jew death merchants being sued

[yankeedoodle]

Members of the Sackler family, who've made billions pushing their deadly OxyContin drug on the masses are arguably responsible for more deaths than any Mexican drug cartel.  Instead of being hunted down at their plush mansions by DEA agents, they are rubbing elbows with members of Congress. Now, however, for the first time, the family is being targeted by a landmark lawsuit for the damages they knowingly caused with their products. 

For the first time ever, lawsuit targets billionaire OxyContin family for causing opioid epidemic
https://www.healthnutnews.com/for-the-first-time-ever-lawsuit-targets-billionaire-oxycontin-family-for-causing-opioid-epidemic/

Members of the Sackler family, who've made billions pushing their deadly OxyContin drug on the masses are arguably responsible for more deaths than any Mexican drug cartel. Instead of being hunted down at their plush mansions by DEA agents, they are rubbing elbows with members of Congress. Now, however, for the first time, the family is being targeted by a landmark lawsuit for the damages they knowingly caused with their products.

On Tuesday, the state of Massachusetts filed a lawsuit against the multi-billionaire Sackler family over the role their drug OxyContin has played in sparking one of the worst addiction and overdose epidemics in history. The lawsuit accuses the company, Purdue Pharma, and its heirs of spinning a "web of illegal deceit" which fueled the deadly crisis in which America currently finds itself.

RELATED STORY:  Meet the Sacklers: The family that's killing millions (maybe more than Stalin)  https://www.healthnutnews.com/meet-the-sacklers-the-family-thats-killing-millions-maybe-more-than-stalin/

What sets this lawsuit apart from the numerous other lawsuits targeting opioid manufacturers — including several against Purdue — is that it has taken the landmark step of personally naming the company's executives.

According to Maura Healy, Massachusetts state attorney general, the suit names 16 current and former executives and board members, including the chief executive, Craig Landau, and eight members across three generations of the Sackler family that wholly owns Purdue.

"Purdue Pharma and its executives built a multi-billion-dollar business based on deception and addiction. We're suing," Healey tweeted Tuesday.

As the Guardian reports, the lawsuit alleges Purdue deceived patients and doctors about the risks of opioids, pushed prescribers to keep patients on the drugs longer and aggressively targeted vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and veterans.

"Their strategy was simple: the more drugs they sold, the more money they made, and the more people died," Healey said on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Purdue issued a statement in response to the lawsuit in which they denied all allegations.

"We share the attorney general's concern about the opioid crisis. We are disappointed, however, that in the midst of good faith negotiations with many states, the Commonwealth has decided to pursue a costly and protracted litigation process," the company said in a statement. "We will continue to work collaboratively with the states toward bringing meaningful solutions."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=EGITecuBEHQ

According to reports, in just the last decade, in the state of Massachusetts alone, the company sold 70 million doses of prescription opioids, bringing in more than half a billion in revenue.

"It was Purdue's executives who led and directed this illegal business model, leading to addiction and deception to enrich a few while leaving a path of devastation and destruction in its wake," Healey said.

According to Healey, more than 670 Massachusetts residents have died solely from the result of ingesting the Sackler family's drugs.

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Purdue, along with several other companies who knowingly pushed opioids on people who did not need them, is facing more than 300 lawsuits from city and county authorities across the country. However, this is the first one which goes after the individuals who became exceedingly wealthy from the sale of this drug.

According to the Guardian, the Sacklers being sued are: Theresa and Beverly, the widows of the brothers Mortimer and Raymond Sackler who built the company into the narcotics giant it is today; Ilene, Kathe and Mortimer David Alfons Sackler, three of Mortimer's children; Jonathan and Richard Sackler, Raymond's two sons; and David Sackler, Raymond's grandson. These family members and a number of their siblings and children are collectively worth an estimated $13bn, according to Forbes, with the vast bulk of the fortune generated from sales of OxyContin. Feuding family members have mostly declined to talk about the opioids crisis and avoid discussing their links to it.

As TFTP previously reported, Purdue Pharma, under the guidance of brothers Arthur, Raymond, and Mortimer Sackler, began a propaganda campaign to push their new drug, as described in The American Journal of Public Health, "The Promotion and Marketing of OxyContin: Commercial Triumph, Public Health Tragedy."

