The U.S. Supreme Court today halted a Purdue Pharma settlement that would have protected the billionaire Sackler family from civil lawsuits related to the opioid crisis.

The Sacklers, who amassed their wealth through the promotion of an addictive and deadly drug, must be perplexed at this turn of events. — Read the rest

Reuters reports that a federal judge ruled that the opioid kingpin Sackler family can't shield itself from future lawsuits by people whose lives were destroyed by their predatory drug dealing practices.

The bankruptcy court did not have the legal authority to release the Sackler family from liability, the judge ruled.

After a decades-long marriage, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Purdue Pharma's Sackler family are parting ways: the disgraced Sacklers, who have been pushing their highly addictive Oxycontin since 1996, will have their name stripped from all seven of the museum's exhibition spaces. — Read the rest

Nearly 500,000 Americans died from opioids between 1999 and 2019 while the Sackler drug-dealing family enriched itself by illegally pushing addictive Oxycontin on patients.

New York Magazine reports that 15 state attorneys general have agreed to settle lawsuits against Purdue Pharma for its illegal sales practices that caused millions of people to become addicted to OxyContin. — Read the rest

Opioids helped kill friends of mine. Even more frustrating is that this is not particularly unique or interesting. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services:

More than 760,000 people have died since 1999 from a drug overdose.

The Sackler family are owners of the drug company that caused a devastating drug crisis in the United States by making false claims about the safety of its highly addictive OxyContin. According to an AP story, Mundipharma, a Chinese company owned by the Sackler family is now using the same tactics in China.  — Read the rest

Propublica has obtained a tranche of leaked internal communications between the Sackler family's Purdue Pharma, makers of the lethal opioid Oxycontin, and Dezenhall Resources, known as "The Pitbull of Public Relations," whose previous client roster includes Enron CEO Jeff Skilling, Exxon and other "beleaguered corporations," who masterminded a "blame the victim" strategy that apportioned responsibility for Oxycontin's mounting death toll on the people who became addicted to it — not the Sacklers and Purdue, who falsified science, bribed doctors, and made billions from an epidemic that has now claimed more American lives than the Vietnam War.

Sesame Street continues its run of excellent, empathetic new muppets to help kids deal with a changing world: after introducing muppets experiencing homelessness, living with autism, and explaining marriage without recourse to gender norms, the show has introduced a muppet whose mother lost custody of her after becoming addicted to drugs.

The Sackler family (previously) made more money than the Rockefellers when their family business, Purdue Pharma, misled the public about the addictiveness of its flagship opioid, Oxycontin, and induced doctors to overprescribe it, kicking off an epidemic that has killed more Americans than the Vietnam war, with the body count at 400,000 and still climbing.

The Sackler family got richer than the Rockefellers through their role in creating and sustaining the opioid crisis, which took more American lives than the Vietnam war.

The Sackler family got richer than the Rockefellers by marketing Oxycontin in ways that kickstarted the global opioid epidemic, whose body count continues to rise — more than 200,000 dead in the US alone, which is more Americans than died in the Vietnam war.

The Sacklers (previously) are a reclusive, super-secretive family of billionaires whose fortune comes from their pharmaceutical company, Purdue Pharmaceuticals, manufacturers of Oxycontin, the drug at the center of the opioid epidemic, which has claimed more American lives than the Vietnam war, with the death-toll still mounting.

Update: We have received a legal letter from Thomas A. Clare, of Clare Locke LLP, writing on behalf of the Sacklers expressing the family's concern that the image of a guillotine and the "guillotine watch" tag originally accompanying this post would be interpreted as a call to violence against the Sackler family, who have, per Mr Clare, received such threats. — Read the rest

Full Frontal's Samantha Bee presents the Sackler family, "art patrons, cosmopolitans, and, believe it or not, almost single-handedly responsible for the nationwide opioid crisis."

The Sacklers aren't just rich. They are rich. They have wings named after them at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre, an entire museum at Harvard, a center at the Guggenheim…
So how do you get to have this many museums name shit after you?

Richard Sackler is the only known member of the powerful opioid family (previously) to have been deposed; the 2015 deposition was published last week by Propublica and it reveals Sackler's bizarre rationalizations for his family company's deliberate creation of the opioid epidemic.

The Sackler family (previously) is one of the richest in the world, and if you've heard of them, it's probably because their family name adorns so many art galleries, museums, and academic institutions around the world: but they way they got that money is less-well-known.

Purdue cynically created the American opiod epidemic through a combination of bribing medical professionals to overprescribe Oxycontin, publishing junk science, and aggressively lobbying regulators at every level to turn a blind eye to the destruction of the lives of millions of patient; while the company settled a record-setting criminal case, the name of the secretive family of billionaires who run Purdue and profited from the Oxy epidemic is best known for philanthropy, not profiteering: the Sackler family.

I'm in Washington, DC today to participate in The National Academy of Sciences' second Sackler colloquium, which is organized "to advance a national dialogue about science communication."

Climate change… evolution… the obesity crisis… nanotechnology: These are but a few of the scientific topics dominating the world stage today.

Have you heard that the National Drug Dealers Consortium is planning on spiking your children's Halloween candy bowl with rainbow-colored fentanyl this year? To hear the local news tell, these evil, mustache-twirling criminals are planning to give away hundreds of millions of dollars worth of illicit painkillers in hopes that a few 8-year-olds might get so hooked on the (genuinely addictive) pills that they start stealing money from their unknowing parents' purses and turn into regular customers for the hustlers. — Read the rest

I missed the debate between MAGA cultist J.D. Vance and Representative Tim Ryan, who are running for U.S. Senator from Ohio, but if these two clips are any indication, Ryan had a swell time pointing out that J.D. Vance is a Trumpian "ass-kisser" and a puppet of the Sackler family drug cartel. — Read the rest