Crime pays if you can buy the law
By 
America’s most destructive drug dealers have struck a deal that allows them to keep billions of dollars of profits from their successful efforts to create millions of junkies, several hundred thousand of whom have sadly died in the process (The sadness felt by the Sackler family is of course for the loss of a small yet extremely profitable part of its customer base).
Members of the billionaire Sackler family and their company, Purdue Pharma, have reached a deal with a group of states that had long resisted the company’s bankruptcy plan — a crucial step toward funneling billions of dollars from the family’s fortune to addiction treatment programs nationwide, according to a court filing on Thursday.
If Judge Robert Drain, who has presided over Purdue’s bankruptcy proceedings in White Plains, N.Y., approves the agreement, the Sacklers would pay as much as $6 billion to help communities address the damage from the opioid crisis. In return, Sackler family members would get the prize they insisted upon for nearly three years: an end to all current and future civil claims against them over the company’s prescription opioid business.
The Sacklers’ liability protection would not extend to criminal prosecutions.
The deal still faces potential hurdles in the courts, but it is the first time in three years of negotiations that all states have accepted a settlement agreement with Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers. The new agreement includes an increase of at least $1 billion in the amount the Sacklers would pay. In addition to the family’s money, Purdue itself is contributing, through cash and revenue from future sales, payments expected to amount to $1.5 billion by 2024, with far more to come.
The agreement marks a significant moment in the national opioid litigation, an effort by state, local and tribal governments to hold companies across the vast pharmaceutical industry accountable for the crisis of opioid addiction that led to at least 500,000 deaths since 1999.
When the leaders of the Medellin and Cali cartels struck deals with the Colombian government back in the day, they at least agreed to do a few years in prison in return for getting to keep most of their billions. The Sacklers are of course far too important and powerful and still semi-respectable — check out how many academic centers and art gallery wings are still adorned with their names — for anything like that.
They got away with it because that’s what “equal justice under the law” means if you’re high up enough in the SES pyramid. Just ask Donald Trump.
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