiction?
| cheeze wrote:
| Here is a good resource on it [1]. My understanding is that
| Purdue pushed hard for marketing, including paying doctors to
| market for them. This paragraph sums up most of it.
|
| > "Purdue admitted that it marketed and sold its dangerous
| opioid products to healthcare providers, even though it had
| reason to believe those providers were diverting them to
| abusers," said Rachael A. Honig, First Assistant U.S. Attorney
| for the District of New Jersey. "The company lied to the Drug
| Enforcement Administration about steps it had taken to prevent
| such diversion, fraudulently increasing the amount of its
| products it was permitted to sell. Purdue also paid kickbacks
| to providers to encourage them to prescribe even more of its
| products."
|
| Is purdue solely at fault here? Absolutely not. Does it seem
| that Purdue likely knew what was happening, but put profits
| above public health? In my opinion, yes.
|
| [1] - https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/opioid-manufacturer-
| purdue-ph...
| shawndrost wrote:
| I understand the contents of the link; that judgement prompts
| my question rather than answering it.
|
| The DOJ found that old Purdue's problem was illgal marketing,
| kickbacks, etc. I understand that as a legalistic thing.
|
| But as far as human judgement goes: I thought the problem
| here was opioid addiction, which is continuing to rise in the
| "new Purdue" regime. We all think old Purdue should not have
| been doing the illegal stuff. But was the illegal stuff the
| real problem here? It seems like the "new Purdue" reforms are
| not affecting the growth of the opioid epidemic.
| vikramkr wrote:
| That's not the settlement. The settlement is that purdue pays
| 8+ bn and shuts down, but the sacklers are immune personally.
| The supreme court threw out that deal saying that the sacklers
| can't be given immunity as a part of the deal.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I mean I have been prescribed opioids many times and I just
| take them as prescribed and they help the pain of the surgery
| or whatever. I don't even take the whole bottle. What will
| replace the opioids if we don't allow them to be prescribed?
| michael_vo wrote:
| Could you have recovered without pain killers? Or maybe used
| a pain killer that is much weaker that doesn't kill all the
| pain but is much safer like marijuana?
|
| Are there scientific studies that shows that opioids help
| patients recover quicker?
| suslik wrote:
| Why is this question important? The primary purpose of pain
| medication is not to facilitate recovery, but to reduce
| suffering and increase quality of life.
| michael_vo wrote:
| Exactly! Opioids increase suffering and ruin the quality
| of life for hundreds of thousands of Americans. 80k+
| yearly overdose deaths, plus a percentage of those using
| opioids for recovery become addicted to it.
|
| Is that a worthy tradeoff? I presume (could be wrong) but
| we did fine recovering with surgical operations 80 years
| ago without opioids.
| bonzini wrote:
| Most countries do without them now and have always done
| without them except in special cases such as palliative
| cures. You get opioids during recovery in the hospital,
| but not once you're discharged. You might get codeine
| rarely, but that's it.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Morphine was commonly administered for post-surgical pain
| 100 years ago:
|
| "The after-treatment of surgical patients, by Willard
| Bartlett and collaborators." (1925)
|
| https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015071056918
| &se...
|
| _One of the first complaints made by the postoperative
| patient on returning to consciousness is pain. This if
| due to the actual operative procedure should be at once
| relieved. William J. Mayo taught us long ago to give
| morphine during the first twenty-four hours for the pain
| which we make; viz., by cutting, retracting, suturing,
| etc. The discomfort caused by such procedures is relieved
| best by this drug and it is given by us if there be no
| contraindications for its use, regardless of the amount
| until full relief is experienced or its physiologic
| effects obtained._
| tcmart14 wrote:
| I don't think it s a black or white on opioids. But more of a
| being honest in the marketing and recommended dosages. For
| instance, Morphine is an opioid that often gets used in end-
| of-life care, this is a 90 year old on hospice actively dying
| from terminal cancer, so morphine to ease the suffering. No
| reason to not give them opioids. However, before the opioid
| crisis became a known crisis, my dad who is a disabled vet
| would get like 300 pills mailed to him a month, at the time
| to be indefinite, from the VA. This was when marketing was
| telling everyone percocet and vicoden were safe and non-
| addictive.
|
| These heavy hitters do have a purpose. But it should as
| narrow as necessary.
| bonzini wrote:
| Ibuprofen, paracetamol, rest?
|
| From
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/27/opinion/sunday/surgery-
| ge...: if you "no longer feel the pain you will no longer
| know what your body is telling you. You might overexert
| yourself because you are no longer feeling the pain signals".
| shawndrost wrote:
| I understand two answers to your question:
|
| 1. Nothing will replace the opioids, but we should make most
| routine use illegal anyway, because the usage you described
| causes addiction, abuse, and death in some cases, which
| overrules your QOL improvements.
|
| 2. Nothing could replace the opioids, so we should keep the
| status quo. The addiction, abuse, and death are a relatively
| minor downside to an important bundle of benefits. The
| Sacklers marketed them illegally, but we've course-corrected
| as best as possible, and the new status quo is uncomfortable
| but OK.
|
| These are, I think, the first two buckets of people I listed.
| I understand them both. I think you're in the second camp.
| I'm in the first. But I think most commenters here are in
| neither camp???
| doublet00th wrote:
| I think there's a misunderstanding in what the settlement is
| about. As part of Purdue's bankruptcy, the Sackler family is
| voluntarily providing 6 billion dollars to help settle claims
| opioid victims have brought against Purdue Pharma.
