Purdue Pharma offers $10-12 billion to settle opioid claims

[Dennis Donovan]

Source: NBC

Aug. 27, 2019, 2:32 PM EDT
By Laura Strickler
Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, are offering to settle more than 2,000 lawsuits against the company for $10 billion to $12 billion. The potential deal was part of confidential conversations and discussed by Purdue's lawyers at a meeting in Cleveland last Tuesday, Aug. 20, according to two people familiar with the mediation.

Brought by states, cities and counties, the lawsuits — some of which have been combined into one massive case — allege the company and the Sackler family are responsible for starting and sustaining the opioid crisis.

At least 10 state attorneys general and the plaintiffs’ attorneys gathered in Cleveland, where David Sackler represented the Sackler family, according to two people familiar with the meeting. David Sackler, who was a board member of the company, has recently been the de facto family spokesperson.

The lawsuits that Purdue and the Sacklers are seeking to settle allege that their company’s sales practices were deceptive and at least partly responsible for the opioid crisis, which claimed more than 400,000 lives from 1999 to 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some of the lawsuits also allege that after 2007 the Sackler family drained the company of money to enrich themselves.

“The Sackler family built a multibillion-dollar drug empire based on addiction,” New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said in May when his state joined others in suing the Sackler family and their company. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey was the first to name family members in her suit in January.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/purdue-pharma-offers-10-12-billion-settle-opioid-claims-n1046526

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...it's a start.

[fleur-de-lisa]

1. Purdue Pharmaceutical is worth about $13 billion . . .

I hope they lose every cent of it.

[mr_lebowski]

2. 400K is the number that died with any opioids in their system ...

Over an 18 year period. It's not the actual number of 'opioid overdoses'.

A large majority of the time people died because they mixed booze and other depressants like benzos with their opioids. In other words, trying to get f***ed up on them.

Very few have died actually taking opioids as prescribed. And in the last 10 years OD's from Heroin and Fentanyl have overshot Rx opioid deaths. Of course there's a fair number of people who ended up on Heroin after starting on pain pills, to be sure.

Not saying these Sackler people did nothing wrong, but the people who've OD'd very often did it to themselves by abusing Rx medications that often weren't Rx'd to them, w/o educating themselves of the dangers of mixing them with other stuff.

I really hope all this money they're going to have to pay actually goes to HELPING PEOPLE ... foremost in my mind, we need better drugs (non-opioid, or perhaps very very mild ones) to help people through withdrawals so it's not so fucking painful, first of all. That'd go a long way towards solving the crisis. People won't get off them when it means 10-28 days of soul-crushing agony, and inability to go to work.

We also need better science on ways to undo the neural pathway damage that addiction causes. Your whole 'pleasure center' system (dopamine, seratonin, GABA) gets f-d up if you abuse opioids (and lots of other drugs, alcohol included) and we don't, as yet, know much about how to 'fix it' ... or in fact, if it can be fixed. But that's the kind of thing this money should be used for.

Along with beds in detox and rehab centers, and counselors, and helping get people onto buprenorphine instead of short-acting opioids if circumstances prevent them from getting off the dope completely.

[Archae]

8. Exactly, and what about those who actually DO need opioid pain killers?

Cancer patients, severe arthritis sufferers, etc.

Many of them have to jump through hoops or they can't get relief from severe pain.

I'm one, I get chronic severe headaches.
As is, I don't get opioids for them, I get a different medication.

And I have to jump through hoops even for them, only one doctor will prescribe them.

[matt819]

3. What are they worth?

Someone posted that Purdue is valued at $13 billion. So the bulk of the company's value is fine. Now go after the family. They are worth billions more, and only when people like that are hit hard will they understand the impact of the damage they caused and maybe, just maybe, have something of a deterrent effect on others like them.

[RockRaven]

4. No deal unless the Sacklers give up every penny they've personally gained from the company.

They're willing to financially devastate the company as the price for settling all these lawsuits because they've already amassed huge personal fortunes from the company's profits. That money needs to be wiped out by the settlement too. Ghoulish death-merchants.

[Locrian]

5. exactly

Criminal punishment would fit - at a min seize their assets like they do with any other drug dealer /kingpin.

[dalton99a]

11. +1. And take their names off the buildings

The Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences, Tufts University
Raymond and Beverly Sackler Institute for Biological, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Yale University
Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University
Smithsonian Institution’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
American Museum of Natural History’s Sackler Educational Laboratory, New York
Dia Art Foundation’s Sackler Institute, New York
Guggenheim Museum’s Sackler Center for Arts Education, New York
Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Sackler Wing, New York
Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archeology’s Sackler Keeper of Antiquities, University of Oxford, UK
British Museum’s Raymond and Beverly Sackler Rooms, London
City & Guilds of London Art School’s Sackler Library, UK
Dulwich Picture Gallery’s Sackler Director and Sackler Centre for Arts Education, London
National Gallery‘s Sackler Room, London
Natural History Museum’s Sackler Biodiversity Imaging Laboratory, London
Royal Ballet School, London (funded by the Sackler Trust)
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew’s Sackler Crossing, Richmond, UK
Royal College of Art‘s Sackler Building, London
Royal Opera, London (Dame Theresa Sackler is an honorary director)
Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London
Shakespeare’s Globe’s Sackler Studios, London
Tate Modern‘s Sackler Escalator, London
University of Cambridge’s Raymond and Beverley Sackler Distinguished Lecture in Archaeology, UK
University of Oxford’s Sackler Library, UK
Victoria and Albert Museum‘s Sackler Courtyard, London
Westminster Abbey’s stained glass window for Dr. Mortimer Sackler, London
Louvre’s Sackler Wing of Oriental Antiquities, Paris
Jewish Museum Berlin‘s Sackler Staircase, Germany
etc. etc.

[in2herbs]

6. There's gotta be a tax benefit/deduction for them to make this offer. nt

[whistler162]

7. That is per family affected right?

[eggplant]

9. Also states, counties, etc that are out money for treatment costs, etc.

[mr_lebowski]

10. I really hope this windfall is used for the purpose of helping people with opioid problems ...

But I doubt it will.

Which is depressing.

[ck4829]

12. Kick