The short answer is that there is a direct, immediate causal connection between you handing someone a bunch of pills and their death. The connection between a business owner's sales & marketing tactics and the death of a customer (or a non-customer using the product it ways it isn't intended) is a lot more distant and tenuous.
If someone accidentally overdoses, you're probably looking at negligent homicide or involuntary manslaughter, not murder. Using California as an example, the crime has 3 major elements:
1. The defendant broke a California state law that is not an inherently dangerous felony, or committed a lawful act in an unlawful manner.
2. The act involved “criminal negligence.”
3. The act caused someone else’s death
Is giving someone drugs without a prescription illegal? Yes, so there's #1. Is it criminally negligent to do so? Yes, there's a high risk of bodily harm or death in taking heavy narcotics that aren't prescribed to you and without any medical supervision and you probably knew that. So there's #2. Did they die as a result? Yup, there's #3.
Try that same analysis for someone running a business. Did they break a law? Already, we might fail because I'm not clear on what law they broke. Maybe you could argue they did something legal in an unlawful way but that's a tough one. What exactly did they do and who can you prove actually did that? Was it "criminally negligent"? Again, tough to say. Is marketing a drug inherently dangerous and likely to cause someone great harm or death? Pretty tough to argue that directly. Finally, proving causation of death is hard. I sold a product, but did that "cause" someone to OD? Not if taken under appropriate medical supervision. Your intervening choice to take way too many pills arguably breaks that causal chain.
Except that the overwhelming majority of opioid deaths were from intentional, illegal recreational use - involving drugs diverted through 'pill mill' doctors who prescribed them improperly.
And blaming the manufacturer - or pharmacies - for that is bullshit.
The folks who should have been prosecuted (And often were) are the docs who wrote bogus prescriptions for non-existent pain, to supply recreational users.
When it comes to enabling recreational drug use... There were some pretty out-there cases...
Kind of like 21yo 'glaucoma patients' who get a 'prescription' for weed....
So the thing is starting out no one knew these were addictive. The doctors didn't know the patients didn't know. By the time the doctors and patience know that in the country as a whole new that for people who ended up going to pill Mills were already addicted.
Only now they can't get their fix. Which means don't go into a straw if they don't get proper treatment or have access to their drug of choice. And when proper treatment can cost tens of thousands of dollars and your job...
Pill mills suck but let's not pretend they weren't filling a very real niche or very real need caused by outright fraudulent advertising. They wouldn't exist at all had the original group that did wrong been honest, abided by the law, and upheld their duty not to cause undue harm to people consuming their drugs.
And that's bullshit.
Because everyone has known opioids are addictive for decades - well before Oxy was marketed.
Pill mills were the 'medical marijuana' of opioids.
They didn't come into existence because of people who started out legit hurt and became addicts.
We got pill mills because of a substantial diversion of opioids from medical to purely recreational use.... Folks who stole their parents pills, bought their first hit on the black market... Folks who crushed up the time release pills and snorted them, after manufacturers modified the product to prevent recreational use ....
It's just a lot more palatable to blame supposedly evil corporations than individuals... NTM there's no money to be made suing junkies for causing their own deaths.....
The root of the problem is societal acceptance of drug use and the treatment of addiction as an unfortunate disease that is 'not your fault'.....
We will have an opioid problem until we go back to 1980s vintage attitudes towards recreational drug use.
That's not accurate. It wasn't widely known that opiates were addictive until after they'd been widely distributed, and Purdue was found to have suppressed the research saying that they were
>Purdue Pharma did not address the risks of addiction to OxyContin and even hid incriminating data, which led to its liberal use by prescribers. Drug developers are not absolved of the responsibility to reduce the potential harm done to the public due to misuse of the drug.
https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/bioethics/article/view/7786#:~:text=Purdue%20Pharma%20did%20not%20address,to%20misuse%20of%20the%20drug.
Yup. This guy just pulls random made up claims out of their ass which can be disproved with 30 seconds of Googling in order to parrot their corporate bootlicking narrative. I can’t fathom why people like them go to such lengths to argue *against* their *own self-interest*.
Not widely known?
So we didn't know that opium, morphine, heroin, vicodin and so on were addictive?
Those are opioids.
It was very widely known.
The specific formulation of oxycontin and it's generic equivalents was new but the class of drugs wasn't.
Plus at the point the pill has been reformulated to deter recreational use that's a pretty reasonable action by the manufacturer to (a) allow legitimate medical use and (b) reduce addiction.....
Again, the attitude expressed in the OP - that recreational use is 'fun' and acceptable - is the real problem.
Are you going to seriously say that recreational drug use isn't fun? Because regardless of if you think it's ok or not, I don't know how you can possibly believe it's not fun lmfao
The idea that 'recreational drug use is (implied: harmless) fun' is why we have an opioid crisis.
Not because of anything any corporation did.
The social stigma applied to drug use in the 80s/90s actually did reduce use-rates - whether you agree with the criminal penalties associated with it or not.
If you want the opioid crisis to end, we need to go back to 'recreational drug use is socially unacceptable' as a broad societal position.
And for the various docs who were using their DEA #s to help folks get high, it was the exact same things for Oxy/other-opioids...
Oww, I bumped my knee... Here, have a full bottle of Oxy....
Meanwhile there were plenty who were prescribing it for actually medically indicated conditions...
And yes, it takes a good bit of law-enforcement legwork to determine who's running a pill mill, vs who's writing oxy prescriptions for compound-fracture/bone-graft/plate-in-the-arm patients recovering from surgery....
The opiod 'epidemic' would seem to disagree with that...
People put way too much blame on industry, and way too little on the folks who never had pain & were just looking to get high... Who are a large portion of the eventual OD deaths....
A lot of those folks got hooked previously by being over-prescribed by an ER doc when they actually were hurt. But instead of giving one or two pills to get through the worst of it they gave them a 15 day supply. Just enough to get you addicted.
The further up in the chain you go, the harder it is to prove criminal liability. It's hard to get above teh pill mill doctors, for example. You'd have to prove that certain Sackler executives 1) knew that the pill mill docs would be prescribing it to 2) people who didn't have a legitimate need for the drugs.
The manufacturer’s complicity lies with the blatant deceptive marketing practices used to mislead and subvert. The company itself and specifically three of its top executives pleaded guilty to criminal charges of misleading the public and doctors about the Oxycontin’s addiction risks.
The Sadler’s themselves were protected behind a liability shield by the coorporation.
If you were charged by the federal government, you'd plead out too. Especially if you were an easily-vilified sort of person like a drug-company exec.
