Museum is latest institution to distance itself from family accused of profiting from US opioids crisis
The British Museum has become the latest cultural organisation to remove the Sackler family name from galleries and rooms they have supported.
George Osborne, the museum’s chair, announced the move on Twitter, saying: “We’re moving into a new era, presenting our great collection in different ways for new audiences.”
Continue reading...Roughly two dozen gave statements at bankruptcy court hearing attended by Richard, Theresa and David Sackler
A virtual hearing on Thursday in US bankruptcy court gave survivors of opioid dependency and people who lost loved ones to the crisis what they have long desired – an official chance to confront members of the family behind Purdue Pharma, the US creator of the powerful but highly addictive prescription painkiller OxyContin.
They blamed the billionaire Sackler family members for helping spur the epidemic that ultimately has cost about half a million American lives, through aggressive marketing of Purdue’s signature narcotic and for failing to take responsibility for their role.
Continue reading...The Sacklers want protection from future suits. Victims’ families want them to ‘know what their greed has caused’
Stephanie and Troy Lubinski met when they were teenagers, and they were married for three decades. Troy was big-hearted, kind, the best fisherman around, a devoted father who cared for the kids during the day after long night shifts as a firefighter.
But he had back pain that began when he worked in construction and then grew worse over the years. His doctor prescribed OxyContin, and that was the beginning of the end.
Continue reading...Settlements represent largest of opioid-related cases in epidemic that has killed more than 500,000 Americans over two decades
Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and three major distributors finalized nationwide settlements over their role in the opioid addiction crisis Friday, an announcement that clears the way for $26bn to flow to nearly every state and local government in the US.
Taken together, the settlements are the largest to date among the many opioid-related cases that have been playing out across the country. They’re expected to provide a significant boost to efforts aimed at reversing the crisis in places that have been devastated by it, including many parts of rural America.
Continue reading...Members of Sackler family would contribute sum over 18 years under latest proposal
Members of the Sackler family who own OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, are willing to kick in more money – up to $6bn in total – to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids as the company tries to work out a deal with state attorneys general who torpedoed an earlier settlement.
The offer was detailed in a report filed on Friday in US bankruptcy court by a federal mediator who asked the court to let her have until the end of the month to broker a new settlement.
Continue reading...CDC considers rolling back limits on which doses can be prescribed and for how many days in cases of acute pain
The US could see loosened guidance around prescribing opioids, as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers relaxing some of its guidelines in a move that could signal a new direction for managing chronic pain.
The CDC last Thursday released proposed changes to its guidance on prescribing opioids, rolling back limits on which doses can be prescribed and for how many days in cases of acute pain.
Continue reading...Bipartisan commission makes 76 recommendations to confront crisis that has caused 1m overdose deaths since 1999
The US urgently needs a smarter, multi-pronged strategy and cabinet-level leadership to tackle an escalating overdose epidemic which poses an unacceptable threat to national security and the economy, a bipartisan congressional commission has found.
The long awaited report by the Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking calls for a major shift in policy to combat rising fatal overdoses, with much greater focus on reducing demand through public health measures.
Continue reading...At first, I could hardly get through a novel. But slowly reading – and writing – saved me from a life of drugs, rehab and jail
When I was in tenth grade in Tampa, Florida, I was, like millions of other high school students, assigned to read The Catcher in the Rye for English class. Like millions of other high school students, I was extremely fragile. I was holding on by a thread. I was 15 and spent much of my time at school, on the days I would go, doing OxyContin, Xanax, cocaine and speed in the bathroom. I jittered and itched through class, and my internal life was, to say the least, stifled. It would continue to be stifled for the next few years, until it became so claustrophobic that I attempted suicide. Needless to say, I was pretty hit or miss with school assignments. But I had always liked to read. I decided to crack Salinger’s book and read a chapter or two. I stayed up all night and finished it. I came into class the next day wired, eyes wide: it felt as if I had been hooked up to a car battery. I remember walking into the classroom and saying to my English teacher, “What the hell was that?”
I didn’t know anything about the book. I didn’t know that the men who shot John Lennon and Ronald Reagan were both obsessed with it. I didn’t know that it was the subject of endless think pieces debating the ethical ramifications of Holden Caulfield’s character. I didn’t know Salinger stormed the beaches on D-Day, carried scars from his years in war. I just got sucked in. It is a funny, polarising little book. I remember my girlfriend at the time saying she hated it, that she couldn’t get through it. But my teacher told me that every year at least one person does what I did, gets hooked up to the car battery. Looking back, it makes sense that someone in my particular situation would have this reaction to it. In fact, it is almost embarrassing just how cliched it is. But that’s what happened. And, in what would become a theme of my life, what stuck with me more than any of the particular content of the book was the feeling of being sucked in, of losing time trapped in someone else’s words and turbulent emotions.
Continue reading...For nine years, New York Times journalist Andrea Elliott followed the fortunes of one family living in poverty. In this extract from her new book, Invisible Child, we meet Dasani Coates in 2012, aged 11 and living in a shelter
• Read an interview with Andrea Elliott here
She wakes to the sound of breathing. The smaller children lie tangled under coats and wool blankets, their chests rising and falling in the dark. They have yet to stir. Their sister is always first. She looks around the room, seeing only silhouettes – the faint trace of a chin or brow, lit from the street below. Mice scurry across the floor. Roaches crawl to the ceiling. A little sink drips and drips, sprouting mould from a rusted pipe.
