Thursday’s Supreme Court decision to nullify a $6 billion settlement with the Sackler family for their role in fueling a nationwide opioid crisis was the right one.
The 5-4 outcome hinged on a loophole in United States bankruptcy law that protected the Sacklers, owners of Purdue Pharma and makers of the painkiller OxyContin, from civil lawsuits that would force them to potentially pay billions more.
OxyContin was introduced in 1996 in 10 milligram tablets. By 2000, that per tablet dosage had reached up to 160 milligrams as the family discovered that patients build resistance and need stronger and stronger doses. By comparison, the U.S. Justice Department reports, Percocet contains 5 milligrams of oxycodone and Percodan-Demi contains 2.25.
The bankruptcy settlement agreement, forged by the Justice Department under former President Donald Trump and approved by a judge in 2021, was laudable in that it forced the Sacklers to dissolve Purdue Pharma, turning it into a public benefits corporation with profits used to fight the opioid crisis.
Money from the Sacklers and the public benefits corporation were to be given to state and local governments, including hundreds of millions of dollars for Massachusetts and New Hampshire, which would then be funneled to organizations and individuals to help fight the opioid epidemic.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, who in 2018 as attorney general filed the first lawsuit against Purdue and the Sacklers, said she will continue to push for relief for the families “who have been hurt in this crisis and for the communities that desperately need these resources for prevention, treatment and recovery.”
The Sacklers and Purdue allegedly started the opioid epidemic by distributing the ever-stronger doses of OxyContin through a network of physicians and so-called “pill-mills.” Today the problem continues, even after extremely strict controls have been placed on the highly addictive drug.
When people who are addicted to prescribed opioids can no longer get them, they often turn to the streets for illegal replacements. In the beginning, heroin was the overwhelming drug of choice. Now people are dying because fentanyl – which is up to 50 times stronger than heroin – has permeated the drug supply chain.
More than 100,000 people a year die from opioid overdoses in the United States, despite the prevalence of Narcan and fentanyl test strips. Narcan reverses overdoses in progress, while test strips detect fentanyl laced into other drugs.
The damage the Sacklers inflicted on the world with the manufacture of a deadly drug they marketed as non-addictive when they knew full well that was not true is unforgivable, and the deal the Supreme Court rejected this week would have protected family members, who still are multi-billionaires, from paying more as the result of civil lawsuits, which through the bankruptcy deal were off the table.
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell vowed that the Sacklers “must and will be held responsible, and, in the wake of this decision, we will use every power available to us to make sure that occurs.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said the Supreme Court’s ruling “doesn’t make things right for the millions of people who have lost loved ones to opioid overdoses.”
However, she added, “This is a first step toward accountability for the Sackler family. It’s time for the Sacklers to pay up.”
It has been well documented that the Sacklers’ immense wealth is largely the result of the sale of OxyContin. The deal thrown out Thursday by the Supreme Court should help victims and their families gain access to that fortune.
Justice Neil Gorsuch made reference to this in writing for the majority. He said the Sacklers “hope to extinguish even claims for wrongful death and fraud, and they seek to do so without putting anything close to all their assets on the table.”
While it may take years for another agreement to be made and for victims and their families to be compensated for the pain they suffered, in the long run justice will be served if the Sacklers, as Warren said, are finally forced “to pay up.”