Tag Archives: Sackler

February 1, 2022 · 16:07

That first step

We have all heard it, the first step is admitting you have a problem. There is of course debate on WHAT the problem is. I am not any different. I hate stupidity, hypocorism and bot to mention short sighted issues. One of these issues is ‘Tax the rich’, we see all these stupid people screaming ‘tax the rich’ whilst the system is set, there is a tax system, there are tax laws and instead of all screaming to adjust the tax system we see the empty gesture to tax the rich, the rich do not care, they adhere to tax laws, so these laws will PROTECT them. Another issue was seen in ‘Greed and Law helping each other’, I wrote it on July 9th 2021 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/07/09/greed-and-law-helping-each-other/). There I set out the short sighted setting of the Oxycontin setting. I wrote “Yes, there are culprits in this story. You see some sources give us that in 1996 316,000 prescriptions were dispensed, it grew to an impressive amount topping over 14 million prescriptions with an estimated value of $3,000,000,000. The issue we see everyone painting over is ‘prescriptions dispensed’, this is not something that a person can get, it needs a doctor and it needs a pharmacist.” You see there are laws and rules, and they were massively broken by doctors and pharmacists. So when do they go to court?

It is Reuters who give us today (at https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/sacklers-near-deal-contribute-more-opioid-settlement-purdue-pharma-bankruptcy-2022-01-31/) the story of ‘Sacklers near deal to increase opioid settlement in Purdue bankruptcy’, I personally do not believe that members of the Sackler family who own Purdue Pharma LP were completely innocent, yet that is not the setting is it? SOMEONE handed a paper to dispense Oxycontin, a pharmacist handed over the drugs. Yet nearly all of them banked the money and did not ring the alarm bell (some really did that) and those who cashed in on 14,000,000 prescriptions? Why are they not in court? Members of the Sackler family cannot hand over prescriptions, they cannot dispense drugs to people, they can merely distribute to pharmacies. So I do not believe that they are completely innocent, but to go after them and not after the doctors and pharmacies is (as I personally see) immoral.

Yes, I know that in Torts you go after the money.

So in that setting: “Jeff Bezos, I do believe you owe me $50,000,000 post taxation, pay up please!”

But is any of that fair? You might say that fair has nothing to do with it and it is not incorrect but it is wrong. So when Reuters gives us “An agreement involving members of the Sackler family and several state attorneys general could potentially end a legal challenge that has prevented Purdue from exiting bankruptcy, and clear the way for a plan aimed at helping to abate the opioid crisis” my personal thoughts are wondering how many of these state attorney generals went after the doctors and the pharmacies? Justice handed in August 2021 a verdict, ‘Doctor Sentenced To More Than 15 Years In Prison For Conspiring To Distribute Thousands Of Oxycodone Pills Illegally’, there is no way in hell that only ONE doctor did that, so how many are serving 15 years?

It is U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss who gives us “Dr. Emmanuel Lambrakis wrote medically unnecessary prescriptions for thousands of oxycodone pills – an addictive and potentially fatal opiate. Instead of abiding by his oath to ‘do no harm,’ Lambrakis pumped deadly drugs into the community. Lambrakis put his own greed before his duties as a medical professional, and for that he will now spend a lengthy term in federal prison.” And as stated before, there is no way that there was merely one doctor guilty of that, in addition, there are truckloads of pharmacies that require the same amount of attention and that too is not being done to the degree it had to be done, it is my personal opinion that some state attorneys general’s were lazy and decided to go after the money, go for the easy conviction. Yes, the Sackler family benefitted, but who prescribed? Who handed them over? I see close to nothing on that. It is a simple tax the rich approach to a failing in law and a failing to observe the law and there are clearly a vast amount of doctors and pharmacies more guilty than any of the Sackler family. But we do not get to see that, do we?

As I see it, it started with that first step and the law has a problem, it cannot properly dispense justice to the wrongdoers. It merely went to the richest person and found them guilty. So what happens when it becomes about something more problematic? What happens when someone figures out that any Ponzi scheme can be done online handing the mess to Apple or perhaps Epic systems? So what happens when the hackers find the weakness in something like Nvidia’s GeForce Now service? What happens when 300,000,000 people lose $10-$35 and Epic goes ‘Not my Problem’, and Nvidia goes ‘We know nothing’? Who will end up with that bill of $3,000,000,000-$9,000,000,000 because the people will demand payment and as I see it the Justice departments will be globally clueless on how to proceed. The nice part here is that the court setting makes Apple automatically innocent, they had to open up the system and the people will merely lose their money.

How a spindled world wide web we weave.