One of the primary missions of Purdue Pharma was to identify the doctors across America prescribing the most pain medication and strategically marketed the drug directly to them as a safe alternative to other pain medications.

According to the LA Times:
"The Times' investigation, published in July, disclosed that for more than a decade, an internal security team at Purdue monitored doctors and pharmacies it suspected of colluding with dealers and addicts. In the case of the L.A. ring, criminals set up a phony clinic near MacArthur Park in 2008 and worked with corrupt physicians and pharmacies to obtain pills over 18 months.

A Purdue sales manager dispatched to investigate the high volume of prescriptions at the clinic found a rundown building thronged with rough men and urged supervisors to alert the Drug Enforcement Administration, saying she was "very certain this is an organized drug ring."

Despite her pleas and additional evidence suggesting that pills were pouring into the hands of criminals, company officials did not go to authorities until years later when the drug ring was out of business and its leaders under indictment. By then, 1.1 million pills had spilled into the illicit pipeline."

These disturbing revelations came after a prior investigation that found Purdue maintained a secret Purdue database of 1,800 suspect doctors, but only about 10 percent of them were reported to law enforcement.

As doctors began to readily hand out this new drug, these high dose pills became a scourge across main street America. Drug users increasingly turned to OxyContin for the powerful high and euphoric effects, comparable to heroin, but which can reportedly last for over eight hours.

RELATED STORY:  Annual death toll from this exceeds that of the Vietnam War  https://www.healthnutnews.com/annual-death-toll-from-this-exceeds-that-of-the-vietnam-war/

Instead of investigating the company for their overt and dangerous tactics, the government and establishment welcomed them into their ranks. Even after dozens of lawsuits exposing this corruption, in an entirely irresponsible and hypocritical move, the FDA approved a measure to give OxyContin to children.

The fact that some people are freely allowed to market potentially deadly drugs, while others are thrown in a cage for the same activity, seems to highlight that not all people are equal in the eyes of the state or the law. Hopefully, this landmark lawsuit will expose this insidious paradigm.

*Article originally appeared at The Free Thought Project.  https://thefreethoughtproject.com/lawsuit-oxycontin-family-opioid-epidemic/

[yankeedoodle]

Looks like the jew death merchants don't like being sued, so, instead of giving you money, they've patented a new pill - which they will sell you, of course - that will free you from your addiction to the opioids they've already sold you.

Sell you a pill to ruin your life, and then sell you another pill to try to help you.   

Man who made billions from OxyContin is pushing drug to wean addicts off opioids
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-oxycontin-purdue-pharma-richard-sackler-20180908-story.html

Following hundreds of lawsuits over the years against pharmaceutical giant Purdue Pharma, Colorado's attorney general is suing the OxyContin creator for its "significant role in causing the opioid epidemic."

The lawsuit claims Purdue Pharma L.P. and Purdue Pharma Inc. deluded doctors and patients in Colorado about the potential for addiction with prescription opioids and continued to push the drugs. And it comes amid news that the company's former chairman and president, Richard Sackler, has patented a new drug to help wean addicts from opioids.

"Purdue's habit-forming medications coupled with their reckless marketing have robbed children of their parents, families of their sons and daughters, and destroyed the lives of our friends, neighbors, and co-workers," Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman said Thursday in a statement. "While no amount of money can bring back loved ones, it can compensate for the enormous costs brought about by Purdue's intentional misconduct."

The lawsuit states that Purdue Pharma "downplayed the risk of addiction associated with opioids," "exaggerated the benefits" and "advised health care professionals that they were violating their Hippocratic Oath and failing their patients unless they treated pain symptoms with opioids," according to the statement from the Colorado attorney general's office.

But Purdue Pharma "vigorously" denied the accusations Friday in a statement to The Washington Post, saying that although it shares "the state's concern about the opioid crisis," it did not mislead health-care providers about prescription opioids.

