Massachusetts Attorney General Targets Oxycontin Maker Purdue, Says They Engineered Opioid Crisis
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The Massachusetts attorney general is targeting Purdue Pharma and eight members of the Sackler family who own the company, alleging in a lawsuit they are "personally responsible" for deceptively selling OxyContin.

The attorney general, Maura Healey, sat down with CBS This Morning. She alleges the Sackler family hired "hundreds of workers to carry out their wishes" – pushing doctors to get "more patients on opioids, at higher doses, for longer, than ever before" all while paying "themselves billions of dollars."

In her lawsuit, Healey names eight members of the family that own Purdue Pharma, alleging they "micromanaged" a "deceptive sales campaign." In the conclusion to the complaint, Healey said the Sackler family used the power at their disposal to engineer an opioid crisis. Almost 400,000 people died from opioid overdoses between 1999 and 2017, according to the CDC.

Full Story: CBS This Morning

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Re: charlie (# 61)

Thank you Charlie I mean that. He was a great kid too just experimented. That one instance of experimenting, now it’s his fault the other guy can’t get his meds..I should also mention he had Epilepsy as well and just wanted to fit in. My sister, his mother hasn’t gone out in five years and is a mess still. My faith was all I had. It’s all I have now. I am not young either and I suffer debilitating pain from RA and back pain. I could go to a pain clinic but I refuse to become a slave to them so my primary just gives me 15 Oxycodone per month 5 mg and when I get a flare, I’ll take one. But I know enough not to get involved with this stuff I benefit from injections and over the counter. Walking helps as well. Anyway I wish these people would go read my post on the Sackler family who owns Purdue Pharma then they would see what they did to others and destroyed so many lives with peoples deaths. You need to be educated in what is going on and why the doctors are not giving them out. It’s nothing to do with kids experimenting. Nobody talks about the dealers who in my opinion should be hung in the square in public, like El Chapo. He’s killed so many Americans and non as well. Do people get out from behind their video games?? Like I said I feel for all who suffer but if your doctor isn’t giving you anything there’s a reason and it’s not because of my nephew. It’s because of you. God Bless you Charles I will say a Rosary for you and all here. I think because of my strong faith God keeps me intact. Thank you again these guys can really be bully’s and gang up on an old lady.

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charlie (# 61) —

YOU are just as ignorant as bella the hun. She has posted some of the most awful comments on this thread and they were unsolicited. You should never preach to anyone. Trying to judge others is just plain stupid.

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Re: Judy (# 62)

YOU and bella the hun make a good pair. At least. I do not take any pill handed to me by any person on the street. I will not tell you to go to hell. I am alive and that little dope fiend that bella is so quick to be codependent with is dead. Good. Another one bites the dust....another one bites the dust...there’s another one down there’s another one gone another one bites the dust. I am glad that little dope fiend is gone. All he ever did is take illicit drugs and kill himself. ONE UNKNOWN PILL. How stupid can you be? I have ignored all of the ignorant posts by bella and those like YOU. I have had enough of ignoring stupid people like you two.

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Re: cliff j (# 59)

So cliff we don't have to tell you to go to hell,..your sorry ass is going to hell for talking about the dead this way,..wow..is all I can say...grow up. How old are you anyways?...2 ??...will you be the next to od?.. humm better watch out, the next pill you pop might be your last..you do not need to be a junkie to od. I will bet you have an addiction problem. Oh wait next your going to say oh no I'm not an addict, I never fill my pills early, I have taken them for years, and years I'm only dependent upon them. So let's hear you say the words for all us to read..don't forget to tell me to go to hell to. And when you check out and start your journey to hell, dont let the door slap you on your a**

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Re: Bella (# 58)

I will stand by you bella, and will always watch your back,..I wish I knew you, but friends we are,..those who call others junkies are most likely one themselves...I mean you don't have to be a KID, or a junkie to OD,.,...it's just others are just not knowledgeable about what's going on..people who live in glass houses...shouldn't throw stones....I'd prefer them to bite their lip, and think before they speak,. Because IF they truly are knowledgeable enough they would not speak on this topic, and I was raised catholic until I was old enough to decide what religion I wanted to grow up as,..however I sure do know I would not speak about someone who has passed away and whomever our higher up leads our heavens watching down on us all, don't they know his ears hear all,..??.. well I have to wonder when he's gone will he be raised above or GO TO HELL? JUST LIKE HE TOLD YOU TO GO..Ha, ha, he's definitely going to hell,..mark my word..lol...so now I expect something said back to me by him,..oh my feelings will be hurt....

