The bold moves of public officials shouldn’t go unnoticed. State attorney general offices as well as cities and towns are lining up in courtrooms across America to file lawsuits against Purdue Pharma, the maker of the opioid drug, OxyContin. To date, according to the New York Times, Purdue Pharma faces 1,600 lawsuits that seek to recoup dollars that governments have spent to treat and deter the opioid epidemic. A trial date is set for late May.

These lawsuits blame the drug, OxyContin, which was released in 1995, for spreading opioid abuse and leaving state and local communities to deal with a nationwide massacre that has resulted in over 200,000 overdose deaths. Due to this avalanche of litigation, the Connecticut-based drug maker is contemplating filing for bankruptcy.

The Sackler family has owned and operated the pharmaceutical company since Arthur Sackler and his two brothers, Raymond and Mortimer, bought the business in 1952. According to Forbes Magazine, the family’s fortune is valued today at $13 billion and OxyContin has generated $25 billion in total sales since it was first approved by the FDA. The success of the drug comes from its potency and intensity, delivering pain relief to users 16 times greater than its closest rivals, Vicodin and Percocet. The lawsuits allege that as Purdue Pharma looked to increase sales of OxyContin, the opioid epidemic was growing into a national crisis and the Sacklers were directly involved in decisions to disregard public health for corporate riches.

In an email, used in the court filing, Dr. Kathe Sackler, a board member at Purdue Pharma, instructed workers to devise a plan that would better position the company to profit from both the addiction and treatment of opioids. Sackler’s grand scheme was to get users hooked on opioids and then help them detox using a new Purdue Pharma drug, Naloxone. Another email from Richard Sackler, former president and chairman of the company, directed employees to blame the drug users when reports began to appear in the media about the misuse of OxyContin.

Corporate greed is nothing new in our world, and though the lawsuits against Perdue Pharma are serious, no one from the Sackler family will see the inside of a prison cell. Rich people don’t go to jail in America, where we have plenty of excuses for white-collar crimes. We know, however, how this story ends: The Sacklers will be convicted of a few misdemeanors with the backlash of having their name removed from the latest art exhibit in the British Museum.

In fact the only real damage Purdue Pharma will suffer is through restitutions, fines and legal fees which will likely drain the company’s coffers. But the pharmaceutical company will rebound just like the cigarette corporations did after their lawsuits in 1990s. Regardless of the outcomes of these cases, nothing can compensate the human beings whose lives were shattered from the opioid epidemic.

Armando Abarca

Somerset