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Shortly before the U.S. Supreme Court considered an amoral deal that would give the notorious Sackler family immunity from lawsuits that target their leading role in the opioid epidemic, Illinois made a frustrating announcement.
The state said it has earmarked $3 million to recruit and retain substance-abuse counselors, who are in desperately short supply because of retirements and burnout.
We’re pleased to see Illinois take action to fight opioids, but $3 million? Seriously?
That works out to less than $1,000 for each fatal overdose that state residents suffer every year, not to mention the thousands of Illinois addicts in desperate need of treatment and support before they, too, succumb to this lethal plague. And don’t forget the many in recovery, still at risk of relapse.
The drop in the ocean that Illinois is setting aside for the training of counselors points to the dilemma that the high-court justices wrestled with earlier this month.
As this page has previously noted, the Sacklers made billions off the epidemic, pumping out prescription opioid pills by the bushel. As the death toll grew, the Sacklers stripped more than $10 billion from their company, Purdue Pharma, and stashed the dirty money in trusts overseas.
They put the remaining shell of the company into bankruptcy and eventually agreed to pay $6 billion to their victims, but only in exchange for sweeping protection from all related legal claims. Under the proposed settlement, no one in the family was required to file for personal bankruptcy. Instead, the Sacklers could walk off with billions and no worries about being held accountable in other courts.
How accountable could they be? During the Supreme Court arguments, a lawyer for Purdue’s creditors pegged the estimated value of all related claims at a mind-boggling $40 trillion, so $6 billion is practically nothing in relation to the potential monetary value of the damage done.
Counterintuitively, the lawyer who cited that number was arguing in favor of the Sackler’s sweetheart accommodation: The family has walled off its money thoroughly, and the relatively small amount that could be pried loose minus the Sackler’s cooperation would be gone in no time, he argued. So, most victims would be unlikely to recover anything without those responsible being given the free pass they’re demanding.
The justices peppered the lawyers with questions indicating they were struggling to arrive at a decision: Do they bless an unjust arrangement, taking away the due-process rights of those who would otherwise sue the Sacklers separately? Or do they reject a settlement that most of the parties want — and potentially lose out on $6 billion that would help Illinois and other states put more resources into helping addicts?
Anyone who thinks the answer is to take the money and run should carefully consider the alarming course of the epidemic, which just keeps getting worse.
It all started with individuals being hooked on opioids that were prescribed for them, most famously the OxyContin that Purdue recklessly marketed to mostly unwitting physicians. As the Sacklers wrung every penny they could from their company, and prescription opioids became more expensive and harder to obtain, those addicts increasingly fed their habits with illegal street drugs — first heroin and, later, the dangerous synthetic opioid known as fentanyl.
The toll has been shocking: Promising lives snuffed out, families torn apart, newborn babies going through the agony of withdrawal, addicts driven to crime to pay for their fixes, with Chinese and Mexican traffickers replacing Purdue and other pharma companies as suppliers.
Chicago Tribune Opinion
In Illinois, the epidemic has contributed, and still contributes, to homelessness, joblessness, lawlessness, truancy and a crushing public health burden that manifests in a lack of access to quality care and prevention for addiction. Conditions would be even worse were it not for the Affordable Care Act, which enables states to expand Medicaid coverage and requires private insurers to cover addiction treatment.
Still, the toll is mounting. Illinois recorded 1,072 opioid-related deaths in 2013, with the number rising to 2,167 in 2018 and 3,261 in 2022. Of that latest figure, almost three-fourths were men, and the Rockford area, the state’s largest city outside of the Chicago metro area, was especially hard hit.
At least 14 other companies so far have taken greater monetary responsibility than Purdue for this public-health disaster. Johnson & Johnson, along with three big pharmaceutical distributors, put up $26 billion in a historic national settlement agreement. CVS, Walgreens and Walmart will pay more than $13 billion for the role their pharmacies played in filling the prescriptions.
The Sacklers have denied they engineered the opioid epidemic, blamed the Tribune Editorial Board and other media for distorting their actions and claimed their $6 billion offer represents the amount they took from the company, minus taxes. (Don’t ask about their no-doubt-enormous investment gains during the many years they’ve held the money).
Yes, Illinois could put Sackler cash to good use. But we hope that in the interest of justice and human decency, the Supreme Court gives a unanimous thumbs-down to the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy scheme.
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