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Re: cliff j (# 59)

Go to hell you say? Calling a deceased teenager names? You’re a poor excuse for a person but you are not human. You clearly are an addict. By saying you’re still here .....for now, is because you know what you’re doing. Your not a kid. To blame them, call me a satanist, saying he’s scum bounces right off me into you. For you are the one suffering and you are the godless one. I love my faith and go to church 3 times a week. So beautiful and a good feeling that I put my trust in God, not doctors. And for you to blame addicted kids is beyond F stupid. You’re the only one. Every other smart person knows it’s the doctors who have been warned by the AMA not to give out the drugs. Addiction is a disease. My nephew did not start with a doctor. I don’t owe you anything. Feel sorry for you that you have to get help. You’re very angry and are struggling with your addiction. You need not come on here to yell at me and make fun of my dead nephew because you don’t have you’re 30 mg 20 times a day drug. Kids may experiment, but adults like you who know better, should have more of a grip on things. Have a nice day. I have always advocated kids and addiction, we have over 500 people who walk for addiction in his name. I do what I can do. You just well, sit on your ass and complain.

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Re: Bella (# 58)

Your sorry ass nephew taking drugs unknown to him is what has got the chronic pain patient in so much crap. He od’s and every legal pain patient pays the price. The authorities cannot get him for his illicit drug use so they attack innocent people. Go Away!!! You are a pariah and a complete jerk. You want to be codependent with a sorry lowlife illicit drug addict. He is dead because he ingested an unknown substance. Case closed. You make excuses for him. I am alive and he is dead. Seems like justice to me. I am sick of reading your ascerbic posts. You are a satan worshipper and NOT any decent person or Catholic. Find someone else to be codependent with. Your sorry lowlife nephew is dead and real chronic pain patients have had to pay the price of his sorry legacy. I have ignored your insanity for long enough. I have avoided you because you are an ascerbic person now go away and stay away.

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Re: cliff j (# 55)

There is one thing I agree with this post and that is there is no opioid crisis. There is a Heroin/Fentanyl crisis. But liberal mayors need to say opioids. There are just so many ignorant people on here waiting to get their pain medication then calling kids junkies. I laugh at that because the ones who are calling them junkies are the same ones who themselves are. WATCH WHAT YOU SAY about kids being addicted. Or are you too high to understand? YOU HAVE STARTED THE CYCLE HERE BY SAYING THE KIDS WANT TO DIE. Read the nasty posts then read the compassionate ones. The compassionate ones are the ones who need their meds and are not angry. The angry talking s*** about blaming kids is so utterly ridiculous I can’t even comment. See once you all started that pill you all became an addict and for a good reason called pain. So your pain is no different from my nephew's pain, emotional pain is debilitating. Let that sink in and stop being so angry that’s a dead give away.

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Re: RosalieMBo (# 52)

Is that a threat? Another rant you just can’t control yourself can you. And you wonder why. Girl bye.

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Re: cliff j (# 55)

It used to be called Heroin Addiction. When I lost access to all of its cousins, I tried to find it. But a grandmother is not going to be trusted or told where to find it. So I have had to do other things most of which has cost more money than I could ever afford. I no longer even shop at thrift stores for myself. I have no right to expect the comfort of a properly fitting pair of used shorts when I have jeopardized my families ability to keep housing and food. We are a couple of years away from Social Security. Not that those funds will be much help. We have to sell our house so that we can maintain some kind of life.

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Re: Michelle (# 54)

Everytime I hear the term “opioid crisis” it makes me want to puke. Every overdose by some junkie is attributed to some “opioid crisis”. Once I read a story on a college student that, according to the story, had copious amounts of cocaine in his system. And no “opioids” whatsoever on the toxicology report. What do you think the headline to the story was. “Promising college student dies at the hands of the “opioid crisis”. This is bulls***. It was COCAINE that killed this guy NOT “opioids”. And it was by his own hands that he died. If he had not done illicit drugs in the first place he would still be alive. MOST of the deaths attributed to “opioids” are at the hands of street drug addicts, thieves that steal their drugs from their relatives, and thieves that steal their drugs by doing Pharmacy holdups. Who is being punished? Chronic pain patients. These people go to Doctors, are examined, have a history, have been through step therapy, and have a legal prescription but yet they are blamed. Absolutely ridiculous.

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For the 10 thousandth time, someone, possibly this Maryland person, created the "Opined Crisis". The motive was likely to harm OxyContin and it's makers, but it went far beyond that goal. Instead it harmed tens of thousands, probably millions, of law abiding, American citizens most of whom had no interest in misusing drugs. Rather these people were prescribed this or similar cousin drugs for one purpose: to reduce intractable and constant pain. The vast majority of people living in pain do not get high from these drugs. The drugs work to reduce pain such that they might live a semblance of a life. Instead we live in desperate agony searching for relief. We look everywhere including in the world of illegal drugs such as Morphine. I have looked. But a 62 year woman is not likely to even know where to find such things. So we suffer. We are housebound, desperate and in agony.