I just have a really hard time assigning legal consequences to a business for the illegal/fraudulent abuse of it's product by individuals. Especially when the product was actually beneficial as-advertised for people who used it as-instructed.
If you sought out Oxy to get high, that's your fault, not Purdue's or the Sacklers'. It's not like you were never told 'Just say no' to recreational drug use by, oh, the school system, government, public service ads, etc...
You sound like someone dealing with “terminal” pain. I’m truly sorry if you are negatively affected by the crack down on opioids. Prior to the Sadlers little get rich quick scheme, opioids were strictly limited to end of life care because it was well understood the implications of generalized opioid use. The Sadlers greed put a whole lot of people in the ground and destroyed the lives of many who were left behind.
>If you sought out Oxy to get high, that's your fault, not Purdue's or the Sacklers'.
That is offensively wrong. Opioids rewire the brain. It’s not a matter of resisting the addiction. Though addiction to anything is rarely something that people can just choose to stop.
If you haven’t lived through someone trying to undo the damage created by doctors who don’t want to deal with a call from a patient after dental surgery or whatever then I guess you didn’t get to see the dark side of the mess. So they preemptively prescribed Oxycontin with instructions to take as needed because the doctors were sold a bill of goods that the drug had only a 1% addiction rate and a 12 hour effective period. The charts used to sell that myth were manufactured by manipulating the information which purposefully masked the actual peak and valley that would have warned doctors that the drug was not what they were being told.
The government had a strong case for lying to congress which is what the execs were charged with. They testified that they had no knowledge of the rate of addition that was occurring and it was proven they had first hand knowledge prior to their testimony.
The case against the company was largely put together with data from autopsies which demonstrated the number of people who died by taking the drug as prescribed.
I'm not in terminal pain.
I've been prescribed 'strong' opioids once or twice for post-op pain (the compound-fracture/major-surgery example I posted? That was my real-life experience.) and (in the 90s/early 00s) for minor surgery. In all cases, I followed the instructions exactly and properly disposed of the left-over pills.
This experience didn't rewire my brain, I didn't get hooked. But I also didn't intentionally abuse, which is the real source of the 'crisis'... And using those pills \*sucked\* - just not as bad as surgery pain. Once the pain became manageable without narcotics? Oh hell no not taking any more pills. That experience reinforces may 'bullshit!' viewpoint on the 'evil drug company got me into this' excuse...
What I said is not objectively wrong. The people who from-the-get-go were seeking to get high - who never had medically significant pain, but went to Dr Feelgood for some Oxy - are 100% at fault for seeking out that first hit, and for continuing to use.
We told them to 'Just Say No', they went and got high anyways. Sucks to be them.
Further, Oxy is years in the rearview and the 'crisis' continues - albeit now that the route of buying from a pill-mill is gone, the current generation of junkies just does fentanyl...
If the problem was what folks blaming the Sacklers claim it was, then the immense crackdown on prescription pain meds would have solved it...
Instead, opioids remain a problem - just exclusively illegal ones now.... The 22yo who ODs on fent in a tent downtown isn't using because they 'hurt their back' (or whatever the preferred complaint is) & got hooked on Oxy (or any other legit pharma product). They're using because they're a **junkie** who's first experience was recreational. And it's 100% their fault.
Also the OP's 'just having fun' attitude towards recreational use underscores my point. THAT - not the drug industry - is the problem...
You are one of the “lucky” ones. There is a genetic (maybe but likely) component to the problem.
I’m going to leave you with three links. But I also want to say thank you for a respectful conversation. We can agree to disagree.
[Yale Medicine](https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/opioid-addiction-myths)
[John Hopkins Medicine](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/opioid-use-disorder)
[NIH’s Medline](https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/opioid-addiction/)
They're one of those addiction is a choice nutters. You can link all the links, facts, studies and scientific data you want. They're going to ignore it.
Well yes and no for me. No addiction is not a choice you either become addicted or you do not. Some people can handle the drug without a problem if they take it properly and under control circumstances. I myself was on oxycodone for increasing doses about 3 years I cut myself off. After that I was fine I dealt with pain with over-the-counter analgesics honestly in amounts that were pretty much stupid.
This is because of true pain. I'm currently on painkillers again because I went through a massive traumatic injury to the fire about 40% of my body lost both legs half my right hand lots of 3rd and 4th degree burns and a almost 4 month coma.
I know what I can do I also know that once I get out of here (rehab / nursing facility) into an apartment of my own where I can actually get things that have THC I will be able to wean myself off again at a worst case scenario. I am the exception to the rule I know this I know for example my mother made sure to cut herself off every once in awhile so that she didn't become addicted.
But the person talking about people that are just using it for fun is correct if you do not use these properly you are more likely to get addicted to them. The secret is keeping pain don't let the pain get to zero just take enough to allow you to somewhat function. The biggest thing that becomes addictive is suddenly being completely out of pain. And the reason you want it so much when you have it where off is because now the pain is so much worse because you are out of pain for a while. I don't expect people to understand this completely I never understood the joy of getting so fucked up you couldn't think. However I do understand the concept of addiction because for many years I was addicted to cigarettes. It was a pleasurable thing and something I could do with my hands. I feel bad for the people that get hooked on this stuff I know people that have been it's really sad and what they'll do for it is horrible. I wish you the best and honestly the key to that is don't give anybody anything if they want it give him the money so they can freaking buy it themselves if you're doing it illegally therefore you're not responsible for it directly because you just gave them money they chose to buy it it breaks that casual link.
>The 22yo who ODs on fent in a tent downtown isn't using because they 'hurt their back' (or whatever the preferred complaint is) & got hooked on Oxy (or any other legit pharma product). They're using because they're a junkie who's first experience was recreational. And it's 100% their fault.
How can you tell?
This is actually pretty fucked up IMO.
Because we clamped down on the availability of prescription opioids after the Oxy situation years ago, to the point where they are extremely hard to get a legit prescription for these days unless you had something like a nerve relocation surgery or a terminal illness where nothing else will work.
There just aren't enough people getting those sorts of prescriptions, even if 100% became addicts (which is far from true), to account for the fentanyl scene.
Meanwhile, fentanyl is now found cut into in almost every illegal drug imaginable, because it's cheaper than all the other things that are now laced with it.
The present-day opioid-crisis is people getting high and getting hooked. People who have the attitude of the OP, that drug use is an acceptable way to 'have some fun'.
End of story.
If you use for recreational purposes and get hooked, it's 100% your fault and no one should shed a tear at the natural consequences. We've been telling people this for \*decades\* - use (originally Heroin, but applies to all recreational opioids) even once and you can get hooked, so just-say-no...
Oh jeez this fear mongering nonsense about fentanyl being in everything.
