Today a federal judge is expected to certify Purdue Pharmaceutical’s bankruptcy plan – a $4.5 billion settlement between the company and thousands of state and municipal governments that have sued for damages related to the opioid epidemic. The settlement occurs more than two decades after Purdue began aggressively marketing OxyContin to an unsuspecting public and after more than 500,000 people died in the United States as a result.

Purdue will be bankrupt, but members of the multi-billionaire Sackler family – who were responsible for the decisions that led to these deaths and profited the most from Purdue’s opioid dealings – will gain near-total immunity from future litigation. By the time the settlement is paid out they most likely will be as wealthy as they ever were.

So where does personal responsibility come in?

Arthur M. Sackler made a fortune in the 1980s by being the first to directly market prescription drugs to physicians. Utilizing many of the same direct-marketing techniques, his brothers Mortimer and Raymond and nephews Richard and Jonathan, began pushing OxyContin, which had […]