Jonathan Sackler, one of the owners of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, has died, the company confirmed.
Sackler died June 30, according to a court filing. He was 65 and the cause of death was cancer.
He was the son of Raymond Sackler, one of the brothers who bought drug company Purdue Frederick in 1952, and served as an executive and board member for the company that was later renamed Purdue Pharma. Like other members of the Sackler family, he has stepped off the board of the company in recent years, though family members retain ownership.
So yeah, this is a thing now. Hoo boy, how to open this thread without running afoul of the mods?
Oh well -- incoherence, maybe.
For all those wondering what the hubbub is about, the Sackler family, a notorious corporation of money addicts (the rare addiction no one can die from directly, though for indirect deaths it can be quite the stunner) is one of the poster people(?) of pharmaceutical malice intersecting quite nicely with capitalist shortsightedness since the turn of the millennium, at least in the United States..
Well, them and that smirking fucking asshole EpiPen jackoff Martin fucking Shkreli.
But enough about that ratface, back to the Sacklers and the company they once piloted hard -- to the ground, that is. Let Wikipedia take my words:
In 2007, it paid out one of the largest fines ever levied against a pharmaceutical firm for mislabeling its product OxyContin, and three executives were found guilty of criminal charges. Although the company shifted its focus to abuse-deterrent formulations, Purdue continued to market and sell opioids as late as 2019, and continued to be involved in lawsuits around the opioid epidemic in the United States. Purdue filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on September 15, 2019 in New York.
Not told in that quote is the fact that the Sacklers, upon learning that Purdue Pharma would shortly face legal scrutiny, made the decision to run to the bank with the money they pilfered off hundreds and thousamds of addicted and dead people, to the tune of $10.7 billion (according to the report of the auditing firm they hired to steer their gilded parachutes through bankruptcy), or more than thrice the amount of money they were willing to settle with the families of the victims they snookered.
So, yes, incoherent anger, just the way this one sacked Sackler would've liked it, I guess.
Post below.