|
| As a condition to provide the 6 billion dollars, the Sackler
| family has asked the bankruptcy judge to not even allow any new
| suits against the Sacklers related to the Opioid epidemic. This
| is something bankruptcy courts do regular for the company
| Purdue Pharma, but it is irregular when it comes to the Sackler
| family (this is not the entity going bankrupt!)
|
| This is the issue that went up to the Supreme Court, and the
| Supreme Court ruled that the protection given to the Sackler
| family is not something that can be given by a bankruptcy judge
| during the bankruptcy of Purdue Pharma.
|
| Matt Levine has a much better explanation here:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-06-27/purdue...
| brookst wrote:
| +1 for Levine's explanation. As usual he is insightful, great
| at communicating a complex topic, and just _fun_ to read.
| monetus wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Co2A1
| Terr_ wrote:
| To try to illustrate the (bad) principle with a starker
| hypothetical:
|
| 1. Scrooge McDuck owns a thousand different corporations that
| are restaurants and eateries.
|
| 2. One single small taco-stand company is in bankruptcy
| court, after recklessly inflicting severe food-poisoning on a
| dozen customers.
|
| 3. Scrooge McDuck says: "Out of the goodness of my heart, I
| will _charitably_ donate $X of my _personal_ funds to help
| these poor unfortunates... _If_ you give me personal immunity
| to _any_ lawsuits involving recent food-poisoning problems
| anywhere. "
|
| 4. The dozen hospitalized taco-eaters are puzzled but OK with
| this, since they'll at least get something. The judge shrugs
| and things move forward.
|
| 5. Meanwhile a million other customers of other restaurants
| see the news on their phones, which they have out because
| they're stuck on their toilets with raging diarrhea.
|
| 6. They are justifiably outraged that _their_ rights to seek
| justice /compensation have been (partly) signed-away in the
| bankruptcy of some unrelated tiny taco stand case that they
| didn't--couldn't--participate in.
| shawndrost wrote:
| My question is not about the settlement; it's a question
| about moral judgements people have around Sacklers/Purdue,
| including judgements I see on this comment page. I already
| understand the mechanical details you've explained and they
| don't answer my question.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > Do you think there is/was a realistic way to prescribe
| opioids routinely and safely?
|
| Oxycodone is routinely and safely administered right now,
| to tens of thousands of people, every day. But this is kind
| of like, an FDA question, no?
| EncomLab wrote:
| Which is why going after the Sackler's is about politics
| and not about the law.
| jewayne wrote:
| Or maybe it's about the horrible crimes against humanity
| committed by the Sacklers?
| feoren wrote:
| Loaning money at 8% interest to informed parties is OK. Loaning
| money at 200% interest to vulnerable people is usury and should
| be illegal. Where in the middle is the right line to draw,
| legally? Does the intent of the lender matter? Does it matter
| if the lender is intentionally trying to keep people uninformed
| and vulnerable? These are hard questions, but that doesn't
| change the basic facts at the extreme ends of the spectrum.
|
| Clearly the Sacklers' behavior was in the realm of exploiting
| vulnerable people as much as possible in order to create a
| cycle of dependence. I think they're villains who destroyed
| lives. I don't think that means no pharmaceutical companies
| should be allowed to sell opioids, or that Purdue should be
| shut down for that reason. Clearly giving birthing women access
| to epidurals (fentanyl!) is OK. Clearly bribing doctors to
| over-prescribe addictive opioids to vulnerable people is
| villainous and should be illegal. It's a hard problem to find
| the exact right line in the middle, but it's a problem worth
| attempting. Obviously it involves a lot of regulatory
| oversight.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > _Loaning money at 200% interest to vulnerable people is
| usury and should be illegal_
|
| Stop with the patronizing. Any transaction between consenting
| parties (backed by bankruptcy protection) should be allowed.
| We're all grown ups, let people make their own decisions.
|
| Setting upper limits on interest rates simply makes it so
| that high-risk borrowers are unable to access credit. This
| harms _those borrowers_ more than anyone else, by limiting
| their opportunities.
|
| Regarding the Sacklers, they never prescribed any drugs to
| anyone. Doctors did. Why aren't we holding them responsible?
| It is doctors who have a duty of care to their patients, not
| pharmaceutical companies.
| shawndrost wrote:
| I like this analogy. How does it apply to the status quo of
| opioids? What rate of interest is the present-day Purdue
| business charging? This year I was prescribed 30 days of
| opioids for post-vasectomy use and guided to expect low-grade
| pain for 1-2 days. Is this like 8% interest or 200%? Does
| anyone here feel like they know the answers to these
| questions?
|
| It seems to me like the emergent answer I get is that the old
| Purdue was charging 200% interest and the new Purdue is
| charging 8%. But why does anyone think that? It seems like
| the core doom loop (dumb opioid scrips -> addiction ->
| fentanyl) is still in place, from what I can tell.
| glitch13 wrote:
| The ruling was only about whether or not a bankruptcy court has
| the legal authority to declare that the individual members of
| the Sackler family are immune to being sued directly, which is
| an agreed-upon condition of the bankruptcy settlement. SCOTUS
| ruled that it did not, so the settlement as it stands is dead.
|
| Purdue is not going to be operating in any capacity regardless
| of this ruling (except as a bank account holding the settlement
| funds).
