Rich White Drug Dealers

One reason I wanted to draw this cartoon is because I know most cartoonists won’t cover it. There may be a few and possibly inspired by someone else doing it first (that’s OK and I’ve done that too). I was positive I’d be the first to draw it.

I knew nobody else would draw it today because there are a lot of other really juicy subjects out there, but this is just as important. I also knew it wouldn’t receive much attention from my colleagues because the major news outlets only covered it for about two minutes yesterday. But it’s really big news.

The Sackler family, the owners of Purdue Pharma, reached a settlement in federal court yesterday that will give them full immunity from all civil legal claims, current and future, over their role in the company’s prescription opioids business. This deal will cost them $6 billion. The Sackler family’s wealth has dropped over the years, but their current net worth is estimated to be around $11 billion.

The New York Times writes:

It removes a major hurdle for that money, plus the company’s initial outlay of $500 million, to be dispensed to states and communities for addiction treatment and prevention programs, needs that soared during an epidemic that has grown far beyond abuse of Purdue’s signature prescription painkiller drug, OxyContin.

Unless it is successfully appealed to the Supreme Court — an unlikely prospect, legal experts said — the new ruling will close the door on Purdue’s hotly contested bankruptcy restructuring, which began nearly four years ago. The bankruptcy is at the core of a plan intended to resolve thousands of opioid cases against the company nationwide, plus roughly 400 against individual Sackler family members.

Purdue will be restructured into a new company called Knoa Pharma. Knoa will continue to sell Oxycontin, which Purdue had claimed in the past was non-addictive.

In 2021, deaths involving synthetic opioids, largely fentanyl, rose from 58,000 to 71,000.

We do not have an equal justice system. Melissa B. Jacoby, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said, “Bankruptcy was not meant to be an alternative justice system for powerful corporations and their superrich owners. But that is the effect and perception when courts read the law to provide extraordinary protections well beyond what Congress authorized.”

If you are caught selling drugs on the street, you go to prison, especially if you’re black. If you’re a super rich white dude on a corporate board selling opioids, even lying about them being addictive, you’ll probably just be sued and you can pay it off.

While this immunity deal doesn’t protect the Sacklers from criminal prosecutions, the fact there haven’t been any is further proof of our nation’s systemic racism.

This is part of the reason Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the playing of the national anthem. By the way, Kaepernick still isn’t on a football team.

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