They say even a stopped clock is right twice a day. About the only thing I can think of that explains today's ruling by the Supreme Court but I'll take it where I can get it. The berobed high priests and priestesses of constitution-ness found that a 'liability shield' for the billionaire family in no small part responsible for the opioid epidemic here was more than even they could explain away.
May Allah have mercy on the Sacklers, for I shall have none. The Sackler family controls Purdue Pharma, which used a bunch of shady shenanigans to bring OxyContin, the infamous hillbilly heroin, to market. Going full capitalism, they marketed a potent opioid as having a low potential for abuse and then pushed (bribed?) nurses and doctors to prescribe it for a much wider range of conditions because of its low risk.
A nasty snowboarding accident in college led to my introduction to OxyContin, and I quickly joined a multitude of others who discovered that it didn't live up to its billing. It proved to be highly addictive and both my and the country's opioid problem spiraled quickly. An aversion to needles was a good enough excuse for me to make an early exit from the spiral but the country's problem has only continued to spiral.
Most of the people I knew in those days are either dead or in prison now. Meanwhile, Purdue Pharma (with the profits going directly to the Sacklers) has netted more than 35 billion USD from OxyContin alone. Once the evidence of their malfeasance and the lawsuits started piling up, they worked out a sweetheart settlement which involved them giving the states that had persecuted and prosecuted the people directly harmed by their products a few billion in exchange for being shielded from any further liability for their actions.
It was that sweetheart deal that was today pitched in pieces by the Supreme Court from their ivory tower. "Thou shalt try again!" This thing is going into extra innings but at least they won't be able to dodge accountability quite so easily. Personally, I don't want their blood money, just wish they could experience some small fraction of the misery they so wantonly inflicted. Does that count as cruel and unusual? I'm ranting past my bedtime, probably a good time to wrap this up. Look after one another y'all, we're all we got.