| wesselbindt wrote:
| The only way is if it is done without a profit driven system
| incentivizing their overprescription. But this requires a
| gigantic systemic overhaul of healthcare to a nationalized
| system. And there seems to be a lot of peer reviewed evidence
| in favor of such a system, and there seems to be broad popular
| support for such a system. Yet we never manage to get there.
| It's almost like there's a group of people who simultaneously
| benefit from its existence and have the capital to influence
| legislation in their favor. Feels almost undemocratic.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| 1) I don't think this is an accurate read of the situation but
| others discuss that
|
| 2) a company is a set of processes and infrastructure, with
| some legal rights to employ people etc. The decisions of a
| driver of a car are the drivers fault not the cars. The car
| itself may be unsafe and should be adjusted if it's possible.
| But there is no point in destroying the car if it has utility
| with different drivers and safety. Revenge isn't a good reason
| to dismantle infrastructure. Revenge can only be taken on
| humans.
|
| 3) yes if you know people with chronic pain opioids are the
| difference between a full life and an early suicide. The
| consequence of all this is all opioid use is treated as
| potentially criminal by everyone involved from pharmacies to
| doctors to patients. This isn't a feature this is a flaw. And
| the lack of legal opioid access is leading chronic sufferers
| into fentanyl from the street.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > I don't understand people who think the Sacklers are villains
| who destroyed lives, but Purdue should continue operating more-
| or-less as-is. Which is, I think, the conclusion from this
| settlement. If this is you, can you help me understand? Do you
| think there is/was a realistic way to prescribe opioids
| routinely and safely?
|
| This is an extremely easy answer that doesn't require any
| details of the case.
|
| The supreme court clarifies what the law is, not if the
| Sacklers are villains and if Purdue should continue.
|
| So the people who think the the Sacklers are Villains and that
| Pursue should continue are people who believe the settlement is
| not legal and dont believe in legislating from the bench.
| darawk wrote:
| Yes of course there are realistic ways to prescribe opioids
| routine and safely. Purdue did not invent opioids, what they
| did is patent a particularly strong formulation, and then work
| to undermine the cultural taboo in medicine around their use.
| That last thing was their crime.
|
| There isn't, at this time, any other way to treat serious pain
| (in all cases). Opioid prescriptions will continue to be an
| unfortunately necessary feature of our medical system until we
| invent painkillers strong/good enough to replace them. I say
| this as someone who was personally addicted to opioids in
| general and Oxycontin in particular and feel very lucky to have
| only one dead friend as a result.
|
| Opioids can't be banned until we can replace them with
| something equally generally effective. But what we should do is
| reinstate the taboo around prescribing them, and probably stop
| offering take home fentanyl prescriptions at all (it's still
| useful for anaesthesia, in hospitals). Perhaps more
| importantly, I think the cat is kind of out of the bag on
| prescriptions. I haven't been around that world for a long
| time, but it seems to me like pharmaceuticals aren't the
| primary entrypoint to opioid addiction anymore - people just
| start with fentanyl.
|
| Dealing with fentanyl seems to me to be basically impossible.
| One kilogram of pure fentanyl is ~2,000,000 doses, for someone
| without a tolerance. This is impossible to interdict at the
| border. It is also fully synthetic, with no great choke point
| on synthesis routes. I have heard that there are other, even
| more dangerous, compounds like
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etonitazene that are also even
| easier to synthesize. I don't really know if there is a good
| way out of this other than doing the slightly less impossible
| thing, which is curing addiction.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > _That last thing was their crime_
|
| Taboos are bullshit. Either something is a clearly
| articulated, written, rule with an enforcement mechanism, or
| it's fair game.
|
| _Prescribing doctors_ are responsible for the opioid
| epidemic. _Doctors_ failed in their duty of care to patients.
| _Doctors_ massively overprescribed, failed to track their
| patient 's medication usage, and failed to spot addictive
| behaviour. Why aren't we holding them responsible? Simply
| because that's hard to do?
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Nobody is forcing you to see any doctors for any of your
| problems.
|
| That's pretty reductive, right? Well so is what you are
| saying.
| worik wrote:
| > Either something is a clearly articulated, written, rule
| with an enforcement mechanism, or it's fair game.
|
| No. There are many legal and bad things.
|
| Laws are a boundary, that few of us need.
|
| Laws are not a target
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I would argue that fiduciary responsibility mandates that
| corporate leaders do everything right up to the legal
| boundary in pursuit of their shareholders interests. In
| fact profitably violating regulations would also be the
| right thing to do in this case. Certainly most
| shareholders seem to appoint executives that do exactly
| that.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Taboos are not simply undesirable things, they are rules
| which carry severe penalties if you break them. The
| difference is that rather than going through the effort
| of getting society on the same page and agreeing what is
| okay and what isn't, you instead leave ambiguity that
| harms the well meaning and benefits the malicious. If
| something is bad enough that it should be banned by an
| unwritten rule, it's bad enough to be banned by a written
| rule. If you aren't willing to ban something by law, then
| it ought to be permissible.
| mcguire wrote:
| Purdue aggressively marketed OxyContin as having a very
| small rate of addiction to doctors who weren't pain
| specialists and thus had little experience with controlled
| medications, while providing a dosing regime that was
| almost designed to cause addiction. (It's sole advantage
| was as a timed-release medication; if pain returned before
| time for the next dose, doctors were instructed (strongly)
| to raise the dosage rather than increase the number of
| doses per day.)
|
| "The Promotion and Marketing of OxyContin: Commercial
| Triumph, Public Health Tragedy"
| (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622774/)
|
| "The Family That Built an Empire of Pain"
| (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-
| tha...)
