- The opioid epidemic in the US, fueled by Purdue Pharma's OxyContin, is still a major public health crisis.
- Purdue Pharma has faced investigations and lawsuits for their role in the crisis.
- Purdue Pharma has pled guilty to multiple felonies and filed for bankruptcy.
- The Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma, have been actively involved in the company's operations.
- The Sacklers have tried to stay out of the spotlight and keep their involvement private.
- Some Sacklers have attempted to rehabilitate their image and portray themselves as victims.
- The Sacklers have launched a website to defend their name and disprove legal arguments against them.
- Joss Sackler, David Sackler's wife, has a clothing line and has spoken publicly about the unfair treatment of her family.

- The Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma, have been trying to avoid legal consequences for their involvement in the opioid epidemic.
- Purdue Pharma pled guilty to three felonies, but no individuals, including the Sacklers, faced charges.
- Purdue filed for bankruptcy and proposed a settlement where the Sacklers would relinquish ownership of the company and pay $4.3 billion, but they still have assets of around $11 billion.
- The Sacklers are seeking a non-consensual third-party release, which would make all current and future lawsuits against them disappear.
- The bankruptcy court chosen by Purdue is likely to support this release, despite objections from several states' attorneys general and branches of the Department of Justice.
- The settlement offers payments to claimants ranging from $3,500 to $48,000, but many families of victims are dissatisfied and want their voices to be heard.
- The current system and the proposed settlement raise concerns about accountability and justice for the harm caused by OxyContin.

- The Sackler family, known for their involvement in the opioid crisis, has agreed to pay $4.3 billion over 9 years, but the payments are structured in a way that they could make up the money through interest and investments, potentially leaving them richer than before.
- While technically they could still face criminal charges, it is unlikely to happen, leaving the settlement as the only form of accountability.
- The settlement requires the creation of an online public repository with millions of documents, including deposition videos and company emails, providing transparency.
- The Sacklers spent millions on lawyers and a website but failed to buy the dot-com domain for it, which was purchased by the author of the video.
- The website, judgeforyourselves.com, provides information on the Sackler family, the opioid crisis, and includes excerpts from those impacted by the Sacklers.
- The website will remain as long as the domain is owned and is not for sale, except for a price of $10 billion.

- The opioid epidemic in the US, caused by OxyContin, remains a major public health crisis.
- Purdue Pharma, the company behind OxyContin, has faced legal issues and filed for bankruptcy.
- The Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma, have been actively involved in the company but have tried to stay out of the spotlight.
- The Sacklers have launched a website to defend their name and disprove legal arguments against them.
- Purdue Pharma has pled guilty to felonies, but no individuals, including the Sacklers, have faced charges.
- Purdue's bankruptcy settlement proposes the Sacklers relinquish ownership and pay $4.3 billion, but they still have significant assets.
- The Sacklers are seeking a release from future lawsuits, which is likely to be supported by the chosen bankruptcy court.
- Many families of victims are dissatisfied with the settlement and want their voices to be heard.
- The settlement payments are structured in a way that the Sacklers could potentially profit from interest and investments.
- The settlement requires the creation of a public repository with transparency on the case.
- The Sacklers spent money on a website but failed to purchase the domain, which is now owned by someone else.
- The website provides information on the Sackler family, the opioid crisis, and includes personal stories.

John Oliver explains how the Sackler family has been handling lawsuits related to the opioid crisis, how hard they’ve been fighting to defend their name, and why you should judge the situation for yourself.

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Our main story tonight concerns a public health crisis that's exposed the failure of American institutions.

That's a good point, But not actually this time.

And if you're thinking, hold on, didn't you already do a show about this?

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 1 company tonight, Purdue Pharma, 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.

You know you make me wanna sell OxyContin, yeah ♪ ♪ Here it's gonna be better than now, yeah ♪ ♪ Say the cash now, it's way for you now, yeah

It's way for you now, yeah, come on now, yeah ♪ ♪ It's a ship, Oxycontin ♪ ♪ Ship, Oxycontin

Ship, come on now, come on now ♪ ♪ Ship, come on now, come on now ♪ ♪ Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah...

That was Purdue's VP of sales performing an oxy-themed cover of Shout.

And that has got to be 1 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.

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 has resulted in 2 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.

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.

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 bankruptcy 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 bullshit.

Well, the Sacklers are the descendants of 3 brothers, Arthur, Raymond, and Mortimer, who in 1952, bought the company that would eventually become Purdue Pharma.

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, Purdue's boom years of selling opioids.

