Every court case that comes to a plea deal is a game of poker.
Who has the better hand? Who has the better bluff? Who has the most to lose or everything to win?
In the case of Purdue Pharma and the part its massively successful pain medication OxyContin played in the opioid crisis, the table is being run by a company that made billions by taking opioids — derivatives of the opium poppy that have been known to be addictive and dangerous for centuries — and refining them into something even more deadly while simultaneously advertising them as safe and non-habit-forming.
The stakes have been upped for years. States like Pennsylvania have sued. So have cities and towns, trying to recoup the cost of the addictive epidemic. In just one year, Westmoreland County paid almost $19 million for the various costs of the opioid problem. There have been settlements and bankruptcies and new lawsuits that never seem to end.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced a deal to end its action against the company.
Purdue will be pleading guilty to three criminal counts of things like conspiracy to defraud the United States and anti-kickback laws and paying an $8 billion through a series of fines, forfeitures and damages.
The company will admit to disregarding its own safety protocols while it assured the government everything was under control, and it will become a public benefit company governed by a trust instead of the Sackler family that has owned it for more than 60 years.
That’s probably more than many expected a company the size and scope of Purdue to have to do.
But is it enough? Three counts of criminal activity. A single sale of a baggie of marijuana can result in more charges. The $8 billion in settlements is a slice of the money Purdue has made from OxyContin. A drug dealer caught in the act could expect to have all assets seized.
What it could be and should be is the deal that could get to the next level. The company agrees as part of it to cooperate in other prosecutions.
That could mean potential prosecution of company executives and the Sacklers, who do not go down with the ship in the Purdue deal but also aren’t protected by it.
What it doesn’t do is bring back the people whose lives were lost to addiction and overdose. It doesn’t do anything about the families broken and bankrupted. In Pennsylvania alone, more than 46,000 overdose deaths were attributed to opioids just in 2018.
The settlement may attempt to mitigate the cost of years of treatment, education, court proceedings, incarceration and foster care, but does it really?
Maybe that is impossible. Maybe there will never be a way to fully get back what OxyContin and its opioid brethren have stolen.
But it seems like the dealers and the kingpins should be held as responsible for a legal drug as an illegal one.
— Tribune-Review (TNS)