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Blindly listening to a company trying to sell you
| something has never been a good idea. Doctors doing just
| that despite the clear, obvious, conflict of interest is
| their failure, not Purdue's.
|
| Thinking that an individual or organization with a vested
| interest will not bullshit you at every turn is absurdly
| naive. This is why third-party testing, accreditation,
| certification, and audits are a thing.
|
| > _doctors who weren 't pain specialists_
|
| Then they should have insisted on third party, board
| approved, usage guidelines; especially when it became
| obvious that OxyContin is _highly addictive_. It doesn 't
| take that long. Doctors have not however been held
| responsible for their abject failure towards their
| patients, and continue to prescribe a month's worth of
| Oxy for minor issues. This will continue until doctors
| start losing their licenses.
| com2kid wrote:
| > . (It's sole advantage was as a timed-release
| medication; if pain returned before time for the next
| dose, doctors were instructed (strongly) to raise the
| dosage rather than increase the number of doses per day.)
|
| The same thing happens with ADHD medications, the timed
| release dosages are supposed to last 12+ hours, but in
| reality they vary from 8 to 16.
|
| Thankfully most doctors will willingly prescribe a small
| after lunch short acting dose.
|
| There is a large delta between the average response curve
| and an individual's response curve!
| darawk wrote:
| > Prescribing doctors are responsible for the opioid
| epidemic. Doctors failed in their duty of care to patients.
| Doctors failed to track their patient's medication usage,
| and failed to spot addictive behaviour. Why aren't we
| holding them responsible? Simply because that's hard to do?
|
| This is a nice idea, but most Oxycontin is not prescribed
| by someone's doctor (it is prescribed by _a_ doctor, but it
| is power-law distributed, most of it is sold by dealers).
| There are a small number of doctors in the country at any
| given time that prescribe almost all of the supply. This is
| not something you can readily fix with responsibility at
| the doctor level. It may seem like you can, because you
| could just prosecute "those doctors", but the problem is
| that the incentives are too concentrated.
|
| That isn't to _absolve_ these individuals of
| responsibility. They are responsible, and we should
| prosecute them legally. The problem is that we already do
| and always have. We should keep doing it, but I don 't
| expect it to fix anything.
|
| EDIT: To be clear I'm not necessarily for or against this
| settlement. There was a time that we might have stopped the
| opioid crisis at the corporate or pharmaceutical level, but
| that time has long since past. We could criminalize all
| opioids tomorrow and it would make almost no difference.
| Most opioid addicts use fentanyl now, and most fentanyl is
| produced/sold illegally. Heroin, for instance, has been
| Schedule I forever - the only thing that reduced its
| popularity was a cheaper substitute in fentanyl.
|
| If we are going to bother prosecuting or civilly charging
| Purdue or its principals, it would have to be for purely
| punitive reasons. Corporate behavior unfortunately does not
| matter anymore.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| The on-ramp from minor pain or surgery; to a massive,
| blindly-renewed, over-prescription of Oxy; to an opioid
| addiction that spirals into street drugs is still
| mediated by doctors. Until these doctors start losing
| their licenses for their clear and obvious breaches in
| their duty of care, this on-ramp will remain open.
|
| > _a small number of doctors in the country at any given
| time that prescribe almost all of the supply_
|
| The fact that medical boards allow these doctors to
| retain their licenses is the core of the issue.
|
| > _we already do and always have_
|
| I am only aware of a handful of the most obvious,
| blatant, and egregious pill mill operators being
| prosecuted. Regular doctors who simply cannot be fucked
| to care for their patients, and prescribe them pills so
| they leave their office, have yet to be held accountable.
| shawndrost wrote:
| Thank you for the reply! I am honestly not informed about
| this stuff and not asking to covertly push an agenda.
|
| Follow-up Q for you. What is the realistic way to prescribe
| opioids routinely and safely? Are there certain formulations
| that have been or should be removed from the market? How do
| we reinstate the taboo on prescribing them?
|
| For EG: I got a vasectomy recently and was told to expect a
| day or two of pain. I was prescribed a month's supply of
| opioids without a single comment from the doctor on their
| addictive nature. My understanding is that this is how people
| get introduced to opioids; the pathway goes "legal scrip ->
| addiction -> illegal supply -> fentanyl -> death" and that's
| the engine of the epidemic.
|
| Should it be legal for the doctor to prescribe pain meds like
| this? (Or, should it be legal but discouraged? Is there a
| well-understood way to do this?) If it should be legal,
| should we expect the epidemic to continue? And if so, is
| post-bankruptcy Purdue a good thing or a bad thing?
|
| (My instinctive answers here are that we should make opioids
| illegal for much of their current use pattern, and that post-
| bankruptcy Purdue is approximately as gross as Sackler-era
| Purdue, for what it's worth.)