"The state claims Purdue acted improperly by communicating with prescribers about scientific and medical information that FDA has expressly considered and continues to approve," a spokesman for Purdue Pharma said in the statement. "We believe it is inappropriate for the state to substitute its judgment for the judgment of the regulatory, scientific and medical experts at FDA."

In 2016, there were more than 63,000 drug overdose deaths in United States, and more than 66 percent of them were attributed to opioids, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC states that both illegal opioids and prescription opioids, which are commonly used to treat pain, have been associated with addiction, overdoses and death.

In federal court in 2007, three top current and former employees for Purdue pleaded guilty to criminal charges, admitting that they had falsely led doctors and their patients to believe that OxyContin was less likely to be abused than other drugs in its class, according to The New York Times. Then earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Purdue planned to stop promoting the drug.

Now, it seems, a new business venture is only adding to the outcry.

The Financial Times reported that Sackler, whose family owns Purdue Pharma, a multibillion-dollar company, patented a new drug earlier this year that is a form of buprenorphine, a mild opioid that is used to ease withdrawal symptoms. However, some are expressing outrage that the Sacklers, who have in essence profited from opioid addictions, may soon be profiting from the antidote.

"It's reprehensible what Purdue Pharma has done to our public health," Luke Nasta, director of Camelot, a New York-based treatment center for drug and alcohol addiction, told the Financial Times. He told the newspaper that the Sackler family "shouldn't be allowed to peddle any more synthetic opiates - and that includes opioid substitutes."

The patent's description acknowledges the risk of addiction that is associated with opioids:  "While opioids have always been known to be useful in pain treatment, they also display an addictive potential in view of their euphorigenic activity. Thus, if opioids are taken by healthy human subjects with a drug seeking behaviour they may lead to psychological as well as physical dependence.

"These usually undesired characteristics of opioids can however become important in certain scenarios such as drug substitution therapies for drug addicts. One of the fundamental problems of illicit drug abuse by drug addicts ("junkies") who are dependent on the constant intake of illegal drugs such as heroin is the drug-related criminal activities resorted to by such addicts in order to raise enough money to fund their addiction. The constant pressures upon addicts to procure money for buying drugs and the concomitant criminal activities have been increasingly recognized as a major factor that counteracts efficient and long-lasting withdrawal and abstinence from drugs.

The patent states that the drug could be used both in drug replacement therapy as well as for pain management.

Purdue Pharma did not respond to requests for comment on the new drug, but in addressing the lawsuit in Colorado, the company said: "We share the state's concern about the opioid crisis. While our opioid medicines account for less than 2% of total prescriptions, we will continue to work collaboratively with the state toward bringing meaningful solutions to address this public health challenge."

[yankeedoodle]

The Massachusetts attorney general is targeting Purdue Pharma and eight members of the Sackler family who own the company, alleging in a lawsuit they are "personally responsible" for deceptively selling OxyContin.

The attorney general, Maura Healey, sat down with "CBS This Morning." She alleges the Sackler family hired "hundreds of workers to carry out their wishes" – pushing doctors to get "more patients on opioids, at higher doses, for longer, than ever before" all while paying "themselves billions of dollars."

In her lawsuit, Healey names eight members of the family that own Purdue Pharma, alleging they "micromanaged" a "deceptive sales campaign." In the conclusion to the complaint, Healey said the Sackler family used the power at their disposal to engineer an opioid crisis. Almost 400,000 people died from opioid overdoses between 1999 and 2017, according to the CDC.

Healey said this is the most complete picture to date of how the opioid crisis began, and why the Sackler family itself should be held accountable. "They don't want to accept blame for this. They blame doctors, they blame prescribers and worst of all, they blame patients," Healey said.

Purdue Pharma called the accusations "a rush to vilify" the drugmaker. There's a lot in the lawsuit that's still redacted, and lawyers for Purdue plan to argue on Friday that it should stay that way.

Healey said Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family are one and the same.

Family behind OxyContin maker engineered opioid crisis, Massachusetts AG says
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/purdue-pharma-lawsuit-massachusetts-attorney-general-blames-sackler-family-for-creating-opioid-crisis-oxycontin/

A federal judge has ruled that a massive lawsuit that blames drug manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacies for the American opioid epidemic will proceed to trial.

