Getting Away with Murder: How the Sacklers Did It

Patrick Radden Keefe, a journalist I greatly admire, lays it out in a Sunday Review essay in today’s New York Times. The billionaire Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma, hooked millions of people on their killer opioid OxyContin — laying waste to entire swaths of America — and are about to go scot-free, thanks to a pliant bankruptcy judge with the Dickensian name Robert Drain. That’s how the justice system works in America, as Keefe reminds us — street drug dealers do hard prison time, while the biggest pushers in the country escape justice. Thanks to U.S. Justice Department officials, the Sacklers evaded criminal prosecution. And now, thanks to Judge Drain, the family soon will be granted “a sweeping grant of immunity from all litigation relating to their role in precipitating the opioid crisis.”

David Sackler — worried that one of the countless lawsuits against Purdue Pharma might “get through to the family” — began draining the company of its wealth with other family members and securing it in their private accounts years ago. That’s how the looted opioid manufacturer ended up in Judge Drain’s White Plains, NY bankruptcy court even though its dangerous painkiller reaped a staggering $35 billion in revenue. Now, thanks to Drain, the bulk of the Sacklers’ wealth will be protected from the families and communities devastated by OxyContin.

This is a primary reason that revolutionary rage is growing in America. “No justice, no peace” goes the street chant of Black Lives Matter after killer cops claim another victim. But it must apply to corporate criminals as well.

Corporate profiteers have hooked us on their deadly drugs. They’ve trashed the environment and triggered a climate crisis that’s now taking a heavy toll in every region of the earth. They’ve flooded countries with military weaponry and grown rich off the blood of war. They’ve looted newspapers and other essential businesses of their value, turning them into shells of their former selves.

These profiteers are deadly criminals. The justice system must begin to act against them — or people will take justice into their own hands. And that’s revolutionary anarchy that will spell the end of U.S. civil society. “No justice, no peace.”