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > I was prescribed a month's supply of opioids without a
| single comment from the doctor on their addictive nature.
|
| Is this really what the question was about? Reflections on
| a personal experience? Those are perfectly valid concerns.
| Nobody is stopping you from asking any of the professionals
| you interacted with about addiction, if you are worried, go
| and ask!
| shawndrost wrote:
| No, my question is about how people judge our opioid
| status quo: a medical system that prescribes addictive
| opioids for routine and low-grade pain.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| I just wonder why random people would know better about
| this than your highly educated providers. Go ahead and
| ask. You can say those exact words. They will give better
| answers!
|
| If you want a poll, this court case was a poll. A
| majority of victims who had ample time to participate in
| litigation agreed to the settlement terms. They told you
| that addiction is bad, the new Purdue would help, and
| that money from its owners was sufficient justice. That
| some agitator basically played the Yogg-Sauron of this
| meta, the Supreme Court, and cast 5 fireballs against his
| opponent versus 4 fireballs on himself, isn't super
| material to the seeming success of the hard political
| work of this bankruptcy judge.
| jacobgkau wrote:
| > I just wonder why random people would know better about
| this than your highly educated providers. Go ahead and
| ask. You can say those exact words. They will give better
| answers!
|
| Are you sure they'll give "better answers" when they're
| the ones prescribing like that?
| shawndrost wrote:
| My question is specifically about the judgements that
| uninvolved people have formed. I can't learn about this
| from my doctor, or from the victims' decision in the
| context of a highly-constrained kabuki dance.
|
| It seems most commenters here are fine with a settlement
| that clears Purdue to sell opioids (for the benefit of
| victims), but not with a settlement that lets the
| Sacklers off with a fine. That is exactly the opposite of
| my moral intuitions. What gives?
|
| Some questions are message board questions.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| its easier to ask random people from home then go to a
| provider when I have no such problem or need to
| physically introduce myself to a highly educated
| provider. it's like a google search.
|
| What I wonder is why someone like you wouldn't know this?
| darawk wrote:
| np,
|
| > Follow-up Q for you. What is the realistic way to
| prescribe opioids routinely and safely?
|
| The simple answer is "less and with better monitoring". The
| first half of that was the equilibrium that Purdue
| intentionally shifted in the medical establishment. The
| cascading effects of that are what caused the modern day
| opioid crisis. Unfortunately, the modern-day opioid crisis
| as I understand it is mostly no longer related to
| pharmaceutical availability. So, while we should improve
| and lock down that supply chain route, unfortunately I
| don't expect it to make a large dent in the overall
| problem.
|
| > Are there certain formulations that have been or should
| be removed from the market?
|
| Take-home fentanyl is probably unnecessary, but again, I
| wouldn't really expect this to be a silver bullet. The
| DEA/FDA has gotten much tighter on their prescribing rules
| for powerful opioids, but their doing so has largely
| coincided with the expansion of the illegal heroin, and
| then fentanyl markets. It is now too late to fix by choking
| off supply, because the market has mostly moved outside of
| the regulatory regime (though we should still do that, to
| the extent we can).
|
| > How do we reinstate the taboo on prescribing them?
|
| These answers keep getting worse but we largely already
| have. We could probably do more, but if you are an MD and
| you are not "opioids are dangerous actually"-pilled, I
| think you need to go back to medical school. There was a
| short period in the mid 2000s where doctors were convinced
| otherwise by Purdue among others. Doctors who "think
| otherwise" today are almost without exception just outright
| criminals.
|
| > For EG: I got a vasectomy recently and was told to expect
| a day or two of pain. I was prescribed a month's supply of
| opioids without a single comment from the doctor on their
| addictive nature. My understanding is that this is how
| people get introduced to opioids; the pathway goes "legal
| scrip -> addiction -> illegal supply -> fentanyl -> death"
| and that's the engine of the epidemic.
|
| Overprescription like that (which that definitely is) is
| bad and unfortunately common. It's hard to say exactly how
| much addiction is caused by that variety, though. Most
| serious opioid addictions that I am aware of didn't get
| that way from a one time moderate overprescription of
| things like Vicodin or Percocet. It is possible to get
| "mildly" addicted from a month's supply of that and when
| you run out you might have a slightly unpleasant day or
| two, but not worse than that. If the illicit market wasn't
| there, that 30 day supply would be the end of any binge,
| and that would be "mostly fine", as such. That is not an
| endorsement or to say that it is at all a safe thing to do,
| but the risk comes primarily from not wanting to quit when
| you run out, and having other options available.
|
| Two things changed with the introduction of Oxycontin:
|
| 1. It started being prescribed for chronic, not acute pain.
| This meant that people had permanent, ongoing prescriptions
| for them. Which meant that people built up a very large
| tolerance, which led to..
|
| 2. Oxycontin is pure oxycodone, it is not formulated with
| an NSAID (like Percocet is). The presence of an NSAID
| limits the amount you can take before you get sick, and
| prevents you from (straightforwardly) consuming it via non-
| oral routes of administration, which is exponentially more
| addictive.
|
| > Should it be legal for the doctor to prescribe pain meds
| like this? (Or, should it be legal but discouraged? Is
| there a well-understood way to do this?) If it should be
| legal, should we expect the epidemic to continue? And if
| so, is post-bankruptcy Purdue a good thing or a bad thing?
|
| Legal but discouraged, definitely. They are an important
| tool in the treatment of acute pain. They can, more rarely,
| be an important tool in the treatment of chronic pain
| (cancer / chemotherapy being a good example of a
| sufficiently serious condition). And finally, they are
| absolutely worthwhile for palliative care. For these
| reasons and what is now the magnitude of the illicit
| market, I don't think there is a lot of value in a total
| restriction.
| worik wrote:
| > Opioids can't be banned until we can replace them with
| something equally generally effective.
