Sacklers Directed Efforts to Mislead Public About OxyContin, New Documents Indicate

[herding cats]

Source: NYT

Members of the Sackler family, which owns the company that makes OxyContin, directed years of efforts to mislead doctors and patients about the dangers of the powerful opioid painkiller, a court filing citing previously undisclosed documents contends.

When evidence of growing abuse of the drug became clear in the early 2000s, one of them, Richard Sackler, advised pushing blame onto people who had become addicted.

“We have to hammer on abusers in every way possible,” Mr. Sackler wrote in an email in 2001, when he was president of the company, Purdue Pharma. “They are the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals.”

That email and other internal Purdue communications are cited by the attorney general of Massachusetts in a new court filing against the company, released on Tuesday. They represent the first evidence that appears to tie the Sacklers to specific decisions made by the company about the marketing of OxyContin. The aggressive promotion of the drug helped ignite the opioid epidemic.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/health/sacklers-purdue-oxycontin-opioids.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

[Cirque du So-What]

1. Headline doesn't match article

[herding cats]

2. Thank you for pointing that out.

Tabbed browsing and not paying attention got me there.

[Cirque du So-What]

5. No problem

I am interested in the Brexit article, however.

[herding cats]

6. Here you go.

Amid Parliament’s Brexit Rebellion, a Tectonic Shift in How Britain Is Governed

LONDON — The annals of British politics are filled with stories about the government’s iron-fisted, sometimes terrifying control of parliamentary affairs.

One former Labour cabinet secretary, Jack Straw, recalled his first encounter as a young member of Parliament with his party’s enforcer, who stopped him in a corridor and grabbed him between the legs. When he asked the deputy chief whip what he had done wrong, the answer was nothing.

Then the whip added, “But think what I’d do if you crossed me.”

The many tales of British lawmakers once being kept ruthlessly in line stand in stark contrast to the events of the last week, as Prime Minister Theresa May and her lieutenants tried ineffectually to get her party members to support the government’s plan on withdrawing from the European Union, known as Brexit.

Her ally Michael Gove, the environment minister, tried on Tuesday morning to scare some wayward lawmakers straight, using the foreboding terminology from “Game of Thrones” to warn them that “if we don’t vote for this deal tonight, in the words of Jon Snow, winter is coming.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/world/europe/brexit-britain-parliament-theresa-may.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

[Cirque du So-What]

7. Thanks!

I've been trying to keep up as best I can on Brexit, as I consider its reversal vitally important to the EU.

[herding cats]

8. As have I been.

I wish them the best of luck fixing this mess.

[2naSalit]

3. That's odd.

The article and title don't match up.

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4. It was my error.

I fixed it now. My apologies.

[2naSalit]

9. No problem.

[ck4829]

10. K&R

[turbinetree]

11. The Slackers...................and there influence................

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/15/oxycontin-purdue-pharma-massachusetts-opioid-crisis


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/27/universities-sackler-family-purdue-pharma-oxycontin-opioids


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/13/meet-the-sacklers-the-family-feuding-over-blame-for-the-opioid-crisis