Opioids III: The Sacklers: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

moving on our main story tonight concerns a public health crisis that's exposed the failure of american institutions no not that one not that one either that's a good point but not actually this time yep there it is the opioid epidemic and if you're thinking hold on didn't you already do a show about this you're wrong we've actually done two of them but we thought it would be worth doing a third installment tonight anyway for a couple of reasons first it's an epidemic that's still very much raging exacerbated by both the pandemic and illicit fentanyl to the point that last year nearly 70 000 people died from opioid overdoses that is the highest annual death toll ever and second you may have seen a bunch of headlines recently about trials and settlements taking place around the country there have been so many of them it can genuinely be hard to keep track but we want to focus on just one company tonight purdue farmer whose rollout of oxycontin arguably fueled the opioid crisis we have talked about their relentless push to sell oxycontin before but more material has come out in the last couple of years including this spectacular glimpse into a 1997 motivational sales meeting for the company's drug reps [Music] wow that was purdue's vp of sales performing an oxy-themed cover of shout and that has got to be one of the most upsetting decisions from the late 90s right up there with give every lonely child an electronic imaginary friend that will immediately die and let's set every sitcom in new york city and make sure the twin towers are prominently featured in the transition shots really reminds people they're there purdue pharma is owned by the sackler family and in recent years purdue and the sacklers have found themselves being investigated by the doj and facing thousands of lawsuits filed by state and local governments native american tribes hospitals and individuals and they have spent years working with an army of lawyers attempting to negotiate their way out of all of it which resulted in two major resolutions including this big news from last october it's being hailed by the federal government as a major victory against a company whose drug oxycontin is part of the public health crisis of opioid addiction that has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of americans the maker of oxycontin admitted to defrauding regulators and paying illegal kickbacks to doctors it's true purdue has pled guilty to multiple felonies and it is weird to hear news that sounds so genuinely good it'd be really nice to get more of that once in a while like no once in a century weather events for the next few hours or billionaire goes to space and dies there you know something heartwarming that guilty plea was actually part of a much larger plan that we'll get into later involving the company also filing for bankruptcy and just this past march submitting a reorganization plan that would end sackler ownership and the thing is this might all sound like a major victory that the sacklers are finally experiencing significant consequences but unfortunately that could not be farther from the truth so tonight with the bankruptcies confirmation hearing scheduled to begin later this week let's talk about the sackler family how hard they've been fighting to defend their name the details of the deal that they're attempting to strike and why the whole thing is a bunch of and let's start with a basic question who are the sacklers well the sacklers are the descendants of three brothers arthur raymond and mortimer who in 1952 bought the company that would eventually become purdue farmer and while arthur's branch of the family sold their stake decades ago before oxycontin was developed the heirs of raymond and mortimer both benefited from and in some cases actively managed produced boom years of selling opioids many sacklers either worked at the company or served on its board and the massachusetts ag points out some of them were pretty hands-on they were in the boardroom they own the company we have emails and memos that show the direct control that they exercised over sales and marketing one of the sackler family members went so far as to want to get in the car with purdue sales reps and drive around to visit doctors offices it's true and doing a drug rep ride-along is about as hands-on as you can get and quick side out there just spare a thought for the sales rep in question because sure they too contributed to the over-prescription of america and probably led to their own local mini epidemic but nobody not even hitler should have to sit in a car with their boss and talk about what exactly the weather and then when you run out of things to say about it do what sit in silence and then say actually i could go for a bathroom break right now and have him say i'm fine but feel free to stop and then what you stop and he waits in the car and then when you get back he looks inconvenienced i would sooner throw myself out of the car in the middle of the freeway now the man responsible for that ride-along was richard sackler who was actually president of the company for years and yet interestingly it is hard to find images of him other than that one in fact while the sacklers have relished slapping their family name on institutions as individuals they have tried to stay out of the spotlight when richard sackler gave a deposition in 2015 purdue fought hard to keep it private that is why in our last piece we had a bunch of actors play him to convey important things like the fact that he said i don't know more than a hundred times now thankfully that deposition has since been released so you can finally watch the man in action how much money has purdue frederick or purdue farmer made off the sale of oxycontin i i don't know i don't know i don't know the answer okay i don't know i i don't know but i i just don't know admit it the guy just oozes charisma although honestly having actually seen it i think i prefer the version that we made how much money has purdue frederick or purdue pharma made off the sale of oxycontin i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know how many purdue entities are there i don't know yeah that is just objectively better now while richard was the most involved he was not alone his cousin kathy sackler was an officer of the company for years and even claimed in emails that developing oxycontin was her idea although despite that fact when kathy was called before congress last year and asked to apologize for her role in the opioid crisis she didn't exactly do that i have tried to figure out was is there anything that i could have done differently knowing what i knew then not what i know now and and i i have to say it i can't there's nothing that i can find that i would have done differently okay first that is definitely not an apology kathy and second come on nearly a year into a pandemic that is just an unacceptable at-home setup put your laptop on a couple of books upgrade your router and while you're at it one click a ring light so kathy that's books router ring lights it's the little zoom tricks that we've all learned that'll help you look your best as you absolve yourself of responsibility for a massive public health crisis but the sacklers haven't just been appearing at congressional hearings some have been trying hard to rehabilitate their image and even paint themselves as victims take david sackler he's richard's son and a former board member himself