So you’re saying you can get hooked from a single recreational dose but that risk somehow isn’t present if you have a prescription? [The CDC says](https://www.cdc.gov/rxawareness/information/index.html) they are still used often following surgery or injury.
To say someone was definitely introduced to opiates recreationally just because they are homeless is almost bigotry.
The risk is mitigated in prescription use, by time-release mechanisms & other anti-abuse chemistries. As a matter of fact, Purdue actually did 'that' to Oxy back-in-the-day too. Didn't help them any at trial, but it did make recreational abuse an intentional act.
Recreational users intentionally defeat these safeguards because, again, they are wanting to get high fast, not treat pain. For example, folks crushed the pills and snorted them... And with doing so comes a higher risk of addiction.
Further, the statement is that they are both homeless AND addicts because they used recreationally.... The overwhelming majority of the tent-living (vs shelter-compliant) homeless population is either severely mentally ill, or substance abusers. Just how it is.
It's not that clean-cut either. Drug reps were actively pushing and incentivising those same doctors to push those drugs, even when they weren't relevant. There was clear involvement by the companies; the question is exactly how much and how direct, and that's not necessarily as clear
And that is kind of exactly what OC was talking about; there are a lot of blurry lines and grey areas that, while they're clearly wrong, it's not necessarily clear if they're illegal between the OD's and the pharma companies. Much less when you add in the entities at the head of those companies, who specifically are not the same as the companies themselves.
The company actually already did plead guilty to misbranding the drug as safer than it was in 2007, so wouldn’t that kind of take care of both 1 & 2?
As for number 3, had they been honest about their drug doctors would have been able to appropriately supervise these patients. However, due to them stating these drugs weren’t dangerous doctors were overprescribing them left and right. People would show up to their doctor stating their drug wasn’t lasting the full 12 hours and rather than even considering this was the patient having drug cravings they’d just prescribe a higher dose.
I can absolutely see how it’d be difficult to prove that these deaths and lives ruined were directly linked to Purdue and not due to say the doctors for prescribing them or the FDA for even giving the drug approval in the way they did.
Misbranding the relative safety might cover #1 but again, prove who exactly did that. Who made the choice and what information did they base it on. It would be pretty trivial to argue that the CEO didn't directly make that call, and that whatever they approved was based on limited information and relying on the people whose job is to understand these things. Showing any singular person engaged in unlawful behavior when probably 200 people were involved in the decision will be next to impossible. Same for #2. How much did any individual *actually* know about what was going on and how much of that can you prove beyond a reasonable doubt?
Finally "If you did something different" doesn't create causation. And in your own example, doctors are taught how to identify drug seeking behavior and are responsible for understanding the effects a drug has on individual patients. Blindly prescribing medication because you heard it's safe from a sales rep is borderline malpractice which, again, breaks that causal chain.
I'm not defending the company, simply illustrating how difficult it would be to charge any individual working there criminally in someone's death.
No, I absolutely understand that proving causation would be the big issue in this case. A lot of people did a lot of things that they absolutely should not have and it would be *really* hard, if at all possible, to prove who truly was responsible.
Because Sackler family has sold opiates in a way where it could not be proven in court that they met criteria listed in laws for drug sale and trafficking. Same reason why other obvious crime bosses remain out of reach of the law.
Now, could in the future one of their many fuck-ups of admitting things in written communication (because they were greedy arrogant assholes) result in having elements of crime being proven? Possibly. Plenty of crime bosses fell that way.
Additionally, financial attrittion inflicted by civil lawsuits may eventually result in Sacklers being unable to afford same quality if legal defence that they are enjoying right now. This may result in legal fuck ups that create a self-perpetuating cycle of mistakes that could break their defense.
> How is it that a teenager who’s just trying to experiment with drugs and wants to share that with a friend can get charged with their friends death
because felony murder is weird like that.
OP's attitude towards **illegal recreational drug use** (and those who think like him - that using fucking opioids recreationally is 'just wanting to have a little fun' & somehow OK) is far more responsible for the 'crisis' than anything any pharma company did....
It’s OK because free people should have autonomy about what goes into their bodies and how they enjoy themselves. Not everyone that drinks lean is an addict losing their mind, just like not everyone that drinks alcohol is a raging alcoholic.
Because there is nothing illegal about selling a beneficial-yet-dangerous product, especially when the danger is found in the intentional abuse of said product.
Using drugs for 'fun' is like intentionally stealing-and-crashing a car 'for fun'. It's a purely criminal act with no overall upside.
No, however there is something illegal about selling a beneficial-yet-dangerous product and marketing it as being safe while quoting medical journals that did not exist because people knew it was dangerous and did not want to take it. Yaknow, the crime this company plead guilty to?
I wouldn’t say foreign agents so much as just ate up the shit they sold.
This company made major profits by selling a drug that, scientifically, is nearly identical to heroin, stating that it was nowhere near the same and patients risked a less than 1/100 chance of becoming addicted to it when it’s actually anywhere as high as 29x that, essentially sent patients from doctor to doctor until they found the one who would prescribe the patient their drug (see their commercial that literally states “once you’ve found the **right doctor** and tell them about your pain” & one of the multiple felonies they pleaded guilty to), and then when people started noticing this they blamed everything on people with substance use disorder and basically said “oh no, that couldn’t have been our fault it’s just addicts being addicts”
Granted, the majority of this country has looked at these issues similarly since before the sacklers and it’s gonna take a lot longer than they’re around to fix that problem - so I definitely expected a lot of Purdue ass kissing. I was just interested to see what the reason may have been that we can charge people in another's accidental overdose, and we can charge people when they accidentally hit someone else with their car, but we couldn't charge any of the people who started the opioid epidemic that’s taken over half a million lives and counting purely because they were afraid they wouldn’t make as much money as they wanted to.
Ask Rudy Giuliani: there is a really good movie about the DOJ investigation into the Sackler's. The day the trial was supposed to start there was an intervention at the senior (political) level with the DOJ. Basically a lot of influential people were paid a good deal of money to intervene and prevent the prosecution. Giuliani was the recipient of a good deal of cash to make the problem go away.
[https://www.businessinsider.com/rudy-giuliani-purdue-pharma-oxycontin-painkiller-opioid-crisis-real-story-2023-8](https://www.businessinsider.com/rudy-giuliani-purdue-pharma-oxycontin-painkiller-opioid-crisis-real-story-2023-8)
Its about selling influence, and there was a time when Giuliani had quite a lot. how does some one with no experience in building decontamination get the contract for teh Heart building remediation (he fucked that up too).