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Sorry not and never would be an addict, I’m too smart for that otherwise I’d be writing posts such as yourself. Have a Blessed day.

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Re: Bella (# 51)

Bella, You really need to put a lid on your nasty mouth! You never know a lot of things, you never know what your mouth and your addiction to opening it inappropriately will bring you, so watch yourself and those words... Any like them, let me make this very clear, very clear, don’t you ever come at me with them again, EVER!! Don’t bother calling yourself a Catholic either, and if you don’t like anything I say keep your Uneducated and uninvolved mouth shut because I didn’t speak to you as though you were the center of the, certainly not my universe, I spoke to a subject matter which is what a forum and this chat is. Like I said your addiction is evolved around your own self-centered crap and I’m not interested in you but the issues discussed here! It’s like I already said your addiction is evolved around you, all self-centered crap and I’m not interested in you but in the genuine issues at hand. Pay attention and perhaps a neuron or two might fire at the synapse that tells you there is an ISSUE that needs attending that affects a lot of people!!!!!

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Re: RosalieMBo (# 49)

I think you need a Xanax. Not interested in this unhinged rant.

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Re: Bella (# 31)

Perhaps I just chimed in but what I read, as a catholic, and you admitting that you’re a catholic and you just said in writing that another human being‘s birth was accidental!! For a catholic those words are abominations and should never be spoken regarding the gift of life that your god has given, because you’re in a little a twist that is purely a self-centered one and you say something like that I am ashamed that you put it in this category of suffering as humans, and utilize the words of the young and the experimental thing that they(and we were once them) and if I’m not mistaken you’ve lost a nephew and I am very very saddened by that loss for you, but also remember that in the 40s 30s 50s the whole music or entertainment industry, as the public form viewed it they the press and made note of what was clearly noticeable because it was obvious as the public viewed it, which came from somewhere call the whole private world of drug abuse that had nothing to do with perdue and oxycontin or oxycodone or all the theories in the world about how these hop heads came to be, and the vets returning from war who were so unfortunate at the time, and the creator of methadone who actually cried because he knew what a nightmare he had created in that drug which ‘helped’ so many become rich today as they became the control form of delivery options so there would be no abuse of that at incredible numbers per dose! Who worried about our young killing the most incredible thing, fighting for our freedom and that I don’t want to get near, who had no choice in their treatment if they were lucky enough to come home at all or hadn’t been shot or blown up, in pieces is how they came back... If they were lucky the pain was not physical but in their minds, and there was no treatment for that but experiments, those in physical pain were given lots of drugs, or were in places where they didn’t want to think about what they were there for and what they were doing and who gave a damn and did wind up in an opium den, who do we blame for all of it, if they attempted to get off it, call when what was there to help, and what were the alternatives? Who worried about our boys, so young.... The morphine that they were living on and what it created in terms of the need for alternatives? I remember and I am a true senior, the words that my mother was raised on, like if you ever tried smoking cannabis and then become what was visible only clearly in the entertainment industry which assured you of becoming heroin addict!

People aren’t comfortable with themselves, that’s simply a part of growing up from that adolescent stage of uncomfortability and uncertainty, the changes whether bodily, emotionally, mentally and what you’re going to do for the rest of your life and where you’re going and how you’re changing and something just might change just enough for you to try something so you‘d feel better and it might even come from your doctor, and if not what if your good and decent friend gave you something to concentrate more in school or to relax a little more and these are all good little students in that uncomfortable adolescent state what begins to happen there as they find and want something to feel a little better. Perhaps new and different and they try it and it doesn’t mean that it was prescribed to try it, for pain issues and if you’re lucky enough to be someone who lives long enough, example being in the hospital having surgery anything of that nature and let’s not forget that if you’re lucky enough to get to a certain age it would be really one of the unusual statistics if you didn’t have something that left you in pain, and half the time the surgery to repair or fix a problem has created horrors in the lives of people in the hopes of relieving pain only creating it tenfold and what of those people, what of the lack of thought that people who are now our young people will become one day and what happens now will effect them forever in the future?! But I really want to say as a catholic I have never heard anyone say that horrible things you said regarding this great gift of life things like pain can make you forget, but to hear you say to someone that ‘their birth was a mistake’....!!! Holy macarel that is one thing I wouldn’t believe a catholic would even conceive of much less say to another human being. I will pray for you, as I know how much it hurts and what you feel like saying or thinking, but not against the beautiful gift of life no matter how many screw ups fit the bill or criteria as a human being. For me you don’t think there are moments when I feel that no good deed goes on punished as I am disappearing all my muscle tissue is just gone as a bodybuilder I lost 46 pounds in a month more than 1/3 my body weight and I’m here for years later wondering what god wants for me as it’s terrifying, but what I did on 9/11 wasn’t for me so what do I feel? It’s not what I feel it’s what I do to correct what I feel feel as it can be pretty bad since people do very selfish in horrible things to someone who is disabled, since greed is an evil foe and the trail is all I know for these past four years and feeling like a throwaway by the medical community doesn’t help at all, and asking for help to find out why this is happening goes unheard, tell me what I should feel?