he gave an interview to vanity fair featuring this portrait which by the way looks like it should be a poster for natural family planning in a christian health clinic and in it he complained my four-year-old came home from nursery school and asked why are my friends telling me that our family's work is killing people which just does not seem remotely credible for a start everyone knows that is not how four-year-olds talk you're missing eight ums fifteen and and and three times they're completely out of breath for no reason and five complete trail offs i call on that whole fake anecdote but that is just the beginning david's branch of the family was also involved in the launch of a pro sackler website that aims to correct the record called judge for yourselves dot info which is shocking for a number of reasons first because billionaires for some reason chose not to splurge for the dot-com but also because of just how petty the website is it features a list of outlets that mistakenly used the brand name oxycontin when they meant the generic oxycodone including a college newspaper and over seven hours of video presentations in which a catastrophically uncharismatic lawyer attempts to disprove every legal argument ever made against the sacklers and purdue this terrible website of self-serving nonsense has been promoted by among others jos sackler that is david's wife and you may remember her from her failure to face the camera in vanity fair now even though joss isn't directly involved in the family business she actually talks more publicly than most sacklers she has a clothing line called lbv or le bulldog vigne which translates to the winemaking bulldogs and is an offshoot of her members only wine and social club josh was also once interviewed for town and country which she complained about how unfairly the press treats both her and her family noting that a previous article wouldn't refer to her as doctor josh sackler despite her telling them she had a phd in linguistics and going on to say they're going to regret with a linguist and that is one hell of a claim joss because nobody is intimidated by linguists you're basically an english major who wasted more time i'll with a linguist all day long i'll show you how do you make two proper nouns into a double negative joss and david boom linguist with so to recap it is pretty clear some sacklers have been working extremely hard to try and engender public sympathy but the real battle the family's been fighting has been a legal one and that is what i want to spend the rest of this piece talking about because while the details of what the sacklers are doing are incredibly complicated the end result is both simple and absolutely infuriating and let's start with that deal you heard about earlier where perdue pled guilty to three felonies it sounded like some good news but there are some major asterisks there because while the company pled guilty to those charges no individuals did and certainly no sacklers and that alone is a big deal to them in fact just watch as cathy jumped to remind everyone of that fact during their congressional hearing the sackler family through purdue has three felony convictions but no one's in jail and it has its billions still excuse me the sackler family doesn't have a felony conviction purdue pharma has a felony conviction i'm an individual person okay hold on i do get the point that she is making there but the fact is purdue is made up of individual people who control it think of purdue like lamb chop if lam chop threatened to kill the president on live tv lam chop wouldn't get in trouble or go to prison shari lewis would why because lambchop is a puppet who does whatever the shari lewis tells lampchop to do now the sacklers might argue that purdue was controlled by many people including non-family members and that while they're not facing criminal charges they are still facing consequences but here is the thing are they are they really and that brings us back to the bankruptcy that i mentioned earlier because the bankruptcy deal that purdue has proposed is the vehicle through which the sacklers are likely to escape any true accountability very basically purdue was buried in thousands of lawsuits and rather than fighting them all separately the company filed for bankruptcy negotiating to resolve all of its debts in one place this proposed deal requires among other things the sackler's relinquished ownership of purdue which will be turned into a public benefit company whose profits will go toward fighting the opioid epidemic now the company claims the bankruptcy will deliver more than 10 billion dollars in value but a few things about that first the sacklers themselves are only contributing around 4.3 billion to that settlement which i know does sound like a lot until you learn the family has assets of around 11 billion which is a massive amount of money but i guess that is what happens when your company makes an addictive product and pushes its employees to [Music] i just saw that 10 minutes ago and somehow it's gotten even worse now also you may want to know regarding the sackler family's net worth a fair amount of it was built up in a very particular period because from 2008 to 2017 even as the opioid epidemic was kicking into high gear more than 10 billion dollars was transferred out of the company for the benefit of the family now the sacklers fiercely maintain that those transfers were proper but the doj alleged that they were made to hinder future creditors in other words to get the money out of the company so that the sacklers could protect it and they found some pretty damning evidence particularly from david sackler who seemed to directly express fears over lawsuits taking the family money back in 2007 writing in an email we're rich for how long until which suits get through to the family and david buddy don't send that kind of thing over email i mean don't send it in the mail mail don't speak it don't think it and ideally don't receive an upbringing that would plant the thought in your mind but bare minimum keep it out of the permanent legal record and if you're thinking well okay so they transferred money to the family but people can still pursue claims against the sacklers directly right well no because here is the really insidious part well there are approximately 400 civil suits that do name the sacklers themselves the family is insisting that they will only agree to this settlement if they get what is called a non-consensual third-party release and this thing is because if they get it all current lawsuits against the sacklers evaporate and no future lawsuits can be filed meaning that the sacklers who didn't file for personal bankruptcy themselves remember are basically off the hook and if it sounds weird to you that a company can declare bankruptcy and then a bunch of individuals get shielded from liability that's because it is it's really weird in fact some bankruptcy courts don't allow these third-party releases at all but purdue very carefully chose one that they knew probably would a few months before filing for bankruptcy purdue changed one of its official corporate addresses to one in white plains new york at which it's never conducted business and where there is only one bankruptcy judge who completely coincidentally has supported third party releases in the past which is all a pretty obvious tactic isn't it it's not like they move to white plains for any other reason if you look up things to do in white plains the first result you get and