"It is accurate to describe the opioid epidemic as a man-made plague, twenty years in the making. The pain, death, and heartache it has wrought cannot be overstated," blasted U.S. District Judge Dan Polster of the Northern District of Ohio in his ruling last month.

This federal trial will take place in September.

The class action combines no fewer than 600 claims by local and state governments against the opioid industry. While the more cynical among us might think this is nothing but a cash grab by our nation's prosecutors, the facts show that this is the least we can do to hold these corporate criminals accountable.

Take Purdue Pharma, the first manufacturer of OxyContin and the most high-profile defendant in this case. The company has reportedly made $35 billion from the sale of OxyContin since its introduction in 1995, mostly thanks to an early marketing campaign that sold the painkiller as a pill to "start with and to stay with" that was "virtually non-addictive." Addiction, Purdue said, occurred with less than 1 percent of patients. Clinical trials have since contradicted that bold claim, but that hasn't stopped Purdue or other manufacturers from pushing this lie for the last two decades. Meanwhile, some 200,000 people have died from overdoses of OxyContin or other prescription painkillers since 1999.

A Real Killing: How Greedy Corporate Pushers Caused the Opioid Crisis
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-the-corporate-pill-pushers-started-the-opioid-crisis/

[yankeedoodle]

Jews sell the poison, and then sell the antidote.

OxyContin Maker Explored Expansion Into "Attractive" Anti-Addiction Market
Secret portions of a lawsuit allege that Purdue Pharma, controlled by the Sackler family, considered capitalizing on the addiction treatment boom — while going to extreme lengths to boost sales of its controversial opioid.
https://www.propublica.org/article/oxycontin-purdue-pharma-massachusetts-lawsuit-anti-addiction-market

Not content with billions of dollars in profits from the potent painkiller OxyContin, its maker explored expanding into an "attractive market" fueled by the drug's popularity — treatment of opioid addiction, according to previously secret passages in a court document filed by the state of Massachusetts.

In internal correspondence beginning in 2014, Purdue Pharma executives discussed how the sale of opioids and the treatment of opioid addiction are "naturally linked" and that the company should expand across "the pain and addiction spectrum," according to redacted sections of the lawsuit by the Massachusetts attorney general. A member of the billionaire Sackler family, which founded and controls the privately held company, joined in those discussions and urged staff in an email to give "immediate attention" to this business opportunity, the complaint alleges.

ProPublica reviewed the scores of redacted paragraphs in Massachusetts' 274-page civil complaint against Purdue, eight Sackler family members, company directors and current and former executives, which alleges that they created the opioid epidemic through illegal deceit. These passages remain blacked out at the company's request after the rest of the complaint was made public on Jan. 15. A Massachusetts Superior Court judge on Monday ordered that the entire document be released, but the judge gave Purdue until Friday to seek a further stay of the ruling.

The sections of the complaint already made public contend that the Sacklers pushed for higher doses of OxyContin, guided efforts to mislead doctors and the public about the drug's addictive capacity, and blamed misuse on patients.

Citing extensive emails and internal company documents, the redacted sections allege that Purdue and the Sackler family went to extreme lengths to boost OxyContin sales and burnish the drug's reputation in the face of increased regulation and growing public awareness of its addictive nature. Concerns about doctors improperly prescribing the drug, and patients becoming addicted, were swept aside in an aggressive effort to drive OxyContin sales ever higher, the complaint alleges.

Among the allegations: Purdue paid two executives convicted of fraudulently marketing OxyContin millions of dollars to assure their loyalty, concealed information about doctors suspected of inappropriately prescribing the opioid, and was advised by global consulting firm McKinsey & Co. on strategies to boost the drug's sales and burnish its image, including how to "counter the emotional messages" of mothers whose children overdosed. Since 2007, the Sackler family has received more than $4 billion in payouts from Purdue, according to a redacted paragraph in the complaint.

"The payments were the motivation for the Sacklers' misconduct," the complaint says. "And the payments were deliberate decisions to benefit from deception in Massachusetts, at great cost to patients and families."

