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Actual language from the State of Massachusetts' lawsuit against Purdue Pharma: “Eight people in a single family made the choices that caused much of the opioid epidemic." Stunning.
Here's the link, from my prior thread that got detached from this tweet. washingtonpost.com/national/lawsu…
"In one email, Richard Sackler personally directed sales reps to push doctors to prescribe extremely high doses of opioids."
"The Sacklers constantly tried to persuade doctors and others to prescribe higher doses, especially the extremely profitable 80-milligram tablet; and continually returned to doctors who were vastly overprescribing OxyContin to encourage them to hand out more."
"From 2008 to 2016, the lawsuit claims, the Sackler family paid itself nearly $4.3 billion from the sales of its drugs."
Think about it: over exactly the course of the Obama years: $4.3 billion.
Think about it: over exactly the course of the Obama years: $4.3 billion.
And here's where some of that money went: a "transformative" donation for the Richard Sackler Family Endowment in Medicine at Yale, named for the exact person who, emails now show, was personally hounding Purdue reps to sell more Oxycontin to shady docs. medicine.yale.edu/news/printarti…
And here's the company that helped Purdue and the Sacklers cash in on the epidemic: McKinsey Consulting. Which "recommended that Purdue redirect its sales force to focus on esp prolific prescribers of OxyContin." nytimes.com/2019/02/01/bus…
"McKinsey’s consultants instructed Purdue Pharma on how to 'turbocharge' sales of OxyContin, how to counter efforts by drug enforcement agents to reduce opioid use, & were part of a team that looked at how 'to counter emotional messages from mothers w/ teenagers that overdosed.'"
In case anyone forgot, here's Richard Sackler's 2001 email disclosed recently urging a strategy of blaming those suffering addiction: "We have to hammer on abusers in every way possible. They are the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals.” nytimes.com/2019/01/15/hea…
More from MA lawsuit against Sacklers: “Millions of dollars were not enough. They wanted billions. They cared more about money than about patients, or their employees, or the truth.”