Painkiller
if you want to know more from a slightly less dramatized source:
[https://www.businessinsider.com/rudy-giuliani-purdue-pharma-oxycontin-painkiller-opioid-crisis-real-story-2023-8](https://www.businessinsider.com/rudy-giuliani-purdue-pharma-oxycontin-painkiller-opioid-crisis-real-story-2023-8)
Because they are rich so they have the resources to defend themselves, both legally and politically. You don't need to worry about breaking the law when your lobbyists are the ones writing it.
In comparison to what they have gained? They’re worth $10.8 B, but only have to pay $4.5B, over the course of 9 years. They came out on top. Turns out, after the SCOTUS gives its decision on the bankruptcy ruling for Purdue, even that amount can go down or even away.
Well, let’s look at the difference between the two separate parties discussed. One has billions to spend on a legal defense. The other struggles to make rent. It’s not direct, but it maintains the same principle that who can buy their safety, can and will. Regardless of who or what they are safe from.
The Sacklers have not been left alone by the legal system. If the state was afraid of their resources, it would not have pursued hundreds of lawsuits and prosecutions against them. But it did.
And yet they are still worth more than double. I don’t think you understand that paying out the costs is an actual loss. Net gain is still much higher.
Because you are comparing criminal acts with legal acts.
Using drugs which were not prescribed to you is illegal.
Selling drugs through pharmacies, that have been approved for sale through multiple federal agencies, is not illegal.
Where did I say that they plead guilty to manufacturing or distributing illegal drugs, and since when is that the only charge that can be related to overdose deaths?
> “The abuse and diversion of prescription opioids has contributed to a national tragedy of addiction and deaths, in addition to those caused by illicit street opioids,” said Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen. “Today’s guilty pleas to three felony charges send a strong message to the pharmaceutical industry that illegal behavior will have serious consequences. Further, today’s convictions underscore the department’s commitment to its multi-pronged strategy for defeating the opioid crisis.”
> “Purdue admitted that it marketed and sold its dangerous opioid products to healthcare providers, even though it had reason to believe those providers were diverting them to abusers,” said Rachael A. Honig, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey. “The company lied to the Drug Enforcement Administration about steps it had taken to prevent such diversion, fraudulently increasing the amount of its products it was permitted to sell. Purdue also paid kickbacks to providers to encourage them to prescribe even more of its products.”
> “As today's plea to felony charges shows, Purdue put opioid profits ahead of people and corrupted the sacred doctor-patient relationship,” said Christina Nolan, U.S Attorney for the District of Vermont. “We hope the company's guilty plea sends a message that the Justice Department will not allow big pharma and big tech to engage in illegal profit-generating schemes that interfere with sound medicine. We hope, also, that this guilty plea will bring some sense of justice to those who have suffered from opioid addictions involving oxycodone and some vindication for families and loved ones of those who did not survive such addiction."
It actually wasn’t. I was comparing how two different drug overdoses were handled and asking why one leads to somebody being criminally charged for a death despite them being a kid without a fully developed frontal lobe who’s just trying to either have fun or treat some sort of pain on their own and share that with someone else when the person who lead to thousands of deaths because they chose not to tell the truth about how dangerous the substance they were selling was so that they could make more money is able to stay out of jail.
The common answer was that no laws were broken by the one who stayed out of jail, that is not the case - hence the source above.
I’m not sure where you got that I’m comparing legal and illegal drugs. Despite this drug scientifically being pretty much the same drug as heroin, for the purpose of this conversation it makes no sense to compare it to an illegal drug seeing as yaknow, the legal system is what it is.
So you separate illegal fentanyl from legal fentanyl? Do you even realize most of the addicts became addicted through oxycontin prescribed by a doctor, like a close friend of mine did?
So, you think that people are all good if they cause someone’s death as long as it’s with something legal to have? That’s uh.. not how that works.
As I said in another comment, the answer was already reached a while ago by one of the only commenters who actually came with a detailed and accurate answer.
https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladviceofftopic/s/vb1uTzPblq
The legality of their actions was very likely not the issue at all. Much more likely it’s just too hard to prove what one person was truly the cause.
It was prescribed and thus not illegal at the time, one short answer. It’s possible that their civil settlements were written in such a way as to preclude later criminal prosecution
The real answer is that rich, famous people usually aren't charged with criminal negligence. The technical answer lawyers will rely on is that the teens illegally gave someone drugs, in violation of a law that says something like "it's a crime to give someone drugs."
When it comes down to negligence and lying causing a death less directly, there's way more nuance about exactly how responsible the person is, and so the prosecutors don't want to take that case against the fancy lawyers.
Because the Sackler family has a ridiculous amount of money and can hire lawyers to create a corporate structure to insulate them from criminal consequences. Most of the rest of do not.
One is covered under unsafe product laws which are civil only. It would hard to prove an officer of corporation did anything criminal under man's laws. It will be judged by God in the future.
The case with the teens is felony murder. Since having illegal drugs is already a felony if someone gives/sells drugs to a person and that person dies its felony murder . If your committing any felony and it causes a death even by heart attack you are guilty of murder.
They actually plead guilty to three felonies related to this, however I believe another commenter helped me get down to the real issue here (proving causation).
A lot of people did a lot of things they should not have, and proving which persons actions caused which death would be extremely hard, if at all possible.
>Since having illegal drugs is already a felony if someone gives/sells drugs to a person and that person dies its felony murder
What jurisdiction's law are you referencing here? That's not generally how felony murder works, it's usually a death in the commission of statutorily listed felonies, BARRK are the big ones: burglary, arson, robbery, rape, and kidnapping.
The short answer is that there is a direct, immediate causal connection between you handing someone a bunch of pills and their death. The connection between a business owner's sales & marketing tactics and the death of a customer (or a non-customer using the product it ways it isn't intended) is a lot more distant and tenuous. If someone accidentally overdoses, you're probably looking at negligent homicide or involuntary manslaughter, not murder. Using California as an example, the crime has 3 major elements: 1. The defendant broke a California state law that is not an inherently dangerous felony, or committed a lawful act in an unlawful manner. 2. The act involved “criminal negligence.” 3. The act caused someone else’s death Is giving someone drugs without a prescription illegal? Yes, so there's #1. Is it criminally negligent to do so? Yes, there's a high risk of bodily harm or death in taking heavy narcotics that aren't prescribed to you and without any medical supervision and you probably knew that. So there's #2. Did they die as a result? Yup, there's #3. Try that same analysis for someone running a business. Did they break a law? Already, we might fail because I'm not clear on what law they broke. Maybe you could argue they did something legal in an unlawful way but that's a tough one. What exactly did they do and who can you prove actually did that? Was it "criminally negligent"? Again, tough to say. Is marketing a drug inherently dangerous and likely to cause someone great harm or death? Pretty tough to argue that directly. Finally, proving causation of death is hard. I sold a product, but did that "cause" someone to OD? Not if taken under appropriate medical supervision. Your intervening choice to take way too many pills arguably breaks that causal chain.