In 1998, two years after OxyContin was launched, Dr. Richard Sackler, a son of Purdue co-founder Raymond Sackler, instructed executives in an email that its tablets were not merely "therapeutic" but also "enhance personal performance," like Viagra. Fifteen years later, he complained in another email that a Google alert he set up for OxyContin news was giving him too much information about the drug's dangers.

"Why are all the alerts about negatives and not one about the positives of OxyContin tablets?" he asked a company vice president. Staff immediately offered to replace Sackler's alert with a service that supplied more flattering stories, according to the complaint.

The redacted paragraphs leave little doubt about the dominant role of the Sackler family in Purdue's management. The five Purdue directors who are not Sacklers always voted with the family, according to the complaint. The family-controlled board approves everything from the number of sales staff to be hired to details of their bonus incentives, which have been tied to sales volume, the complaint says. In May 2017, when longtime employee Craig Landau was seeking to become Purdue's chief executive, he wrote that the board acted as "de-facto CEO." He was named CEO a few weeks later.

In a statement today in response to questions about the redacted material, the company said that Massachusetts "seeks to publicly vilify Purdue, its executives, employees and directors by taking out of context snippets from tens of millions of documents and grossly distorting their meaning. The complaint is riddled with demonstrably inaccurate allegations."

Purdue acknowledged in the statement that it was considering acquiring the rights to sell drugs that combat addiction or reverse the effects of an overdose. It criticized the state for "casting in a negative light" the company's exploration of a potential acquisition of an addiction treatment that was already on the market, "even though the company never actually made the acquisition."

Purdue also pointed out that OxyContin is approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It said that most opioid overdoses "now result from heroin and illicit fentanyl."

The Sackler family was once best known for its philanthropy. Its name is engraved on museums and university buildings across the world. A group of activists has called on organizations to stop accepting Sackler donations and for the family name to be stripped from some institutions. Aggressive marketing of OxyContin is blamed by some analysts for propelling the crisis that has resulted in 200,000 overdose deaths related to prescription opioids since 1999.

After its 1996 launch, OxyContin rapidly became a top seller. But reports of patients abusing the drug soon followed. OxyContin contained more pain relief medication than older drugs, and crushing and snorting it was a simple way to get high fast. In 2007, Purdue pleaded guilty to federal charges of understating the risk of addiction and agreed to pay $600 million in fines and penalties. Still, the company argued publicly that OxyContin has "done far more good than harm," and it sought to place responsibility for the bad acts on "certain of its supervisors and employees."

Privately, the complaint suggests, the Sacklers were concerned about alienating two executives, then-CEO Michael Friedman and then-legal counsel Howard Udell. Friedman and Udell each pleaded guilty in 2007 in U.S. District Court in Abingdon, Virginia, to a misdemeanor charge of misbranding OxyContin, as did a former executive. The board signed off on the three executives' decisions to plead guilty. No member of the Sackler family pleaded guilty.

Purdue paid $5 million to Udell in November 2008, and up to $1 million in November 2009, the complaint states. In February 2008, the company paid $3 million to Friedman. The complaint doesn't mention any payments to the former executive.

"The Sacklers spent millions to keep the loyalty of people who knew the truth," the complaint alleges.

Udell died in 2013. A person answering a phone number listed to Friedman declined comment.

The plea deals did little to hinder OxyContin sales or the Sacklers' hands-on management. At the direction of the board, Purdue repeatedly increased its sales force, which pushed doctors to prescribe higher opioid doses.

In 2008, the same year that Purdue paid Udell and Friedman, Richard Sackler advised other family members that it was important to select a new chief executive who was loyal to the family. "People who will shift their loyalties rapidly under stress and temptation can become a liability from the owners' viewpoint," he allegedly wrote. A defendant in the Massachusetts lawsuit, Richard Sackler served in a number of different positions at the company before being named president in 1999 and then co-chairman of the board in 2003.

The company did install five new, non-family board members in the wake of the federal investigation. But in hundreds of board votes, the new directors never opposed the family, according to the complaint. Although Purdue does not operate outside the U.S., board meetings took place at a castle in Ireland as well as in Bermuda, London, Portugal and Switzerland.