|
| Opioids should not be banned
|
| Opioid addiction (I have seen a lot of it, not had it) is a
| social problem and is best managed with, opioids
|
| The problems stem from putting unreasonable obstacles between
| adicts amd their appropriate treatment. Practical legal and
| financial obstacles, sadistic legal obstacles, and bizarre
| moral obstacles
|
| Great Britain for many y4ars managed Opioid addiction with
| opioids, principally methadone and heroin
|
| Nineteenth century society managed it with laudinum
|
| We westerners in the twenty first century are failing to
| manage it with cruelty
|
| The Sacklers are, were, parasites profiting from that social
| malaise and bad things will finally happen to them. But the
| cause of the malaise is our irrational attitude to drugs
| darawk wrote:
| > Opioid addiction (I have seen a lot of it, not had it) is
| a social problem and is best managed with, opioids
|
| I don't entirely disagree with you, but I have also seen
| enough people stop, who probably wouldn't have if that were
| the typical treatment, to be pretty cautious about that.
| There are a number of promising addiction treatments in the
| wings at the moment, in particular Ozempic and the general
| GLP-1 agonist class.
|
| Transitional opioids like Buprenorphine are fine as a detox
| strategy, and maybe even fine for the medium term, but
| committing to them for life I think is a mistake (in most
| cases).
|
| > The problems stem from putting unreasonable obstacles
| between adicts amd their appropriate treatment. Practical
| legal and financial obstacles, sadistic legal obstacles,
| and bizarre moral obstacles
|
| There is a lot of truth to this. It is, in fact, what I
| used to say when I used them. And it is and remains true.
| It is also true that prolonged opioid use is _mostly_
| physiologically harmless (overdoses notwithstanding).
| However, there are psychological elements that come with
| long term use that these measures do not capture, and are
| not fully internalized by the transaction costs (or literal
| costs) associated with obtaining them.
|
| > Nineteenth century society managed it with laudinum
|
| Ask China why they fought that opium war, and how they feel
| about such things lately. They are still mad about it.
|
| > The Sacklers are, were, parasites profiting from that
| social malaise and bad things will finally happen to them.
| But the cause of the malaise is our irrational attitude to
| drugs
|
| Agree on the Sacklers although personally I'd place more
| blame on the McKinsey consultants that wrote the original
| deck that proposed the strategy. I don't know how much the
| Sackler individuals personally made these decisions, but
| those people certainly did.
|
| Re: irrational attitudes to drugs, I agree, but the
| situation is substantially more nuanced than it might
| superficially appear. Laudanum did used to be over the
| counter, as did cocaine among other things. However, these
| things were not criminalized for no reason - heroin wasn't
| criminalized in the 60s/70s anti-hippie craze, or for
| racist reasons in the 1930s (like marijuana).
|
| Heroin was first criminalized for over the counter sale in
| 1910 - 15 years after Bayer first marketed it. Easily the
| fastest criminalization of a novel pharmaceutical compound
| in the history of the world. This is not an accident or a
| product of some temporary social hysteria. And
| unfortunately, it was also not criminalized because all of
| its harms were due to its being illegal.
|
| If criminality were the problem we would expect things to
| get better, not worse, with the introduction of fentanyl
| which is far cheaper and more readily available. I could be
| misreading the data, but that does not seem to be working
| out.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| Here's a way to help you understand. Let's say I gave you 1
| million dollars to help you understand. Then would you
| understand? That's likely how other people started
| understanding the situation. Something along those lines.
| Something this obviously wrong, some sort of coercion or
| bribery or some other shady thing has got to be a part of it.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Pound for pound, the Sacklers probably did more damage to America
| than any other drug dealers in history. More damage than any
| serial killer or mass shooter. In my mind they should be
| considered public enemies 1 through N. I sincerely hope they face
| civil and criminal liabilities for what they've done.
| janice1999 wrote:
| You're really underselling it if anything. Over a million
| Americans have died so far in the opioid epidemic. That more
| than any of their wars, including their civil war.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| Maybe, but its more common than this one example and more than
| what most people can stomach. The real problem is these people
| are sociopaths, and the next set of sociopaths will do it
| again. They don't care who they hurt because they lack empathy
| and if killing people drives up profits then so be it.
|
| If you really want to show concern or right a wrong then find a
| way to better criminalize violations of accepted ethical norms.
| The best way to punish sociopaths is to take all their assets,
| embarrass them in public, and permanently bar them from
| practicing in the same industry. For example if a lawyer is
| disbarred they do not get a second chance.
| addicted wrote:
| I'd argue it's the opposite.
|
| Look at what's happened since Oxycontin was heavily regulated.
|
| Opioid deaths in America have exploded by an order of
| magnitude.
|
| There's a direct correlation between higher regulation of
| OxyContin and opioid deaths in the U.S.
|
| The Sacklers have done illegal stuff. Misrepresenting the
| addictiveness of their drugs (well, it was immoral and
| wrong...it's not clear how illegal it was).
|
| But it's quite clear that America had a parallel opioid crisis
| going on. By making OxyContin easily available, ie, a slow
| acting opioid (it had to be crushed to be fast acting) that was
| produced legitimately and had a legitimate supply chain so
| people were able to get exactly what they wanted, Purdue Pharma
| helped keep the number of opioid deaths under control.
|
| IOW, the U.S. has had an addiction crisis that is independent
| of prescription drugs whose cause is not clear yet because
| everyone has thrown the blame on Oxy instead of researching it.
| This is the same kind of drug crisis that hit inner cities in
| the 20th century but has hit rural areas in the 21st century.