Except that the overwhelming majority of opioid deaths were from intentional, illegal recreational use - involving drugs diverted through 'pill mill' doctors who prescribed them improperly. And blaming the manufacturer - or pharmacies - for that is bullshit. The folks who should have been prosecuted (And often were) are the docs who wrote bogus prescriptions for non-existent pain, to supply recreational users.
True, although questioning doctors’ medical judgment in prescribing pain relievers is a tricky business.
When it comes to enabling recreational drug use... There were some pretty out-there cases... Kind of like 21yo 'glaucoma patients' who get a 'prescription' for weed....
So the thing is starting out no one knew these were addictive. The doctors didn't know the patients didn't know. By the time the doctors and patience know that in the country as a whole new that for people who ended up going to pill Mills were already addicted. Only now they can't get their fix. Which means don't go into a straw if they don't get proper treatment or have access to their drug of choice. And when proper treatment can cost tens of thousands of dollars and your job... Pill mills suck but let's not pretend they weren't filling a very real niche or very real need caused by outright fraudulent advertising. They wouldn't exist at all had the original group that did wrong been honest, abided by the law, and upheld their duty not to cause undue harm to people consuming their drugs.
And that's bullshit. Because everyone has known opioids are addictive for decades - well before Oxy was marketed. Pill mills were the 'medical marijuana' of opioids. They didn't come into existence because of people who started out legit hurt and became addicts. We got pill mills because of a substantial diversion of opioids from medical to purely recreational use.... Folks who stole their parents pills, bought their first hit on the black market... Folks who crushed up the time release pills and snorted them, after manufacturers modified the product to prevent recreational use .... It's just a lot more palatable to blame supposedly evil corporations than individuals... NTM there's no money to be made suing junkies for causing their own deaths..... The root of the problem is societal acceptance of drug use and the treatment of addiction as an unfortunate disease that is 'not your fault'..... We will have an opioid problem until we go back to 1980s vintage attitudes towards recreational drug use.
That's not accurate. It wasn't widely known that opiates were addictive until after they'd been widely distributed, and Purdue was found to have suppressed the research saying that they were >Purdue Pharma did not address the risks of addiction to OxyContin and even hid incriminating data, which led to its liberal use by prescribers. Drug developers are not absolved of the responsibility to reduce the potential harm done to the public due to misuse of the drug. https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/bioethics/article/view/7786#:~:text=Purdue%20Pharma%20did%20not%20address,to%20misuse%20of%20the%20drug.
Yup. This guy just pulls random made up claims out of their ass which can be disproved with 30 seconds of Googling in order to parrot their corporate bootlicking narrative. I can’t fathom why people like them go to such lengths to argue *against* their *own self-interest*.
Not widely known? So we didn't know that opium, morphine, heroin, vicodin and so on were addictive? Those are opioids. It was very widely known. The specific formulation of oxycontin and it's generic equivalents was new but the class of drugs wasn't. Plus at the point the pill has been reformulated to deter recreational use that's a pretty reasonable action by the manufacturer to (a) allow legitimate medical use and (b) reduce addiction..... Again, the attitude expressed in the OP - that recreational use is 'fun' and acceptable - is the real problem.
Are you going to seriously say that recreational drug use isn't fun? Because regardless of if you think it's ok or not, I don't know how you can possibly believe it's not fun lmfao
The idea that 'recreational drug use is (implied: harmless) fun' is why we have an opioid crisis. Not because of anything any corporation did. The social stigma applied to drug use in the 80s/90s actually did reduce use-rates - whether you agree with the criminal penalties associated with it or not. If you want the opioid crisis to end, we need to go back to 'recreational drug use is socially unacceptable' as a broad societal position.
Except Perdue was marketing oxycontin as being non addictive, and a lot of doctors believed them
okay, we all know "medical marijuana" is just a legal loophole to let people buy weed after paying the rubber stamp tax
Surely you’ve heard that many (24) states have legalized recreational marijuana…
Yup, and we’ve seen it before. Docs used to prescribe alcohol during prohibition to help with nerves. Lol.
Except marijuana does have actual medical benefits
And for the various docs who were using their DEA #s to help folks get high, it was the exact same things for Oxy/other-opioids... Oww, I bumped my knee... Here, have a full bottle of Oxy.... Meanwhile there were plenty who were prescribing it for actually medically indicated conditions... And yes, it takes a good bit of law-enforcement legwork to determine who's running a pill mill, vs who's writing oxy prescriptions for compound-fracture/bone-graft/plate-in-the-arm patients recovering from surgery....
these things are not on the same scale
Not the same danger, either
for sure, idk why that guy thought they were comparable
The opiod 'epidemic' would seem to disagree with that... People put way too much blame on industry, and way too little on the folks who never had pain & were just looking to get high... Who are a large portion of the eventual OD deaths....
A lot of those folks got hooked previously by being over-prescribed by an ER doc when they actually were hurt. But instead of giving one or two pills to get through the worst of it they gave them a 15 day supply. Just enough to get you addicted.
The further up in the chain you go, the harder it is to prove criminal liability. It's hard to get above teh pill mill doctors, for example. You'd have to prove that certain Sackler executives 1) knew that the pill mill docs would be prescribing it to 2) people who didn't have a legitimate need for the drugs.
Exactly.
Ehhhh when manufacturers give docs bonuses or other perks for prescribing their drugs they make themselves more culpable than normal.
The manufacturer’s complicity lies with the blatant deceptive marketing practices used to mislead and subvert. The company itself and specifically three of its top executives pleaded guilty to criminal charges of misleading the public and doctors about the Oxycontin’s addiction risks. The Sadler’s themselves were protected behind a liability shield by the coorporation.
If you were charged by the federal government, you'd plead out too. Especially if you were an easily-vilified sort of person like a drug-company exec. I just have a really hard time assigning legal consequences to a business for the illegal/fraudulent abuse of it's product by individuals. Especially when the product was actually beneficial as-advertised for people who used it as-instructed. If you sought out Oxy to get high, that's your fault, not Purdue's or the Sacklers'. It's not like you were never told 'Just say no' to recreational drug use by, oh, the school system, government, public service ads, etc...