When sales results disappointed, Sackler family members didn't hesitate to intervene. In late 2010, Purdue told the family that sales of the highest dose and most profitable opioids were lower than expected, according to the complaint. That meant an expected quarter-end payout to the family of $320 million was at risk of being reduced to $260 million and would have to be made in two installments in December instead of one in November.

That news prompted a sharp email question from Mortimer D.A. Sackler, whose late father, also named Mortimer, was a Purdue co-founder. "Why are you BOTH reducing the amount of the distribution and delaying it and splitting it in two?" he asked. "Just a few weeks ago you agreed to distribute the full 320 [million dollars] in November." The complaint doesn't say how much was ultimately paid.

From 2009 until at least 2014, McKinsey helped Purdue shape its message for selling OxyContin and overcoming concerns about addiction and overdoses, according to redacted passages. The consultant told Purdue in a slide presentation that it could increase prescriptions by convincing doctors that opioids provide "freedom" and "peace of mind" and give patients "the best possible chance to live a full and active life."

Purdue staff, according to the complaint, told the Sacklers that McKinsey would study "patient pushback" to encourage hesitant doctors to prescribe opioids. In a meeting with Purdue executives, McKinsey planned how to "counter the emotional messages from mothers with teenagers that overdosed in [sic] OxyContin" by recruiting pain patients to talk about the need for the drugs.

In a 2013 report, McKinsey recommended directing sales representatives to focus on the most prolific opioid prescribers because that group writes "25 times as many OxyContin scripts" as less prolific prescribers. Because prescription rates rose in tandem with visits from sales reps to doctors, McKinsey recommended increasing each salesperson's quota from 1,400 visits a year to closer to 1,700. McKinsey estimated that targeting the most frequent prescribers could boost OxyContin sales by hundreds of millions of dollars. The quotas rose, as did total visits, the complaint states. Purdue said it planned to decrease visits relating to opioid products, and any increase was due to promoting a laxative.

McKinsey also recommended Purdue fight back against efforts by a major pharmacy chain, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and the U.S. Department of Justice to stop illegal opioid prescribing, the complaint states. These new rules were cutting into sales of the highest doses, which were also the most profitable, it says. The complaint doesn't say if Purdue followed McKinsey's recommendation. Purdue said the recommendations "actually relate to ensuring continued access to pain medicines for appropriate patients."

A McKinsey spokesman declined comment.

In September 2014, Purdue embarked on a secret project to join an industry that was booming thanks in part to OxyContin abuse: addiction treatment medication. Code-named Project Tango, it involved Purdue executives and staff as well as Dr. Kathe Sackler, a daughter of the company co-founder Mortimer Sackler and a defendant in the Massachusetts lawsuit. She participated in phone calls and told staff that the project required their "immediate attention," according to the complaint.

Internally, Purdue touted the growth of an industry that its aggressive marketing had done so much to foster.

"It is an attractive market," the team working on the project wrote in a presentation. "Large unmet need for vulnerable, underserved and stigmatized patient population suffering from substance abuse, dependence and addiction."

While OxyContin sales were declining, the internal team at Purdue touted the fact that the addiction treatment marketplace was expanding.

"Opioid addiction (other than heroin) has grown by ~20%" annually from 2000 to 2010, the company noted. Although Richard Sackler had blamed OxyContin abuse in an email on "reckless criminals," the Purdue staff exploring the new business opportunity described in far more sympathetic terms the patients whom it now planned to treat.

"This can happen to any-one – from a 50 year old woman with chronic lower back pain to a 18 year old boy with a sports injury, from the very wealthy to the very poor," it said.

Company documents recommended becoming an "end-to-end pain provider." Initially, Purdue intended to sell one such medication, Suboxone, which is commonly retailed as a film that melts in the mouth. When Kathe Sackler asked staff members to look into reports that children might be swallowing the film, they reassured her. They responded, according to the complaint, that youngsters were overdosing on pills, but not the films, "which is a positive for Tango."