| By providing easy access to regulated and legitimate opioids
| the Sacklers may have marginally worsened the addiction crisis,
| but they minimized the number of deaths and severe negative
| impacts.
|
| The moment Oxy and the other opioids were made less easy to
| get, the underlying drug crisis hadn't gone anywhere, so
| instead the people suffering from the crisis had to get their
| opioids from illicit sources as opposed to the pharmacy,
| exposing them to all sorts of unregulated drugs that had all
| sorts of nonsense like Fenranyl mixed in, which causes the
| actual negative impacts of the drug crisis to explode.
|
| The funny thing is that when the entire country was just
| absolutely united at making the Sacklers the big bad evil, the
| actual people working on the ground trying to help those who
| were facing this drug crisis were predicting this exact
| situation and were asking authorities to not clamp down on Oxy.
| But they were all ignored and so we have a situation where
| opioid OD deaths have gone from a consistent 10-15,000/year (a
| rate which preceded Oxy) to about 50,000/yr now.
| api wrote:
| Wasn't Oxycontin kind of the boot loader for the present
| opioid crisis in that it mainstreamed opioid use and got a
| huge number of people introduced to it?
|
| Then it was taken away and things like illicit fentanyl
| filled the gap, but that came later.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| Sure, OxyContin is better than Fentanyl, and banning Oxy can
| push people to way more dangerous opioids. But before
| painting Purdue as a hero of the people, let's remember that
| million of people were pushed to opioids through Oxy when
| they shouldn't have in the first place. Purdue played a big
| part in creating the epidemic in the first place. People that
| are now pushed to harder drugs because of an addiction they
| got into for the sake of Purdue making more dough.
| beaeglebeachedd wrote:
| It's the same shit practically all the way back to opium
| wars.
|
| Always the drug dealers fault.
|
| I blame the patient. We've known opiates were bad since at
| least the 1800s, and really longer than that. What the doc
| said was just what they needed to hear to lie to
| themselves, but this is taught in every highschool.
| voisin wrote:
| > We've known opiates were bad since at least the 1800s,
| and really longer than that. What the doc said was just
| what they needed to hear to lie to themselves, but this
| is taught in every highschool.
|
| I am not sure high schools are teaching people to be
| distrustful of their doctor's advice. I think what's
| being taught is about the dangers of illicit drugs, not
| those with a medical expert's stamp of approval.
| beaeglebeachedd wrote:
| On the plus side between oxy and COVID distrust is now at
| all time highs.
|
| People have learned you can't trust the doc anymore than
| a quik-lube mecanico.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| > but this is taught in every high school
|
| Here's the thing about what they teach you about drugs in
| high school: lots of it is bullshit. I don't know if it's
| still a thing but when I was in school there was a lot of
| pearl clutching about weed being a Gateway Drug. For a
| lot of people who smoked weed and didn't progress towards
| any harder drugs, weed was a prime example of how drug
| education was a sham. No one went crazy, none of the weed
| horror stories came true, everyone enjoyed the concert
| and woke up the next morning feeling better than if
| they'd been drinking alcohol the night before.
| com2kid wrote:
| > I blame the patient. We've known opiates were bad since
| at least the 1800s, and really longer than that.
|
| As a reminder, Oxy was _heavily_ marketed, (to doctors!)
| as a "not bad" opioid. As in, not as addictive, not as
| problematic, and something that can be prescribed more
| easily and with less worries.
|
| If a doctor comes up and tell you "don't worry about this
| one, it isn't addictive like the others", and you are in
| a ton of pain at the time, you are going to thank modern
| medicine for its new miracle pain drug and accept the
| prescription.
|
| > but this is taught in every highschool.
|
| And as another reminder, most schools, until recently,
| just taught that "drugs are bad" and kind of left it at
| that. They exaggerated some of the down sides, and didn't
| mention any of the positive experiences.
|
| IMHO South Park actually did the world's best anti pot ad
| -
|
| "Well, Stan, the truth is marijuana probably isn't gonna
| make you kill people, and it most likely isn't gonna fund
| terrorism, but... well, son, pot makes you feel fine with
| being bored. And it's when you're bored that you should
| be learning some new skill or discovering some new
| science or being creative. If you smoke pot you may grow
| up to find out that you aren't good at anything."
|
| -
|
| And IMHO messages like that are more useful than what
| kids are being told.
|
| There is also the social contract side of things - Since
| around 1950s, if people worked hard they things in return
| from society: A stable job, a house, the opportunity to
| raise a family. That social contract is shot to shit, and
| so it should be no surprise that more and more people are
| choosing to drop out of society via drugs/games/apathy.
| beaeglebeachedd wrote:
| You didn't learn about the opium wars? I'm not talking
| about dare which was obvious bullshit, I'm talking of
| learning from history. There was no weed war, that a drug
| caused a couple wars lasting decades should at least
| raise an eyebrow of any thinking person.
| com2kid wrote:
| We didn't study the Opium Wars in history at all
| throughout my education, I learned about those on my own
| thanks to the Internet. The entire Middle East, our
| influence in South America, etc, none of that was covered
| in school, and I went to some pretty good public schools.
| (E.g. in High School we edited DNA of Bacteria)
|
| For that matter, I think China was only mentioned in
| passing throughout my entire education. WW1 was also only
| mentioned very briefly (maybe a couple weeks? Archduke is
| shot, shit goes down) and then we spent a fair bit of
| time on WW2, but less than we spent on Ancient Egypt
| honestly. (I think we spent an entire 2 or 3 months on
| Ancient Egypt).