Greed and Law helping each other

I have written about it before, it is my point of view and my conviction. It is my setting that gives rise to what you could see, and gives rise to what you could know, you already did, but you seemingly decided to ignore it, you decided to enable the greed driven and all parties are smitten by greed, they call it different, yet as I see it, it is mere greed.

How it ends
The end is shown by the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57770557) with “It marks the first step towards the OxyContin painkillers maker paying out $4.3bn (£3.1bn) to settle cases related to the opioid crisis”, it was always about the money. There is an old saying “μυστήριον, Βαβυλὼν ἡ μεγάλη, ἡ μήτηρ τῶν πορνῶν καὶ τῶν βδελυγμάτων τῆς γῆς;” The book of revelations 17:5. Did anyone consider it could optionally reflect on Attorney General Letitia James from the state of New York? We might see and take notice of “While no amount of money will ever compensate for the thousands who lost their lives or became addicted to opioids across our state or provide solace to the countless families torn apart by this crisis, these funds will be used to prevent any future devastation”, will it though?

The method
We see ‘OxyContin is one of the most commonly abused prescription drugs’, and we see that it belongs to the Sackler family, the members who own Purdue Pharma, privately held. They are not guilty, yet they are also not innocent, greed drove them towards their billions, yet they are not the demons we all paint them to be, to not be innocent and to be a demon is to be a different cattle of fish and any Attorney General could tell you that, but they have the money and they all wanted the money, the real demon.

Culprits
Yes, there are culprits in this story. You see some sources give us that in 1996 316,000 prescriptions were dispensed, it grew to an impressive amount topping over 14 million prescriptions with an estimated value of $3,000,000,000. The issue we see everyone painting over is ‘prescriptions dispensed’, this is not something that a person can get, it needs a doctor and it needs a pharmacist. The top 5 are Walgreens Company, CVS Health, Walmart, Rite Aid Corp and Krogers company. They own a little over 25,000 stores and around 113,000 pharmacists. There are ere players in the game. Yet how many Oxycontin did they hand out? How many doctors did these prescriptions?
You see, the interesting side is not what we see, but what we saw on TV in 1978, it was an episode of Lou Grant and that episode (season 2 episode 1 “Pills”) shows us the larger station that plays here and THEY gave the people (government also) the goods 20 years earlier. We all want one demon, but there was not one, there were a truckload of them, but the US government cannot fill their pockets there.

Innocence
It is the first fatality in any war, there is no exception and this is not different. The Sackler family is not innocent, but they are not the guilty demons that the media and the flaming screamers claim them to be. It was simple and it was out there. 14,000,000 prescriptions and only doctors can make them. Yes, we see “lawsuits regarding overprescription of addictive pharmaceutical drugs” yet it is given out by doctors and it is handed out by pharmacies. Yet the New Yorker in 2020 gives us “Purdue Pharma played a “special role” in the opioid crisis because the company “was the first to set out, in the nineteen-nineties, to persuade the American medical establishment that strong opioids should be much more widely prescribed—and that physicians’ longstanding fears about the addictive nature of such drugs were overblown”, I get that and we should understand that, yet in this (at https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/opioid-manufacturer-purdue-pharma-pleads-guilty-fraud-and-kickback-conspiracies) we also get “Purdue also paid kickbacks to providers to encourage them to prescribe even more of its products”, so who were those providers? Who received these kickbacks? We are not likely to see those are we, we will merely see words like ‘settlement’ and ‘undisclosed parties’, innocence was the first victim to fall, none of the players were innocent. And the government is equally guilty. The NPR (at https://www.npr.org/2020/12/22/949309266/doj-sues-walmart-over-unlawful-distribution-of-controlled-substances) gave us in December 2020 “The Justice Department is suing Walmart. In a civil suit filed today, the Justice Department alleges that the company’s pharmacies and warehouses helped fuel the opioid crisis. Walmart’s pharmacy chain dispensed billions of opioid pills, including OxyContin and other highly addictive medications. And this lawsuit claims that the company broke the law hundreds of thousands of times”, so that took a decade? And when we consider ‘broke the law hundreds of thousands of times’, how come that store is still open? And it is Brian Mann who gives us “according to the DOJ, Walmart did exactly the opposite, filling huge numbers of unsafe and illegal prescriptions, allegedly doing so for years without alerting the government”, and there we have it, the crux of the Lou Grant episode, the evidence that set the caper in motion in 1978, but that is not all, the article also gives us “NPR has been looking into this. And we found that some of the company’s own former pharmacists tried for years to raise the alarm about allegedly illegal activity. Ashwani Sheerin (ph) is a pharmacist who worked for Walmart in rural Michigan. He told NPR he saw real red flags”, not all pharmacists are evil, but we see the stage of revenue pushing, it is greed in action and when we see ‘tried for years to raise the alarm’ we see that the Justice department is not innocent either and the media is not innocent either. A stage where they all love revenue, circulation and ringing the bell loudly was apparently not an option. So whilst we see “had reached an agreement with Purdue that would see its owners, the wealthy Sackler family, pay an additional $50m”, I wonder where Walmart is in this and with them a whole range of pharmacies. Because it was never Walmart alone, not with an annual 14,000,000 prescriptions.

