Little time? At the end of the text there is a summary.
The man in the video is sitting in front of a half-empty bookcase, he is wearing a perfectly tailored suit, he holds the reading glasses between his hands. He seems controlled, but also slightly annoyed. "How much did the Sackler family make on selling Oxycontin?" Asks a voice over. "I do not know," replies the man. It's the answer Richard Sackler will give more than a hundred times that day.
The name Sackler has long been familiar to many Americans: a family of wealthy philanthropists who generously donated to art museums such as the Guggenheim.
But now Richard Sackler has become the face of an industry that, in the opinion of its critics, literally goes over dead bodies. The pharmaceutical industry is accused of having triggered the opioid crisis in the US with an aggressive and truth-spreading marketing of its painkillers, which counts to date about 400,000 deaths.
The prosecutors' target is the sacking company Purdue Pharma, but also the consumer goods company Johnson & Johnson, generics manufacturers such as Teva and leading wholesalers in the USA. According to experts, it will not stay here: the pharmacy chain Walgreens and even the supermarket giant Walmart, who also sells pills, are on the possible shot list of prosecutors.
The video is from August 2015. The sworn testimony of Richard Sackler in an office in Louisville, Kentucky was recorded by the prosecution at the time. Four months later, Purdue agreed to pay the state $ 24 million in compensation. Without guilt. For four more years, the company fought in court to keep the record secret. A few weeks ago, however, the news site STAT enforced the publication.
Billion dollar deal with states, cities and municipalities
Purdue Pharma is about to go out. With insolvency proceedings, the company wants to settle the more than 2000 pending lawsuits for Oxycontin, as the group announced on Sunday evening.
George Frey / REUTERS
Painkiller Oxycontin: Approximately 400,000 deaths
The background is a comparison Purdue has negotiated with 23 states and more than 2,000 cities and municipalities: it envisages that the company goes bankrupt - and shortly afterwards resurrects as a foundation whose profits will be distributed to the plaintiffs in the future. This foundation will continue to distribute the controversial painkiller Oxycontin - but also develop antidotes to an overdose and drugs for addiction treatment. The size of the deal is between ten and twelve billion dollars, depending on how well the business is doing. According to the agreement, the Sacklers contribute $ 3 billion from their private assets.
Not all plaintiffs are satisfied. They accuse the family of having deliberately withdrawn funds from the company in recent years. The New York Procuratorate said on Friday that they had traded $ 1 billion of transactions on accounts in Switzerland. So had flowed funds from a parent company Purdues on the ex-manager Mortimer DA Sackler to a straw company, the houses of the family in Manhattan and the Hamptons belong.
The US magazine "Forbes" has the assets of the Sacklers estimated at about 13 billion dollars. The now negotiated settlement could "not be more than a down payment," said Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, who, like several of his colleagues, does not want to join the deal. Meanwhile, several states have filed lawsuits against members of the Sackler family.
In the middle of October a process starts
AP
Family members and friends of deceased opioid victims protest in front of the Purdue Pharma headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut
And long ago, the opioid manufacturer from Stamford in Connecticut is no longer the only target of the Avengers. In mid-October, a trial in Cleveland with 22 suspects to start. Not only manufacturers such as Purdue Pharma and Johnson & Johnson are on trial, but also wholesalers and pharmacy chains. The accused include names such as Actavis, Allergan, Cephalon, Endo, Janssen, Teva and Watson. There are also the "Big Three" of the distributors - AmerisourceBergen, McKesson and Cardinal.
In addition, there are a further 40 processes in various US states.
First millionaire judgments
In Oklahoma, a first trial ended with Johnson & Johnson - known by the prosecutors as the "drug lord" - being fined $ 572 million. Observers believe that the company miscalculated and thought it might win the dispute. But the court resorted to an unusual gimmick to take the corporation into account for the 6000 drug-related deaths in the state since 2000. It condemned him for "disturbing public order" - a reproach otherwise reserved for brothels or polluters. The signal worked: Johnson & Johnson has appealed, but at the same time signals readiness for a settlement.
Others have already surrendered before.
- Teva Pharmaceuticals has committed $ 85 million to Oklahoma.
- Leading pharmaceutical wholesaler McKesson pays $ 37 million to West Virginia.
- The companies Endo and Allergan, according to the transmitter NPR, according to comparisons.
- Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, one of the largest manufacturers of generic opioids in the US, has already agreed to pay $ 24 million to major communities in Ohio.
All this, however, is likely to be just the prelude to the drama. Patrick Trucchio of Berenberg Capital Markets estimates the process risk for the entire pharmaceutical supply chain at $ 150 billion.
The trial in Oklahoma shows that the "anger" in the face of the drug crisis is so great that it can come to "wild" judgments, said Trucchio the "FT".
Industry as the scapegoat of a social problem?
Is industry being the scapegoat of a social problem? In the opinion of many, others also share responsibility: the politicians, the supervisory authorities, the prescribing physicians and, in part, the people affected themselves.
What is undisputed is that companies have made every effort to increase their sales. Thus, according to investigations by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Walgreens Florida chain was flooded with painkillers. Within two years, six pharmacies were populated with 13.7 million doses of the active substance oxycodone. The Washington Post has now painstakingly researched how the lobbyists managed to pull their teeth during Barack Obama's presidency of the DEA with the help of willing or overstressed Congressmen in Washington.
Now the pendulum beats back. As was the case with the powerful tobacco industry, which promised $ 200 billion in compensation at the end of the 1990s. In 2018, however, a study found that governments spend less than three percent of this money on prevention and cigarette withdrawal programs.
In any case, the reputation of the pharmaceutical industry is ruined: in a poll by the opinion polling institute Gallup on the reputation of 25 organizations, the industry ended up in last place this year.
It has put the government in Washington at the bottom.
To sum up: America's big pharmaceutical companies have flooded the market for years with painkillers, aggressively and truthfully promoting it - and, according to their critics, complicit in the big opioid crisis. The industry is finally being brought to justice by law enforcement agencies, and Purdue Pharma is facing closure due to 2000 pending lawsuits. Others, however, also share responsibility: the politicians, the supervisory authorities, the prescribing doctors and sometimes even the people affected themselves.