In 2015, Purdue turned its attention to another potential product, the overdose reversing agent known as Narcan, calling it a "strategic fit." Purdue executives discussed how its sales force could promote Narcan to the same doctors who prescribed the most opioids. Purdue said in the statement Wednesday that it decided against acquiring the rights to sell Suboxone and Narcan.

While those initiatives appear to have stalled or ended, Richard Sackler received a patent last year for a drug to treat addiction, according to the complaint. The patent application states that opioids are addictive and refers to people who suffer from substance use disorders as "junkies."

Besides being a defendant in the Massachusetts case, Richard Sackler was deposed in a lawsuit against Purdue in Kentucky, which the company settled. It's believed to be the only time a member of the family has been questioned under oath about OxyContin and its addictive properties. The Kentucky Court of Appeals has ordered the release of his deposition, in response to a motion by STAT, but Purdue is asking the state Supreme Court to review the ruling. Hundreds of other lawsuits filed by states, cities, counties and tribes against Purdue have been consolidated in a pending case in federal court in Ohio.

The Massachusetts complaint cites multiple incidents of Purdue allegedly sitting on information, sometimes for years, about doctors it had reason to believe were inappropriately prescribing OxyContin. In 2012, a Purdue employee appealed to the company's head of sales to alert health insurers to data the company collected about doctors suspected of abusing or illegally prescribing OxyContin. The list of doctors was code-named Project Zero.

"At a basic level, it just seems like the right and ethical thing to do," the employee wrote. "Doing so could help those companies identify those physicians that may be of a concern, not just with respect to our products, but also other" pain medications. "As a result, if it reduces abuse and diversion of opioids then it seems like something we should be doing."

The idea was rejected and the employee left the company a month later, according to the complaint.

[yankeedoodle]

The Sacklers, Jewish family behind OxyContin, will pay $6B in deal that shields them from lawsuits
https://www.jta.org/2023/05/31/united-states/the-sacklers-jewish-family-behind-oxycontin-will-pay-6b-in-deal-that-shields-them-from-lawsuits

The Sackler family, the Jewish billionaires whose marketing of the painkiller drug OxyContin fueled the United States' ongoing opioid epidemic, will receive full immunity from all civil legal claims in exchange for spending up to $6 billion on addiction treatment and prevention programs.

The decision to grant immunity by a federal appeals court panel Tuesday effectively ends the thousands of civil lawsuits that have been filed against Purdue Pharma, the Sacklers' company, over opioid deaths.

But it clears the way for the company to declare bankruptcy, a move considered essential to a plan to pay out billions of dollars to help states and communities address the opioid crisis. Of the up to $6 billion allocated under the deal, about $750 million will go to people who became addicted to OxyContin, and to family members of people who died from overdoses.

The ruling reverses a lower court's 2021 ruling that bankruptcy proceedings were an improper tool for shielding wealthy private citizens from legal repercussions. It does not grant members of the Sackler family immunity against possible future criminal charges.

In a brief statement sent after the publication of this article, the Sackler family welcomed the decision and said it is "critical to providing substantial resources for people and communities in need."

Purdue founders Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond Sackler were the sons of Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn who attended medical school in Scotland because American schools wouldn't admit Jews at the time. Mortimer and Raymond introduced OxyContin in 1996, after Arthur had left the company; the family then made billions by aggressively marketing the drug for more than two decades, even amid signs it was driving users into opiate addiction.

The three brothers have all died, but other members of the family have retained control of Purdue Pharma and their wealth, estimated at about $11 billion two years ago.

The Sackler name had been a regular presence in philanthropic circles until the opioid lawsuits began building up in 2019, at which point many cultural institutions began refusing the family's donations and removing their name from buildings. The Jewish artist and activist Nan Goldin spearheaded a grassroots movement opposing the family for years.

One notable beneficiary of the Sacklers, Tel Aviv University, has resisted pressure to drop the Sackler name from its medical school — though the American-facing wing of its medical school quietly removed the Sackler name from its marketing materials last year. The school still has a Sackler Faculty of Medicine whose "About" page cites the "generous contributions of renowned U.S. doctors and philanthropists Raymond, and the late Mortimer and Arthur Sackler."