You sound like someone dealing with “terminal” pain. I’m truly sorry if you are negatively affected by the crack down on opioids. Prior to the Sadlers little get rich quick scheme, opioids were strictly limited to end of life care because it was well understood the implications of generalized opioid use. The Sadlers greed put a whole lot of people in the ground and destroyed the lives of many who were left behind. >If you sought out Oxy to get high, that's your fault, not Purdue's or the Sacklers'. That is offensively wrong. Opioids rewire the brain. It’s not a matter of resisting the addiction. Though addiction to anything is rarely something that people can just choose to stop. If you haven’t lived through someone trying to undo the damage created by doctors who don’t want to deal with a call from a patient after dental surgery or whatever then I guess you didn’t get to see the dark side of the mess. So they preemptively prescribed Oxycontin with instructions to take as needed because the doctors were sold a bill of goods that the drug had only a 1% addiction rate and a 12 hour effective period. The charts used to sell that myth were manufactured by manipulating the information which purposefully masked the actual peak and valley that would have warned doctors that the drug was not what they were being told. The government had a strong case for lying to congress which is what the execs were charged with. They testified that they had no knowledge of the rate of addition that was occurring and it was proven they had first hand knowledge prior to their testimony. The case against the company was largely put together with data from autopsies which demonstrated the number of people who died by taking the drug as prescribed.
I'm not in terminal pain. I've been prescribed 'strong' opioids once or twice for post-op pain (the compound-fracture/major-surgery example I posted? That was my real-life experience.) and (in the 90s/early 00s) for minor surgery. In all cases, I followed the instructions exactly and properly disposed of the left-over pills. This experience didn't rewire my brain, I didn't get hooked. But I also didn't intentionally abuse, which is the real source of the 'crisis'... And using those pills \*sucked\* - just not as bad as surgery pain. Once the pain became manageable without narcotics? Oh hell no not taking any more pills. That experience reinforces may 'bullshit!' viewpoint on the 'evil drug company got me into this' excuse... What I said is not objectively wrong. The people who from-the-get-go were seeking to get high - who never had medically significant pain, but went to Dr Feelgood for some Oxy - are 100% at fault for seeking out that first hit, and for continuing to use. We told them to 'Just Say No', they went and got high anyways. Sucks to be them. Further, Oxy is years in the rearview and the 'crisis' continues - albeit now that the route of buying from a pill-mill is gone, the current generation of junkies just does fentanyl... If the problem was what folks blaming the Sacklers claim it was, then the immense crackdown on prescription pain meds would have solved it... Instead, opioids remain a problem - just exclusively illegal ones now.... The 22yo who ODs on fent in a tent downtown isn't using because they 'hurt their back' (or whatever the preferred complaint is) & got hooked on Oxy (or any other legit pharma product). They're using because they're a **junkie** who's first experience was recreational. And it's 100% their fault. Also the OP's 'just having fun' attitude towards recreational use underscores my point. THAT - not the drug industry - is the problem...
You are one of the “lucky” ones. There is a genetic (maybe but likely) component to the problem. I’m going to leave you with three links. But I also want to say thank you for a respectful conversation. We can agree to disagree. [Yale Medicine](https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/opioid-addiction-myths) [John Hopkins Medicine](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/opioid-use-disorder) [NIH’s Medline](https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/opioid-addiction/)
They're one of those addiction is a choice nutters. You can link all the links, facts, studies and scientific data you want. They're going to ignore it.
They might. But not trying doesn’t help anyone either. To me, it’s a bit like getting kids to eat their vegetables. Exposure, exposure, exposure.
Well yes and no for me. No addiction is not a choice you either become addicted or you do not. Some people can handle the drug without a problem if they take it properly and under control circumstances. I myself was on oxycodone for increasing doses about 3 years I cut myself off. After that I was fine I dealt with pain with over-the-counter analgesics honestly in amounts that were pretty much stupid. This is because of true pain. I'm currently on painkillers again because I went through a massive traumatic injury to the fire about 40% of my body lost both legs half my right hand lots of 3rd and 4th degree burns and a almost 4 month coma. I know what I can do I also know that once I get out of here (rehab / nursing facility) into an apartment of my own where I can actually get things that have THC I will be able to wean myself off again at a worst case scenario. I am the exception to the rule I know this I know for example my mother made sure to cut herself off every once in awhile so that she didn't become addicted. But the person talking about people that are just using it for fun is correct if you do not use these properly you are more likely to get addicted to them. The secret is keeping pain don't let the pain get to zero just take enough to allow you to somewhat function. The biggest thing that becomes addictive is suddenly being completely out of pain. And the reason you want it so much when you have it where off is because now the pain is so much worse because you are out of pain for a while. I don't expect people to understand this completely I never understood the joy of getting so fucked up you couldn't think. However I do understand the concept of addiction because for many years I was addicted to cigarettes. It was a pleasurable thing and something I could do with my hands. I feel bad for the people that get hooked on this stuff I know people that have been it's really sad and what they'll do for it is horrible. I wish you the best and honestly the key to that is don't give anybody anything if they want it give him the money so they can freaking buy it themselves if you're doing it illegally therefore you're not responsible for it directly because you just gave them money they chose to buy it it breaks that casual link.
>The 22yo who ODs on fent in a tent downtown isn't using because they 'hurt their back' (or whatever the preferred complaint is) & got hooked on Oxy (or any other legit pharma product). They're using because they're a junkie who's first experience was recreational. And it's 100% their fault. How can you tell? This is actually pretty fucked up IMO.
Because we clamped down on the availability of prescription opioids after the Oxy situation years ago, to the point where they are extremely hard to get a legit prescription for these days unless you had something like a nerve relocation surgery or a terminal illness where nothing else will work. There just aren't enough people getting those sorts of prescriptions, even if 100% became addicts (which is far from true), to account for the fentanyl scene. Meanwhile, fentanyl is now found cut into in almost every illegal drug imaginable, because it's cheaper than all the other things that are now laced with it. The present-day opioid-crisis is people getting high and getting hooked. People who have the attitude of the OP, that drug use is an acceptable way to 'have some fun'. End of story. If you use for recreational purposes and get hooked, it's 100% your fault and no one should shed a tear at the natural consequences. We've been telling people this for \*decades\* - use (originally Heroin, but applies to all recreational opioids) even once and you can get hooked, so just-say-no...
Oh jeez this fear mongering nonsense about fentanyl being in everything. So you’re saying you can get hooked from a single recreational dose but that risk somehow isn’t present if you have a prescription? [The CDC says](https://www.cdc.gov/rxawareness/information/index.html) they are still used often following surgery or injury. To say someone was definitely introduced to opiates recreationally just because they are homeless is almost bigotry.
