The Sacklers Deserve Prison, Not a Petty Fine

The United States' is the middle of a horrific drug epidemic as best illustrated by this catastrophic chart:

And most of this was spurred on by the Sackler family and their company Purdue Pharma; which created and marketed Oxycontin and Oxycodone; which are basically just heroin. And lots and lots of people got hooked and then turned to black tar heroin crossing the border from Mexico after their prescription ran out. (For more on this, see Sam Quinones' book Dreamland.)

​Indeed, Purdue Pharma actively downplayed the risks of addiction, as Kaiser Health News notes,

Purdue turned the records over to the Florida attorney general’s office in 2002 during its investigation of the company. Additional Purdue documents from the Florida investigation detail how the company targeted patients and allayed addiction worries.

'Fear should not stand in the way of relief of your pain,' a pivotal marketing brochure said.

Yet despite this clear criminality that has wrecked havoc across America, the Sacklers will not only avoid prison but stay rich as well,

Their fortune will drop below $1.5 billion based on the terms of the proposal, which envisions the family paying at least $3 billion in cash. Purdue would file for bankruptcy, handing itself over to a trust controlled by the states, cities and counties that have sued. ​

Better than what Jeffrey Epstein originally got (not the suicide he later received). But still, not anywhere near enough...