Many Sacklers either worked at the company or served on its board.

And as the Massachusetts AG points out, some of them were pretty hands-on.

They were in the boardroom, they owned the company.

We have emails and memos that show the direct control that they exercised over sales and marketing.

1 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 doctor's offices.

And doing a drug rep ride-along is about as hands-on as you can get.

And quick side note 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?

And then when you run out of things to say about it, do what?

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 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 1.

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, Perdue 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'd 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 Pharma made off the sale of OxyContin?

Although, honestly, having actually seen it, I think I prefer the version that we made.

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 Cathy 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?

There is 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, 1 click a ring light.

So, Kathy, that's books, router, ring light.

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.

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.

Which just does not seem remotely credible.

For a start, everyone knows that is not how four-year-olds talk.

You're missing 8 ums, 15 and, and, ands, 3 times they're completely out of breath for no reason, and 5 complete trail-offs.

I call bullshit on that whole fake anecdote.

David's branch of the family was also involved in the launch of a pro-sackler website that aims to correct the record called judgeforyourselves.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's name, OxyContin, when they meant the generic oxycodone, including a college newspaper, and over 7 hours of video presentations in which a catastrophically uncharismatic lawyer attempts to disprove every legal argument ever made against the Sacklers and Perdue.

This terrible website of self-serving nonsense has been promoted by, among others, Joss 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 Les Bulldogues Vignerons, which translates to The Wine-Making Bulldogs, and is an offshoot of her members-only Wine & Social Club.

Joss was also once interviewed for Town & 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 Dr.

Joss Sackler, despite her telling them she had a PhD in linguistics, and going on to say, they're going to regret fucking with a linguist.

And that is 1 hell of a claim, Joss, because nobody is intimidated by linguists.

You're basically an English major who wasted more time.

I'll fuck with a linguist all day long, I'll show you.

How do you make 2 proper nouns into a double negative?

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 1.

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 Purdue pled guilty to 3 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.

In fact, just watch as Cathy jumped to remind everyone of that fact during their congressional hearing.

The Sackler family, through Purdue, has 3 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.

I do get the point that she is making there, but the fact is, Purdue is made up of individual people who control it.

If Lamb Chop threatened to kill the president on live TV, Lamb Chop wouldn't get in trouble or go to prison, Shari Lewis would.

Because Lamb Chop is a puppet who does whatever the fuck Shari Lewis tells Lamb Chop 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.

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 1 place.

This proposed deal requires, among other things, the Sacklers' relinquish 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 in value.

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...

I should go to jail, yeah, I should go to jail

♪ ♪ I just saw that 10 minutes ago, and somehow it's gotten even worse.

Now also, you might 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 10000000000 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?

Until which suits get through to the family.

And David, buddy, don't send that kind of thing over email.

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?

Because here is the really insidious part.

While 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.

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.

In fact, some bankruptcy courts don't allow these third-party releases at all.

But Purdue very carefully chose 1 that they knew probably would.

A few months before filing for bankruptcy, Purdue changed 1 of its official corporate addresses to 1 in White Plains, New York, at which it's never conducted business.

And where there is only 1 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 moved 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 TripAdvisor 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...

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 9 states and D.C.

And 2 branches of the DOJ have said it violates the U.S.

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 1 person thinks that it's actually a very good thing.

Although I will say, that 1 person is Purdue's current chairman.

This is a milestone in public health history.

Never before have you seen this amount of money, 10000000000 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.

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, Chili'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.

And I know hundreds of moms that aren't either, and families.

For some families of victims, the opportunity to have their voices heard is priceless.

Which is to say, a fuck of a lot more than $48,000.

Some have even called into court, only to be told it wasn't the right forum.

1 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 forum to do this." And the thing is, he is right, but this also may be the last forum 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'm afraid it somehow gets 1 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 9 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 principal.

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 fucking 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 is 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 1 tiny positive here.

And that is that Perdue 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 Sacklers' 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 $2,500 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 judgeforyourselves.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.

Welcome to the premier source of information on the Sackler family that you can find on the Internet.

I mean, what kind of fucking idiot would set up an important website and not buy the dot com?

Anyway, if you want the truth, you've come to the right place.

Get a sense of what my terrible family has done.

And you know, maybe we'll throw in some makeup tidbits.

I don't know, maybe, how to make a great pesto chicken.

Anyway, there's some great buttons that you press around, and, you'll get this somehow.

This new website lets you judge for yourselves whether the Sacklers got off too easy, which 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's 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.

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