Attorney General: Opioid makers have ‘blood on their hands’

addiction recovery ebulletin blood on hands

Where the Bottom Line is a Corpse –

Sept. 14, 2019 – “This is what people need to know,” Boffetti went on: “Those companies are going to continue to operate, because it will take them years to wind them down, and they generate cash flow” — by some estimates, up to $1 billion a year. “And they propose that they can find ways to use that to defray costs, to pay for lawyers, to help sell those businesses,” he said. “They get to walk away with all the money they took out of the company running this opioid scheme and none of that money is being asked for them to pay back as a civil penalty. There was no pain; there was no penalty at all for what the Sacklers have done here.

“And it’s not unfair to say the Sackler family have blood on their hands for what they did, because countless people have died from a scheme that they created, that they put into place, that resulted in the excessive overprescribing of the use of opioids. Because they told doctors, and they told patients, that these drugs were safe and effective and non-addictive for chronic pain,” Boffetti said. “All of which they knew was false.” There’s more. The proposal also would set up a new company run by a trust that would continue to operate as a for-profit business; trustees would be nominated by the attorneys general, he said. “So tell me how the attorneys general should be in the position of having some say about running a drug company … which is producing the exact product that we think was so instrumental in causing the harm,” he said. And all of that is why New Hampshire won’t sign onto the deal, he said. “It’s not right for the people of New Hampshire. It’s not right and just, because the Sacklers basically get to benefit tremendously from this deal. So we said no.”