Solution
There might not be one, but us all recognising that Justice reacted well over a decade too late, that is as I personally see it, the FDA dropped the ball, likely more than once, especially as this has been going on for years, optionally well over a decade. And it is Attorney General Letitia James with “prevent any future devastation” who has the ball now, I wonder if she drops it, or hands it over to someone else, as NPR gives us pointing the finger at Walmart, but they are not alone and the records of the FDA are also in question. When I look into ‘Federal Regulations for Clinical Investigators’, I wonder if it helps investigations, or slows them down.
You see Oxycontin is a schedule 8 drug and we get “Doctors must follow state and territory laws when prescribing oxycodone and must notify, or receive approval from, the appropriate health authority”, you see this matters as pharmacies need a doctors prescription, so which doctors were behind the 14,000,000 annual prescriptions?

So there you have it, I made no claim that the Sackler family was innocent, they are not, but they are not the demons we see them to be, this is a much larger problem and it was left unchecked for well over a decade, or there was at the very least a decade of inaction and too many filled their pockets and yes the Sackler benefitted, but they were not alone, Walmart was part, but there too they were not alone and the doctors who prescribed these pills, what is their price for a prescription? As I personally see it, the law enabled greed to continue for too long, the law and greed enabled each other, and the end is still not in sight, no matter what Attorney General Letitia James and in this she is not alone either, doesn’t San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia not have any Attorney Generals? Where were they in the 2000-2021?

1 Comment

Filed under Finance, Law

Tagged as Ashwani Sheerin, BBC, Boston, Chicago, FDA, Letitia James, Los Angeles, Lou Grant, NPR, OxyContin, Philadelphia, Sackler, San Francisco, Walmart

March 23, 2019 · 11:00

Go cry me a river

OK, at times it is important to keep a moral foundation towards the actions we take. Some people (the non-Germans) were hesitant to be named a recipient by Adolf Hitler. There are Africans that did not consider accepting any honours from Idi Amin Dada; there was opposition by some towards the grants from Muammar Al Gadhafi, even if he looked like Jeffrey Ross. Many have been in a place where question marks are held high. Yet I think that we have taken the left to a whole new level (of stupidity) when we see: ‘Austerity forcing arts institutions to accept gifts from billionaires‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/mar/22/austerity-forcing-arts-institutions-to-accept-gifts-from-billionaires). The setting here is: “More than £100m of government cuts to annual arts funding has forced the nation’s top art galleries, theatres and opera houses to accept gifts from billionaires, including the controversial Sackler family, which made a fortune from the deadly opioid painkiller crisis“, I am not in a financial happy place, so when the Sackler family gives me a £5 million grant, I will bow, smile and say “Thank you very much!” You see, the question is not what their morality allowed for, the question becomes, were criminal acts done?

It is important to take another look at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/21/sackler-family-500-cities-counties-and-tribes-sue-oxycontin-maker, where we are introduced to: ‘Massive lawsuit says Sackler family broke laws to profit from opioids‘, even as we see the word ‘lawsuit’, that does not imply that the law was broken. There we see: “accusing members of the Sackler family, who own the maker of the opioid painkiller OxyContin, of helping to create “the worst drug crisis in American history”“. I am also very aware of the state of accusation that is given with: “Court documents accuse the eight family members of purposely playing down the dangers of the prescription painkiller OxyContin, which is more potent than heroin or morphine. They are accused of deceiving doctors and patients and directing sales and marketing techniques that drove huge over-prescribing and ever stronger doses for many patients who should never have been prescribed the pills in the first place“. In that text the two words that matter are swept under the carpet. The part ‘prescription painkiller‘ is at the centre of that part and there we see a clear shift. In this he first issue becomes the GP, or medical professional that prescribed the painkiller in the first place. Then we get the FDA (the US Food and Drug Administration) who should have put an initial stop to the issue if there was one. Was this done? As we now see the claims like ‘House Democrats Want More Information On Sackler Family’s Role In Opioid Epidemic‘, and a whole range of other accusations, we need to take a larger look. The FDA gives the direct part: “Get emergency help right away if you take too much OXYCONTIN (overdose). When you first start taking OXYCONTIN, when your dose is changed, or if you take too much (overdose), serious or life-threatening breathing problems that can lead to death may occur. Never give anyone else your OXYCONTIN. They could die from taking it. Store OXYCONTIN away from children and in a safe place to prevent stealing or abuse. Selling or giving away OXYCONTIN is against the law.”

