Good. Just not good enough.

It looks like Purdue Pharma, the OxyContin pushers who pretty much single-handedly created the opioid crisis, has gotten its comeuppance. At least somewhat.

Earlier this week, they agreed to a settlement (worth $8.3 billion) with the Justice Department.

As part of the deal — the largest such settlement ever reached with a pharmaceutical company, officials said — Purdue Pharma agreed to plead guilty to three felonies. (Source: WaPo)

That's the good news. Sort of. Purdue, which has filed for bankruptcy, may not have the scratch to pay their fine. 

...[and] state authorities and families who have lost loved ones to their products said the Justice Department’s terms go easy on the Sacklers, the billionaire family that once ran the firm.

Massachusetts is one of the states that's none too happy with the settlement. Maura Healey, our AG, ain't having any. She had this to say:

"I am not done with Purdue and the Sacklers, and I will never sell out the families who have been calling for justice for so long.”

Massachusetts is not alone.

About 2,800 cities, counties, Native American tribes and other groups have sued drug retailers, distributors and manufacturers, including Purdue, in a mammoth case that has been consolidated before a federal court judge in Cleveland. Separately, most states have sued the company in their own courts, believing those venues give them a legal advantage. Those matters are distinct from the federal settlement announced Wednesday and remain ongoing.

Hopefully, the bankruptcy doesn't fully shield Purdue. Or the Sacklers, for that matter.

Just what did Purdue Pharma do? Why, they were front and center when it came to creating:

...the widespread problem of overprescribing, diverting, and abusing pain pills [which] raged across America while drug manufacturers, distributors, pharmacists, and doctors profited from the problem and largely deflected responsibility.

The Sacklers benefited quite nicely from Oxy-Contin. The family is worth $13B. And while they weren't going door-to-door to push pills to physicians, or hiding information about just how addictive OxyContin is, they were plenty involved. Now, from their lofty perch as rich folks/philanthropists, they're pointing their fingers down the food chain at Purdue Pharma lower echelon employees, back in the day they were exerting plenty of pressure from their board-level positions as directors to rev up financial results. Among other things, a bunch of the Sacklers:

...approved a new marketing plan called “Evolve to Excellence” in which “Purdue sales representatives intensified their marketing of OxyContin to extreme, high-volume prescribers who were already writing ’25 times as many OxyContin scripts’ as their peers,” the Justice Department said.

Those efforts directly led to uses of the addictive tablets that were “unsafe, ineffective, and medically unnecessary, and that often led to abuse and diversion,’’ the government said.

Throughout, Purdue Pharma marketing downplayed the addictive properties of Oxy. Which worked out fine for them, but not so fine for those taking their pills.

And, of course, those with sports injuries, accidents, chronic pain, were a more lucrative (i.e., far larger) market than those taking strong drugs to cope with cancer-related pain. 

So far, the family has contributed $3B towards a settlement, and they're hoping that will do it. 

Not good enough.

I can't imagine what families go through when someone they love - their child, their brother, their aunt, their parent - is hooked on opioids. For a lot of them, the addiction started out innocently enough. A sports industry. An accident. A little something for the pain. OxyContin is addictive, a gateway drug to heroin, fentanyl. 

I think it's good that Purdue has at least agreed that, at least on a few counts, they're guilty as charged. Just not good enough.

As for the Sacklers, they're probably shaking in their designer boots. For years, they no doubt congratulated themselves that because the company that made them rich didn't have the Sackler name in it, no one would associate their family with the death and destruction of so many other families. They don't need to be stripped of every last penny. Still, they need to 'fess up and pony up.

$8.3 billion is something. But over the last 20 years, over 700,000 Americans died of a drug overdose. No, not all of them died because of Purdue Pharma's OxyContin. Even if it's "only" 222,000 folks - the number who've died due to COVD - that $8.3 billion is less than $40K per capita. 

Just not good enough.