this is true is a trip advisor page recommending a helicopter tour of new york city which is just incredible come visit white plains where you can immediately leave and go look at somewhere more interesting to live and the sackler's third party release is comprehensive stating that the released party shall be conclusively absolutely unconditionally irrevocably fully finally forever and permanently released from any and all claims of any kind from the beginning of time and this is the list of every person and entity they want covered it contains over 200 companies and 200 more trusts where the sacklers have tucked their money away this release is ludicrously broad which is probably why the ags of nine states and dc are still objecting to it and two branches of the doj have said it violates the us constitution and specifically violates due process because it deprives individuals of an opportunity to be heard and yet incredibly despite all of this it is widely assumed that this whole deal is going to go ahead and while it sounds completely terrible to me i will say at least one person thinks that it's actually a very good thing although i will say that one person is purdue's current chairman this is a milestone in public health history never before have you seen this amount of money 10 billion dollars being devoted to opioid abatement and it's only available through this plan assuming we can get it approved and i think when people think about it they will come around to the notion well i might have liked something slightly different but this is certainly a lot better than going into endless costly litigation that may end up with no proceeds going to anybody okay no i might have liked something different but this is better than nothing it's what you say when your dad insists on having dinner at chili's not when you're talking about the fate of a company that poisoned a generation which incidentally is i believe chile's current slogan and here is the thing that man is not even entirely wrong the longer these lawsuits drag on the more money will get wasted in court and an increasingly large percentage of it will go to lawyers rather than victims because right now under this settlement claimants could receive payments from 3 500 to 48 000 which yes feels wildly insufficient but some families are reluctantly willing to take what they can get although i will say others like this woman whose son became addicted to opioids after being prescribed oxycontin as a high school student are furious that this is what it's come to we want our voices heard not interpreted by the court like they have been i don't want somebody saying that i love i'm so happy with the settlement as i hear at practically every hearing i'm a mom i'm not happy with any of this and i know hundreds of moms that aren't either in families exactly for some families or victims the opportunity to have their voices heard is priceless which is to say a of a lot more than 48 000 some have even called into court only to be told it wasn't the right forum one woman called into the bankruptcy hearing and said i lost my brother tragically at the tip of the epidemic in 2012 i would like to speak in memory of my brother to which the judge replied i hold hearings on what is scheduled before me i don't think that this is the proper form to do this and the thing is he is right but this also may be the last form these families have to be heard look it might well be true that this is the best deal we can get under our current system but the fact that that's the case doesn't speak well to this deal or indeed the system itself and if you're thinking well the sacklers are paying so much already what more do you want i'm not sure that is the right way to think about this because i would argue that when your family's company recklessly sold a product as damaging as oxycontin the question might not be how many billions is it right for you to pay it's how many billions is it right for you to keep and i would argue no billions and i'm afraid it somehow gets one step worse because the way this settlement is structured it's actually hurting the sacklers even less than you might think that 4.3 billion that they've agreed to pay is spread out over nine years with the largest payments coming toward the end of that period which means they could make that money up in interest and investments and never have to touch the principle in fact when the sacklers are done paying in 2030 they will probably be richer than they are today so i guess the answer to we're rich for how long is oh don't worry forever david because it seems that's how the system works unfortunately when it comes to accountability for the sacklers this is probably it because while technically they could still be criminally charged nobody expects that to happen and it's just infuriating that things are set to end so comfortably for a family that has made so much at the expense of so many although i will say there is one tiny positive here and that is that purdue and the sacklers have always heavily valued secrecy but this deal requires the creation of an online public repository that will eventually contain 30 million documents including deposition videos and the sackler's company's emails which is undeniably a good thing but even with that let's admit we're not getting anything approaching justice here and the sacklers in sparing no expense seem to have successfully bought their way out of this problem well not no expense because again despite spending millions on lawyers and even creating a website filled with legal propaganda they still somehow couldn't scrape up the 2500 required to buy the dot-com for it and the reason i happen to know exactly how much it cost is because that is how much we spent to buy it it is true we bought judge for yourselves.com and i know that it does absolutely nothing to even the scales here but it does give me the tiniest bit of comfort to imagine that it might irritate the sacklers a bit to know that when people go to that site in the future this is what they're going to see hi it's me the real richard sackler welcome to the premier source of information on the sackler family that you can find on the internet it's called judge for yourselves.com but you gotta get the dot-com i mean what what kind of idiot would set up an important website and not by the dot com i don't know i don't know anyway if you want the truth you've come to the right place so click around okay get a sense of what my terrible family has done and uh you know maybe we'll throw in some makeup tidbits i don't know maybe uh how to make a great pesto chicken anyway there's some great buttons that you press around and uh you'll get this somehow anyway best of luck to you all right bye-bye thank you richard sackler this new website lets you judge for yourselves whether the sacklers got off to easy witch they absolutely did on it you can see richard sackler's full deposition all of our episodes about the opioid crisis and there is even a link that will eventually direct you to the document repository the moment it is launched also because the families of those impacted by the sacklers haven't always been heard there are some excerpts on the website of what some of them wanted to say all of this will be up as long as we own the domain and this is at least something that the sacklers cannot throw their dirty money at and make go away which is not to say that it isn't for sale at all sackler family it is available for a price let's say 10 billion dollars you