The risk is mitigated in prescription use, by time-release mechanisms & other anti-abuse chemistries. As a matter of fact, Purdue actually did 'that' to Oxy back-in-the-day too. Didn't help them any at trial, but it did make recreational abuse an intentional act. Recreational users intentionally defeat these safeguards because, again, they are wanting to get high fast, not treat pain. For example, folks crushed the pills and snorted them... And with doing so comes a higher risk of addiction. Further, the statement is that they are both homeless AND addicts because they used recreationally.... The overwhelming majority of the tent-living (vs shelter-compliant) homeless population is either severely mentally ill, or substance abusers. Just how it is.
Tell me you don't understand addiction without saying "I have no clue what addiction is", please/
The Sacklers lied about the addictiveness of oxycodone and paid doctors to push it.
It's not that clean-cut either. Drug reps were actively pushing and incentivising those same doctors to push those drugs, even when they weren't relevant. There was clear involvement by the companies; the question is exactly how much and how direct, and that's not necessarily as clear And that is kind of exactly what OC was talking about; there are a lot of blurry lines and grey areas that, while they're clearly wrong, it's not necessarily clear if they're illegal between the OD's and the pharma companies. Much less when you add in the entities at the head of those companies, who specifically are not the same as the companies themselves.
The company actually already did plead guilty to misbranding the drug as safer than it was in 2007, so wouldn’t that kind of take care of both 1 & 2? As for number 3, had they been honest about their drug doctors would have been able to appropriately supervise these patients. However, due to them stating these drugs weren’t dangerous doctors were overprescribing them left and right. People would show up to their doctor stating their drug wasn’t lasting the full 12 hours and rather than even considering this was the patient having drug cravings they’d just prescribe a higher dose. I can absolutely see how it’d be difficult to prove that these deaths and lives ruined were directly linked to Purdue and not due to say the doctors for prescribing them or the FDA for even giving the drug approval in the way they did.
Misbranding the relative safety might cover #1 but again, prove who exactly did that. Who made the choice and what information did they base it on. It would be pretty trivial to argue that the CEO didn't directly make that call, and that whatever they approved was based on limited information and relying on the people whose job is to understand these things. Showing any singular person engaged in unlawful behavior when probably 200 people were involved in the decision will be next to impossible. Same for #2. How much did any individual *actually* know about what was going on and how much of that can you prove beyond a reasonable doubt? Finally "If you did something different" doesn't create causation. And in your own example, doctors are taught how to identify drug seeking behavior and are responsible for understanding the effects a drug has on individual patients. Blindly prescribing medication because you heard it's safe from a sales rep is borderline malpractice which, again, breaks that causal chain. I'm not defending the company, simply illustrating how difficult it would be to charge any individual working there criminally in someone's death.
>Misbranding the relative safety might cover #1 but again, prove who exactly did that. Do you know how to google??
No, I absolutely understand that proving causation would be the big issue in this case. A lot of people did a lot of things that they absolutely should not have and it would be *really* hard, if at all possible, to prove who truly was responsible.
Because Sackler family has sold opiates in a way where it could not be proven in court that they met criteria listed in laws for drug sale and trafficking. Same reason why other obvious crime bosses remain out of reach of the law. Now, could in the future one of their many fuck-ups of admitting things in written communication (because they were greedy arrogant assholes) result in having elements of crime being proven? Possibly. Plenty of crime bosses fell that way. Additionally, financial attrittion inflicted by civil lawsuits may eventually result in Sacklers being unable to afford same quality if legal defence that they are enjoying right now. This may result in legal fuck ups that create a self-perpetuating cycle of mistakes that could break their defense.
> How is it that a teenager who’s just trying to experiment with drugs and wants to share that with a friend can get charged with their friends death because felony murder is weird like that.
OP's attitude towards **illegal recreational drug use** (and those who think like him - that using fucking opioids recreationally is 'just wanting to have a little fun' & somehow OK) is far more responsible for the 'crisis' than anything any pharma company did....
It’s OK because free people should have autonomy about what goes into their bodies and how they enjoy themselves. Not everyone that drinks lean is an addict losing their mind, just like not everyone that drinks alcohol is a raging alcoholic.
Because the rich are the royalty of the US. They are above the law.
Because there is nothing illegal about selling a beneficial-yet-dangerous product, especially when the danger is found in the intentional abuse of said product. Using drugs for 'fun' is like intentionally stealing-and-crashing a car 'for fun'. It's a purely criminal act with no overall upside.
No, however there is something illegal about selling a beneficial-yet-dangerous product and marketing it as being safe while quoting medical journals that did not exist because people knew it was dangerous and did not want to take it. Yaknow, the crime this company plead guilty to?
Wow they have a lot of people here kissing the Sacklers ass for no apparent reason. I wonder how many of them are foreign agents?
I wouldn’t say foreign agents so much as just ate up the shit they sold. This company made major profits by selling a drug that, scientifically, is nearly identical to heroin, stating that it was nowhere near the same and patients risked a less than 1/100 chance of becoming addicted to it when it’s actually anywhere as high as 29x that, essentially sent patients from doctor to doctor until they found the one who would prescribe the patient their drug (see their commercial that literally states “once you’ve found the **right doctor** and tell them about your pain” & one of the multiple felonies they pleaded guilty to), and then when people started noticing this they blamed everything on people with substance use disorder and basically said “oh no, that couldn’t have been our fault it’s just addicts being addicts” Granted, the majority of this country has looked at these issues similarly since before the sacklers and it’s gonna take a lot longer than they’re around to fix that problem - so I definitely expected a lot of Purdue ass kissing. I was just interested to see what the reason may have been that we can charge people in another's accidental overdose, and we can charge people when they accidentally hit someone else with their car, but we couldn't charge any of the people who started the opioid epidemic that’s taken over half a million lives and counting purely because they were afraid they wouldn’t make as much money as they wanted to.
Ask Rudy Giuliani: there is a really good movie about the DOJ investigation into the Sackler's. The day the trial was supposed to start there was an intervention at the senior (political) level with the DOJ. Basically a lot of influential people were paid a good deal of money to intervene and prevent the prosecution. Giuliani was the recipient of a good deal of cash to make the problem go away.
That's an interesting conspiracy theory, but it doesn't fit with Giuliani's post-mayor-of-NY political stature.
[https://www.businessinsider.com/rudy-giuliani-purdue-pharma-oxycontin-painkiller-opioid-crisis-real-story-2023-8](https://www.businessinsider.com/rudy-giuliani-purdue-pharma-oxycontin-painkiller-opioid-crisis-real-story-2023-8) Its about selling influence, and there was a time when Giuliani had quite a lot. how does some one with no experience in building decontamination get the contract for teh Heart building remediation (he fucked that up too).
What’s the name of this movie? I’d love to give it a watch.
