For the last five or six years, more often than not I have received monthly news of someone I know having to bury their kid due to an opioid overdose. Sometimes they’re not dead. Maybe they were revived or arrested or went into rehab, or walked out for the third or fourth or fifth time. The news is rarely good, although I also hear of the sobriety anniversaries and other positive stories as some people slowly turn their lives around. Those are the exceptions.
I’m approaching five years of sobriety myself, although I quit using illegal drugs in my early twenties and I never abused prescription drugs. A few years ago, I had to bury my brother who waited too long to get sober and wound up serving as a wake-up call for me. I know all these affected people because of my time in family support groups and my connections to the sober community. So, when I read something like this, I just don’t have any sympathy:
Jacqueline Sackler was fed up. HBO‘s John Oliver had just used his TV show to pillory her family, the clan that owns Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. In a nearly 15-minute Sunday-night segment, he joined a long line of people who blamed the Sacklers in part for the nation’s opioid crisis.
When the show was over, Ms. Sackler, who is married to a son of a company co-founder, emailed her in-laws, lawyers and advisers. “This situation is destroying our work, our friendships, our reputation and our ability to function in society,” she wrote.
“And worse, it dooms my children. How is my son supposed to apply to high school in September?”
As far as I am concerned, the Sacklers should be stripped of every last penny they own down to the change under the cushions of their expensive couches. That money should be put to use in helping the people who are struggling to deal with addiction or the trauma of losing someone to addiction. Call it reparations.
I know Jacqueline Sackler’s son isn’t responsible and he should be considered like any other applicant, but the only reason he is applying for private schools is because his parents can afford one. That should change.
Anything for a buck. And they never have enough bucks, so …everything is for sale.
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I’m not one who believes everything was just peachy back in the “good old days”. The U.S. was a very racist place when I was a child. But there was one thing that was better. There was this thing called shame that kept people from behaving like greedy pigs in public. Behind the curtain they might get away with whatever they could. But not out in the open.
The guy who discovered insulin in 1921 didn’t patent his discovery. Jonas Salk didn’t patent the polio vaccine. These days, pharmaceutical companies will do anything for a buck. Raise the price of a life saving drug completely out of reach of the uninsured? No problem. If people die, whatever. Kill off older versions of a drug and prevent generics from being manufactured. Yes, yes, yes!
Market prescription drugs like candy? Why not? Addictive ones? What’s the problem? There’s an epidemic of overdoses and drug-related suicides? Hey, not our responsibility! We’ve got our private jets and mansions to maintain.
I just got an email telling me that a dear friend that I have known for six years just lost her daughter to an opioid overdose. This is devastating and it’s just a drumbeat of my life now. Half a generation is being lost to this. And this was a long struggle with many periods of hope and optimism. It’s just crushing.