Not very easy to live with feelings most of the time as well as pain most of the time and isolation is the worst all of the time, the easiest and the only thing that makes sense is that something must be wrong with me if nobody cares about me now. And for me, I went to detox right after seven surgeries not to ever be a part of that world, prescription drugs for pain,only to lose after dying and a heart attack and my lungs are filled with nodules chillers tumors, bronchiectasis, copd and asthma which prevented me from working out and keeping a strong body to support the things that were in pain helping not to have it overcome me and that’s all before my neck and back issues, so, am I a throwaway? Is my birth a mistake too? I can feel things like that but no one else has the right, and not even me with the gift of life I’ve been given and it doesn’t feel like it most of the time but it is a gift and what I do with it is what truly matters and determines the character I’ve developed over all this time, but watching deterioration, even may lose my home as no one is there to help and then my property taxes went up over $1000 a month with no help and my income does not meet my mortgage plus and one of the utilities that has threatened to close and they did close my gas is soon as I came back since my house did not sell and I am trying to get the help I need with an issue that new york city has that may put me in the street with the one 875 credit rating that’s in the crapper now in one year, and people stolen every penny I’ve had having to borrow from humans for the first time in my life at this the worst time of my life but I cannot do much is really a travesty and sometimes I feel fully ashamed of my fellow man who really does not care and somehow that does not seem to be getting better here in this world around us and I grew up here, so I do know the difference the computer and social media age has made and how sad these millenials seem to be and what they have to look forward to....But for the seniors of the world, and blaming perdue for everything that had started so many years ago that it’s an absolute impossibility! Let us have our integrity for a last moments, and some quality of life so we are being punished for everyone else’s decisions as pain is debilitating and restrictive of mind and body, leaving us to be nothing, leaving us to wait for nothing and have no value in this life where the experiences of the elderly are the ones that really provide the wisdom and the knowledge of history and a true experience of history, and perhaps a vision of a tomorrow!

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Re: cliff j (# 37)

Some people take street drugs, very true,. However they probably took medication from a doctor and then some times if you run out they may know someone on the street to get them street drugs..now I'm more less speaking about me kinda, because back in the late 80s it was very easy to get opioids from a doctor and many doctors at the same time, also very easy to fill several scripts at a time...that was me here in southwest Florida when all these pain management doctors were on every corner with pharmacy's attached.. with a boatload of cars and vans from out of town coming to the area,..so I was one of these guys who started the so called opioid epidemic..now in 2005 I finally found help....back then I don't know if I was addicted or dependent upon opioids...because I actually started pain management for real pain that I still suffer from today..I'm not at all proud of my behavior, but I'm 59years old and a lot wiser, I still cannot believe I did everything I did just to get my hands on a brand new bottle of pills...

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Re: ThunderHeart (# 47)

I’m sensitive as well as all know my nephew is dead from overdose not by his own hand but because there is no help for the addicted kids. I just can’t figure out how others blame kids for their own addictions to pain meds. My nephew did not cause your or anyone else’s problems. It’s the doctors who were giving out the meds like candy for the money. And besides he didn’t go to a doctor. He was in college and experimented. He use to cry to me for help I put him in California and Florida. They never did anything to help him he just got beat up. He has great parents til this day his mother is not the same and wants to be with him. It’s awful how mature adults blame a kid for their problems, when in fact they need look in the mirror as some here have been on pain meds rather large amounts for years! Comes a time when either surgery or something else needs to be in place. For all you haters who are very angry you can’t feel high anymore... look in the mirror at your own addictions and for those who have legitimate pain, don’t blame street kids for it... blame the crooked doctors and the Big Pharma. I’m done defending a kid whose no longer here, unless it happened to you you’ll never get it. All need to blame someone except themselves.

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Re: ThunderHeart (# 46)

I apologize Bella. I'm so sensitive on this subject I think I misunderstood what you meant now that I've thought about it. You are right. It did feel like withdrawals. They are not making the medicines effective any more. It was horrible feeling this way!! Its not right big pharm is being allowed to do this.

Again please accept my apologies for my misunderstanding your comment. By itself it could be taken different ways. No disrespect.

Sincerely,
ThunderHeart

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Re: Bella (# 44)

You are so far out in left field to say such an ugly thing!!

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