|
| We spent a fair amount of time on the Reformation and
| Renaissance, ancient Greece and Rome, and US history was
| mostly a ~bullshit~ censored history of the founding of
| the US. The Washington State history classes went into
| some history of the local tribes, but failed to mention
| any of the fun details about how Seattle was founded
| (prostitution, drinking, Seattle literally poisoning the
| wells of nearby towns to force them to join Seattle to
| get access to clean water)
|
| College was better, mostly US history and World History,
| still nothing about the far east though.
|
| We did an excellent segment on the US Revolution in
| College, including the funding source behind the
| revolutionary war, that was very interesting.
|
| Edit: Sex ed was pretty comprehensive, and we ended the
| quarter by watching Rocky Horror Picture Show, so that
| was fun. (The Nerd and Goth kids formed a voting block
| for what movie to watch. :D) I am still surprised they
| talked about so much about forms of contraceptives that
| almost no one uses (spermicidal gels and foams), but at
| least they properly demonstrated how to use a condom, so
| that was good.
|
| For "don't smoke" the health teacher had lots of pictures
| of tumors.
|
| Alcohol wasn't really talked about, but honestly in the
| 90s we didn't know a much about how unhealthy it is as we
| do now. (Doctors knew it was bad, but just in the last
| few years research has come out showing that the safe
| amount of drinking is none)
| RIMR wrote:
| Exactly. If it wasn't for the existing demand for cheap
| powerful opioids, Fentanyl would never have been a problem
| to begin with.
| kidme5 wrote:
| username "addicted" eh?
| darth_avocado wrote:
| > But it's quite clear that America had a parallel opioid
| crisis going on
|
| I don't think that's really the case. What happened here was
| that peddling oxy, created the excess demand that is now met
| by illicit sources that cause more deaths now that oxy is
| regulated. But what you're missing in your understanding is
| that without oxy, demand wouldn't exist in the first place.
| And that's the harm everyone is talking about.
|
| You're talking about the aftermath of the problem. Parent is
| talking about the root cause.
| throwadobe wrote:
| morally: providing more of something that has no societal
| good is not commendable.
|
| logically: this argument isn't sound at all. looking at what
| happened since Oxycontin was regulated is not a proper
| counterfactual. you would have to look at a universe in which
| it was never introduced to begin with
| api wrote:
| Don't forget McKinsey:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/business/mckinsey-opioids...
| farceSpherule wrote:
| Fraudulent Transfer...
|
| From Reddit...
|
| Piercing the corporate veil would mean disregarding the corporate
| form entirely. It usually comes up when the owner-manager of a
| company fails to distinguish the corporation as a separate entity
| with its own purpose and finances, using the company as a
| personal piggie bank or otherwise going about life as usual and
| not going through the motions required of corporations under the
| law.
|
| What plaintiffs have alleged against the Sacklers is different,
| and specific to bankruptcy. Perdue is out of money and is
| bankrupt, mostly because it caused billions of dollars of damages
| to hundreds of thousands of people and to the states (which now
| have to clean up the opioid mess). But not that long before it
| went bankrupt, it was swimming in money. Perdue didn't use those
| profits to avoid harming people. Nor did it keep the money on
| hand to pay potential tort claims from the people it was harming.
| Instead, Perdue's officers and board of directors (that is, the
| Sacklers) approved dividends of billions of dollars to be paid to
| the company's shareholders (that is, again, the Sacklers).
|
| The plaintiffs in various lawsuits have alleged that the Sacklers
| knew that the profits were temporary and the bill would come due,
| so they purposefully got the money out of the company while the
| getting was good. More technically: it is alleged that Perdue's
| owners received assets that were transferred from Purdue with
| actual intent to hinder, delay, or defraud creditors.
|
| One thing you absolutely are not allowed to do is use your
| company to rack up a bunch of debt or liability, take all the
| assets out of the company, and then declare bankruptcy and expect
| to get to keep the money. We call that "fraudulent transfer," and
| if a court finds that you did fraudulent transfers from your
| company to your personal bank account you will be ordered to pay
| that money back to the company (so it can use that money to pay
| back its creditors and other claimants). The company still
| exists, it's a distinct legal person (so not technically piercing
| the veil), you just took the company's money as if it were a
| profit when you knew full well the company couldn't afford to pay
| out profits.
|
| One big difference between the concepts is this: If Perdue's
| corporate veil were pierced, the Sacklers would be personally on
| the hook for all the harm their company caused -- they could lose
| their bank accounts, vacation homes, nice cars, artwork,
| everything, as if they themselves (rather than "Perdue") had been
| the ones going around knowingly fueling a drug addiction crisis.
| Whereas if they merely engaged in fraulent transfer of assets,
| the Sacklers are only on the hook to give back what they
| fraudulently took from the company during the period it can be
| proven that they knew of the looming liability -- limited to the
| statute of limitations, which I think is around 6 years. So all
| the money they made before that, and all the money they have from
| non-fraudulent sources, is safe from creditors.
| voisin wrote:
| It's pretty wild that everyone acknowledges that the Sacklers
| engaged in a "milking program" going from 15% to 70%
| distributions after the first lawsuits in order to strip the
| company of assets and then hide behind the company to shield
| liability. This alone should allow claimants to pierce the
| corporate veil and go after the family directly.
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