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 4,830,246

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Id: uaCaIhfETsM

Length: 24min 0sec (1440 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 08 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/apple_kicks]

New Yorker has a great article on this awful family https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-an-empire-of-pain

[u/ukexpat]

HBO has done an eye-opening mini documentary about the Sacklers, Purdue Pharma and the opioid crisis — The Crime of the Century. Worth watching but it will make your blood boil.

[u/hannahstohelit]

I'm genuinely stunned that he didn't mention that, in the book he highlighted at the beginning (Empire of Pain), it's mentioned that some of the family members were pissed at JO's prior coverage because they loved the show and hated that he was criticizing/mocking them.

[u/CollumMcJingleballs]

My favorite part of this episode was the discovery of how bad that Esteban is at daytime television

[u/deanertheman]

RIP Canada

[u/Claudius_Gothicus]

Pharma not only made bank from enabling the epidemic, but also from treating it. Shit like Narcan, Buprenorphine, Naloxone, Sublocade costs a fucking fortune.

In October Ive been clean from fentanyl/heroin for 3 years. Shit is a fucking nightmare lol.

[u/BoogsterSU2]

Will the Sackler family escape all these lawsuits?

Well, I DON'T KNOW! Why don't you judge for yourselves instead?

[u/OfficerJohnMaldonday]

Anyone got a mirror?