In addition we find information like: “Oxycodone is used for managing moderate to severe acute or chronic pain when other treatments are not sufficient.” again we see ‘when other treatments are not sufficient‘, now we see the crying of a collection of bitches whilst the direct investigation on these patients has optionally not been done. When we look at the history of these people and to what was initially prescribed we are likely to find a whole range of crying whiners who shouted and screamed for the strongest painkillers neglecting other alternatives, I feel certain that with all the data I would be able to find well over 10% failing the case from the very start. There is documentation on OxyContin going back to 1996, and NOW we see an optional case? 22 years later? I believe that there is a much larger issue in play. I believe that responsible parties have given in towards whining patients for decades, so is the Sackler family to blame for any of that? I do not believe that to be the case.

In addition we see: “Among the eight Native American tribes suing the Sacklers are parts of the Cherokee, the Chippewa and the Sioux, the Oneida Nation and the Blackfeet. Drug overdoses now kill more than 72,000 people in the US a year, according to government figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 49,000 of those are caused by opioids.” We see the facts, yet who prescribed these drugs? The direct and simplest of questions and none of the articles give a correct or decent answer, the direct application of the failing of the Unites States through lawsuits that will not go anywhere ever. I am decently certain that when the doctors are called to testify and they describe the harassing and badgering patients that needed more and more and stronger painkillers, we will see a prescription failure to a much larger degree. In this light it is important to take the Native American Tribes into view as well. From my point of view there is a whole different range into the need of medication between rural (Native American or not) and metropolitan medication needs. That too must be taken into account. In addition, such an overload of opioids also puts the pharmacies into view. They have a duty to report such an increase of prescribed of opioids, as well as the physicians prescribing them. I will give you one better, the TV show Lou Grant (1978-1982) actually had one episode focused on that issue, an issue before OxyContin was in existence. A systemic failure brought into the limelight by a TV series and well over 13 years before there was OxyContin, so at this point, is there a clear directive to take a much larger view before you merely throw your lawsuit needy fingers towards the Sackler family?

And the clear part is that I am not stating that they are innocent, I am showing that there are at least three iterations of optionally guilty parties and involved players that should find themselves defending their actions in the courts before there is even a remote chance to have a go at the Sackler family and the FDA might be in court long before the Sackler members are.

So whilst you want to have a go at la dottore Raymond Sackler, be aware that those trying to make that jump will lose funds and cash by not doing their homework form day one and it took me a mere 187 seconds to realise that after these two articles were read. The biggest part is seen with: “This nation is facing an unprecedented opioid addiction epidemic that was initiated and perpetuated by the Sackler defendants for their own financial gain, to the detriment of each of the plaintiffs and their residents. The ‘Sackler defendants’ include Richard Sackler, Beverly Sackler, David Sackler, Ilene Sackler Lefcourt, Jonathan Sackler, Kathe Sackler, Mortimer DA Sackler, and Theresa Sackler,” this week’s lawsuit states“, no mention of the FDA approval, no list of hundreds of physicians prescribing the substance and no mention of a properly investigated medical history of the victims, all that got the limelight from the mere mention of ‘prescription painkiller‘. The fact that a TV Series like Lou Grant took an episode to show the failing of some physicians in such a situation was merely the icing on the cake called: “Laughingly created Court failure“.

As stated, I am not stating that they are guilty, not merely as they are presumed innocent, especially in light of the failed required elements in all this, the fact that some articles are loaded with emotion absent of 22 years of evidence that never required to await the court date is the added bonus that makes this all an optional failure, the application of common sense wins again!

In addition, consider the quote: “Court documents accuse the eight family members of purposely playing down the dangers of the prescription painkiller OxyContin, which is more potent than heroin or morphine“, yet I see no mention or any accusations towards the FDA, are they not the authority that people should turn to? Where were they in all this? Where are the approving physicians in all this? All direct questions, all without any answers. So when we consider the statement: “Drug overdoses now kill more than 72,000 people in the US a year, according to government figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 49,000 of those are caused by opioids.” How many of those are merely junkies looking for a fix? How many were due to illegally obtained drugs and painkillers? I wonder what remains of these numbers when we take a deeper look at that part of the data cake sliced on those influencing factors. When we do that those numbers might dwindle down for up to 80% making this a non-case and a non-event from the very beginning.

Good luck to those who shout: ‘prosecute’ whilst ignoring common sense of the matter at hand.

Tag Archives: Sackler

That first step

Greed and Law helping each other

Go cry me a river

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