A few feet away is the yellow mop bucket they use as a toilet, and the mattress where the mother and father sleep, clutched. Radiating out from them in all directions are the eight children they share: two boys and five girls whose beds zigzag around the baby, her crib warmed by a hairdryer perched on a milk crate.
Continue reading...Accidental deaths soar among young people amid a proliferation of fentanyl-filled pharmaceuticals
Fourteen-year-old Alondra Salinas had set out her new white sneakers and packed her backpack the night before the first day of in-person high school when police say she responded to an offer on Snapchat for blue pills, which turned out to be deadly fentanyl. Her mother couldn’t wake her the next morning.
Seventeen-year-old Zachary Didier was waiting to hear back on his college applications when a fake Percocet killed him. Sammy Berman Chapman, a 16-year-old straight-A student, died in his bedroom after taking what he thought was a single Xanax.
Continue reading...Purdue Pharma deal arranged for the family to be guarded from lawsuits over their role in the US epidemic
A judge has rejected the OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy settlement of thousands of lawsuits over the opioid epidemic because of a provision that would protect members of the Sackler family from facing litigation of their own.
The ruling on Thursday from Judge Colleen McMahon in New York is likely to be appealed by the company, family members and the thousands of government entities that support the plan.
Continue reading...Art museum announces change in the wake of leading members of the family being blamed for fueling the deadly US opioids crisis
New York’s famed Metropolitan Museum of Art is going to remove the name of arguably its most controversial donor groups – the billionaire Sackler family – from its galleries.
The news comes in the wake of leading members of the US family, one of America’s richest, being blamed for fueling the deadly opioids crisis in America with the aggressive selling of the family company’s prescription narcotic painkiller, OxyContin.
Continue reading...Conditional approval for plan to organize drugmaker into new company with board appointed by public officials
A US federal bankruptcy judge on Wednesday conditionally approved a sweeping, potentially $10bn plan submitted by the OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma to settle a mountain of lawsuits over its role in the opioid crisis that has killed a half-million Americans over the past two decades.
Related: Former Purdue Pharma chair denies responsibility for US opioid crisis
Continue reading...Group of US states attorneys general unveil settlement including three largest US drug distributors and Johnson & Johnson
A group of US state attorneys general unveiled on Wednesday a landmark $26bn settlement with large drug companies for allegedly fueling the deadly nationwide opioid epidemic, but some states were cool on the agreement.
Under the settlement proposal, the three largest US drug distributors, McKesson Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and AmerisourceBergen Corp, are expected to pay a combined $21bn, while drugmaker Johnson & Johnson (J&J), which manufactures opioids, would pay $5bn.
Continue reading...Whether the pharmaceutical giant jumped or was pushed, its New York deal is a significant sign of the way the wind is blowing
Johnson & Johnson said it had already jumped. New York’s attorney general suggested the pharmaceutical giant was pushed.
Either way, the American drug maker is the first to formally agree to get out of the multibillion-dollar business of selling the powerful narcotic painkillers that drove the US opioid epidemic.
Continue reading...A branch of the family launches website and claims they are victims of smear campaign by lawyers seeking to make profit
A branch of the Sackler family has launched a website denying responsibility for the US opioid epidemic even after agreeing to pay billions of dollars to settle lawsuits over the crisis.
The website, called Judge for Yourselves, claims that the family and the company it owns, Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma, are victims of a smear campaign by lawyers seeking to profit from a “strategically invented false narrative” that the firm’s high-strength prescription painkiller, OxyContin, drove an epidemic that has ultimately claimed more than 500,000 lives over the past two decades.
Continue reading...Twenty-four states object to bankruptcy proposal for Sacklers to settle lawsuits by paying $4.3bn but family would keep about $7bn
Nearly half of US states have joined growing opposition to a highly unusual bankruptcy plan that would protect the wealth of the Sackler family after it made billions of dollars from selling the drug that kickstarted the US opioid epidemic.
Attorneys general of 24 states, members of Congress, municipalities and victims’ families object to the proposal for the Sacklers to forfeit ownership of Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of the powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin, and surrender part of their immense fortune in return for immunity from further litigation over their part in a drug epidemic that has claimed more than 500,000 lives.
Continue reading...A series of federal cases over the pharmaceutical industry’s push to sell narcotic painkillers which created the worst drug epidemic in US history
The trial of the three biggest US drug distributors for illegally flooding West Virginia with hundreds of millions of prescription opioid pills, and driving the highest overdose rate in the country, is due to open on Monday.
Related: Empire of Pain review: the Sacklers, opioids and the sickening of America
Continue reading...Patrick Radden Keefe delivers a damning account of Purdue Pharma, Oxycontin and a family that grew rich
By 2016, opioids had torn a piece out of Appalachia and the rust belt. The deep drop in life expectancy among white Americans without four-year degrees would no longer be ignored. OxyContin, Purdue Pharma’s highly addictive painkiller, helped elect Donald Trump.
Related: George Floyd's girlfriend shared his opioids pain – Derek Chauvin refused to see it
Continue reading...Courteney Ross’s testimony showed how police departments fail in their duty to protect those who battle addiction
Of all the accounts of George Floyd’s life and death heard in a Minneapolis courtroom this week, perhaps the least expected was his girlfriend’s description of their shared struggle with opioid addiction.
Courteney Ross’s wrenching testimony gave a very human glimpse into the remorseless search for a fix and a mutual fight to shake off drug dependency.
Continue reading...