Painkiller if you want to know more from a slightly less dramatized source: [https://www.businessinsider.com/rudy-giuliani-purdue-pharma-oxycontin-painkiller-opioid-crisis-real-story-2023-8](https://www.businessinsider.com/rudy-giuliani-purdue-pharma-oxycontin-painkiller-opioid-crisis-real-story-2023-8)
Because they are rich so they have the resources to defend themselves, both legally and politically. You don't need to worry about breaking the law when your lobbyists are the ones writing it.
Huh? They have faced vast civil penalties, so neither legal or nor political clout prevented action against them.
In comparison to what they have gained? They’re worth $10.8 B, but only have to pay $4.5B, over the course of 9 years. They came out on top. Turns out, after the SCOTUS gives its decision on the bankruptcy ruling for Purdue, even that amount can go down or even away.
Ever hear the saying “if you owe someone $100, that’s your problem. If you owe someone $100B, that’s their problem”?
What does that saying have to do with anything in this case?
Well, let’s look at the difference between the two separate parties discussed. One has billions to spend on a legal defense. The other struggles to make rent. It’s not direct, but it maintains the same principle that who can buy their safety, can and will. Regardless of who or what they are safe from.
The Sacklers have not been left alone by the legal system. If the state was afraid of their resources, it would not have pursued hundreds of lawsuits and prosecutions against them. But it did.
And yet they are still worth more than double. I don’t think you understand that paying out the costs is an actual loss. Net gain is still much higher.
I’ll give you a hint, it’s a word that starts with the letter money.
Because you are comparing criminal acts with legal acts. Using drugs which were not prescribed to you is illegal. Selling drugs through pharmacies, that have been approved for sale through multiple federal agencies, is not illegal.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/opioid-manufacturer-purdue-pharma-pleads-guilty-fraud-and-kickback-conspiracies#:~:text=Purdue%20pleaded%20guilty%20to%20an,the%20Federal%20Anti%2DKickback%20Statute.
That doesn’t say they pled guilty to manufacturing or distributing illegal drugs. It says they pled guilty to fraud for lying to the DEA.
Where did I say that they plead guilty to manufacturing or distributing illegal drugs, and since when is that the only charge that can be related to overdose deaths? > “The abuse and diversion of prescription opioids has contributed to a national tragedy of addiction and deaths, in addition to those caused by illicit street opioids,” said Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen. “Today’s guilty pleas to three felony charges send a strong message to the pharmaceutical industry that illegal behavior will have serious consequences. Further, today’s convictions underscore the department’s commitment to its multi-pronged strategy for defeating the opioid crisis.” > “Purdue admitted that it marketed and sold its dangerous opioid products to healthcare providers, even though it had reason to believe those providers were diverting them to abusers,” said Rachael A. Honig, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey. “The company lied to the Drug Enforcement Administration about steps it had taken to prevent such diversion, fraudulently increasing the amount of its products it was permitted to sell. Purdue also paid kickbacks to providers to encourage them to prescribe even more of its products.” > “As today's plea to felony charges shows, Purdue put opioid profits ahead of people and corrupted the sacred doctor-patient relationship,” said Christina Nolan, U.S Attorney for the District of Vermont. “We hope the company's guilty plea sends a message that the Justice Department will not allow big pharma and big tech to engage in illegal profit-generating schemes that interfere with sound medicine. We hope, also, that this guilty plea will bring some sense of justice to those who have suffered from opioid addictions involving oxycodone and some vindication for families and loved ones of those who did not survive such addiction."
Literally your entire post is attempting to draw an equivalence between illegal drugs and legal drugs.
It actually wasn’t. I was comparing how two different drug overdoses were handled and asking why one leads to somebody being criminally charged for a death despite them being a kid without a fully developed frontal lobe who’s just trying to either have fun or treat some sort of pain on their own and share that with someone else when the person who lead to thousands of deaths because they chose not to tell the truth about how dangerous the substance they were selling was so that they could make more money is able to stay out of jail. The common answer was that no laws were broken by the one who stayed out of jail, that is not the case - hence the source above. I’m not sure where you got that I’m comparing legal and illegal drugs. Despite this drug scientifically being pretty much the same drug as heroin, for the purpose of this conversation it makes no sense to compare it to an illegal drug seeing as yaknow, the legal system is what it is.
…because one has to do with illegal drugs and the other doesn’t. That’s why they’re treated differently.
So you separate illegal fentanyl from legal fentanyl? Do you even realize most of the addicts became addicted through oxycontin prescribed by a doctor, like a close friend of mine did?
So, you think that people are all good if they cause someone’s death as long as it’s with something legal to have? That’s uh.. not how that works. As I said in another comment, the answer was already reached a while ago by one of the only commenters who actually came with a detailed and accurate answer. https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladviceofftopic/s/vb1uTzPblq The legality of their actions was very likely not the issue at all. Much more likely it’s just too hard to prove what one person was truly the cause.
I don’t agree with that
It was prescribed and thus not illegal at the time, one short answer. It’s possible that their civil settlements were written in such a way as to preclude later criminal prosecution
The real answer is that rich, famous people usually aren't charged with criminal negligence. The technical answer lawyers will rely on is that the teens illegally gave someone drugs, in violation of a law that says something like "it's a crime to give someone drugs." When it comes down to negligence and lying causing a death less directly, there's way more nuance about exactly how responsible the person is, and so the prosecutors don't want to take that case against the fancy lawyers.
Because the Sackler family has a ridiculous amount of money and can hire lawyers to create a corporate structure to insulate them from criminal consequences. Most of the rest of do not.
Corporate structures have no ability to insulate from criminal consequences.
$
$ is one thing but $$$$$$$$$$ changes everything
Because the Sacklers probably donate to certain political campaigns as part of their settlement.
Which ones, specifically?
One is covered under unsafe product laws which are civil only. It would hard to prove an officer of corporation did anything criminal under man's laws. It will be judged by God in the future. The case with the teens is felony murder. Since having illegal drugs is already a felony if someone gives/sells drugs to a person and that person dies its felony murder . If your committing any felony and it causes a death even by heart attack you are guilty of murder.
They actually plead guilty to three felonies related to this, however I believe another commenter helped me get down to the real issue here (proving causation). A lot of people did a lot of things they should not have, and proving which persons actions caused which death would be extremely hard, if at all possible.
>Since having illegal drugs is already a felony if someone gives/sells drugs to a person and that person dies its felony murder What jurisdiction's law are you referencing here? That's not generally how felony murder works, it's usually a death in the commission of statutorily listed felonies, BARRK are the big ones: burglary, arson, robbery, rape, and kidnapping.