The Sackler family lawyers are in the process of rewriting their bankruptcy filing because the Supreme Court has just overturned their first attempt to protect the Sacklers after they had moved $11 billion of the Purdue opioid profits into their personal accounts.

     Justice Gorsuch wrote in the court’s ruling that “The Sacklers have not filed for bankruptcy or placed all their assets on the table for distribution to creditors, yet they seek what essentially amounts to a discharge. No provision of the code authorizes that kind of relief.”

     Purdue Pharma has been facing a multitude of lawsuits for knowingly and fraudulently marketing OxyContin as non-addictive. In the first bankruptcy filing that was overturned, the Sackler family had offered to pay $6 billion in reparations for their part in creating the opioid epidemic, but Justice Gorsuch noted that they had sheltered their company’s opioid profits from the Purdue bankruptcy and had transferred $11 billion of company profit to their own personal account.

     In exchange for the reparations, the original bankruptcy filing would have also shielded Purdue and the Sacklers from any future lawsuits against them. Paying $6 billion in reparations after pocketing $11 billion is a pretty small price to pay for that kind of immunity.

     Between 1999 and 2021 nearly 650,000 people died from an opioid overdose, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has reported. Many states are still negotiating with other opioid manufacturers such as Johnson and Johnson, Teva and Allergan for settlements. Total payout from these settlements could reach $50 billion.

     Purdue was the largest marketer of opioids to physicians and was particularly aggressive in its
broad advertising of OxyContin. In 2001 alone it spent $200 million on marketing OxyContin despite knowing the dangers of the opioid. Purdue earned over $35 billion from total OxyContin sales.

     “Today is a very good day for justice,” said Ed Bisch, whose 18 year old son overdosed on OxyContin in 2001. Bisch now directs Relatives Against Purdue Pharma. Unfortunately, no justice has yet been meted out to the FDA, which allowed those false claims by Big Pharma, which downplayed the risks of opioids, to continue for nearly twenty- five years without correction.

     Big Pharma was motivated by profit. What was the FDA motivated by?

     In 2021, 75 percent of the FDA drug division budget — $1.1 billion — was paid for by user fees that Big Pharma is charged when they apply for FDA approval of a medical drug or device. 45 percent of the total FDA budget is paid for by these same Big Pharma fees.

     That’s probably pretty good motivation to maintain the FDA collusion with Big Pharma.