How The Greatest Pharma Scandal in HISTORY Ruined MILLIONS of Lives

You're listening to an Air Wave Media Podcast. Hi, I'm Cassidy, and I'm April, and together we are fashion historians, friends, and co-hosts of Dress, the history of fashion, a podcast about why the clothes we wear matter throughout history and around the world. From the cultural and societal to the personal and often political, with each episode we explore the multitude of meanings quite literally sewn into the clothes we wear. Please join us in unraveling the hidden histories residing in your closet. New episodes are available on Wednesdays and our Dressed Classic episodes re-air each Friday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else to listen to your favorite shows. Oh, hello, my friends. Like are you here? And I'm Gabby. And welcome back to the podcast, my host. Oh dear God, yeah, I do formally want to apologize. I know from the previous episode, those of you who are watching on YouTube that the episode was going out late, and I do. Yeah, but we've hired an assistant, we've restructured things in order to make sure that that doesn't really happen. So we have dedicated research, dedicated editing, dedicated admin because we had a period last year, if you guys have been like around for the last year, we're all of last January or last December, we recorded episodes. I mean, like exhausted late at night, recorded episodes, and he never hit post. Yes, that has happened. And so someone message him, I was like, Hey, are you guys on a break? And we're like, no, we've recorded an episode every single week. He didn't post them. So anyway, we have someone who will post them now because he is a little bit tired. And I do apologize yet yesterday, we literally just did a 10 hour drive back from Pennsylvania where we were filming history unhinged, which you guys have seen that show. Definitely go and check it. It's there on YouTube. And Gabby, you were playing for me a lot of varying different video documentary things on medical scandals. Yeah. He had never heard of Philidamide or Viox. And of course, I was like, I have some treat for you, but like not really a treat. We're like a horrified rabbit hole. Which it is. It absolutely is. And well, that is what gave rise to this episode, which is on Purdue. Purdue Farma. I know from me even saying that in the beginning, and you probably seen from the title, I am probably going to make a lot of enemies from this episode. Well, I say a lot of enemies, technically speaking, Purdue Farma doesn't exist anymore. Technically on a technicality, a little bit of a spoiler there. Did they just like rebrand? Sort of. It's more so that the company as it was just got completely restructured into something else. And again, we will get to that. It's a little bit of a spoiler for me saying it, but you need to understand just how bad it is for what was arguably one of the largest and most powerful pharmaceutical companies on earth that this happened to. Was this bigger than Merck? I think it was. That was in charge of fire. Yes. But Merck was what, $4.5 billion, I think that they had for their settlement. Merck was American, right? Yes. Because I remember Thalidomide. Thalidomide, I mean, was German. Or really? Yeah. Thalidomide was originally German. Merck was, it's funny. A lot of those companies had like multinationals. They had a research in different places. Well, yeah. But when you hear of something happening with pharmaceuticals, this is where it's both. How do I even explain this? This is something to wear when people talk about the evil American pharmaceutical companies. It is because the American pharmaceutical companies are usually, usually nine times out of 10 if something is being made or developed or studied. It's happening in America. That is where the majority of research and innovation actually comes from. It also means that's where the majority of scandals come from. Then why didn't we come up with GLP ones, Ozanpek? People have been researching. Again, nine times out of 10. That's the one. That's the one. And now that one company is responsible for like all of Denmark's GDP at this point. Yeah. I'm like, they have crushed it. Though again, just like what you told me with the scandals of the day for back, and this is what I'm going to say regarding pharmaceutical scandals and people who say, trust the science or believe in the science. Yes, normally you should, but you should always have at least a healthy, and I'm saying that with the caveat, healthy amount of skepticism to not just blindly 100% believe things, because every single time in history that we have said, ah, yes, we live in the modern day and age. It is the greatest, most advanced time in all of human history. And we know exactly how these things work. Trust the science. Trust the medicine. And then 10, 15, 20 years later, something comes out where it's like, oh my God, we were doing something horrible there. Well, remember with Viox, there was an active problem that the scientists were trying to solve like the heart attack issue. Yep. But then the marketing team was not, I don't know if they were, and the marketing team was saying something completely different. Oh, this is pushing it through anyway. So this is going to be part of the same thing. Exactly. So you could trust the science, but do we trust the marketing? Yes. And also that's the thing that needs to be specified. That's why I say healthy skepticism. It's not necessarily the science. It's the grand promises that people make. Right. And especially like, I guess there's a certain level of ethics, but that's a whole ethical moral issue where people know the science and they know the risks and then they continue on. I don't know. It's interesting. Well, they do, especially when massive amounts of money are involved. When I say massive, this is what we were talking about. This is the biggest pharmaceutical scandal in all of human history. But yet outright is this is the thing that resulted in, we're not talking millions of dollars. We are talking billions upon billions of dollars. And that is even an understatement from what probably should have happened. And that is the issue. We are talking about Purdue, Farma and OxyContin, which, yeah, this one is going to be spicy. The opioid crisis. The opioid crisis. Exactly. Now, pre-warning, for those of you who may be a bit disturbed by some of the things that we're going to be talking about, I am not going to be going into extensive issues with addiction and how it absolutely destroyed millions of families across the United States and arguably from that across the world. But we are going to be describing very frustrating things that are going to be heard about within the company. So this is going to be less on the biological side and more so the story of how all this went down. And look, when again, I am talking about this, right? Don't get me wrong. Modern medicine is actually something that is amazing. Prescription drugs are a thing that are a great relief to many, many people with light-threatening conditions. But sometimes the risk that is associated with a drug can outweigh its benefits. And this is something that could be hidden within, as we talked about, the very shiny walls of advertising and marketing. I absolutely, the most shocking thing when I moved to the US were those drug advertisements that I hated. You're watching I show on there like, anyway, this will treat neurologies, make us hotter talk, stroke, death. I think we are like one of two or three countries on earth where that is legal. It's wild. I would honestly rather sneeze than die, but do you remember I love Lucy? I think it was. Yeah, I loved I love Lucy. I watch every episode multiple times. I may be confusing it with another show. I remember there was an episode of it or something like it where she is brought onto a program to do an advertisement. Like that's the thing that she did the cough. And there was disgusting. There's no she kept making a face. And so she kept on doing it again and again and again and it turns out that culture have had like a lot of alcohol and other substances in it. So when she eventually just got like black out drunk and I guess at the same time off of it. And so it ruined the shoot and like that was the joke, but it's like, Hey, that's a real thing that could happen with medication. And when people are just taking it again and again, it's bad. So when we're going and talking about this with oxy cotton, this is a little bit different than what you would see among other things because it is actually derived of something significantly older. And I'm going to need to explain that because in the case of oxy cotton, this isn't about people necessarily doing something deliberately evil per se with something new. They had opioids forever. And this is something that all across human history for the past like 7,000 years, people have used opiates. It just got in this case significantly worse because instead of misleading people, people were outright lied to about the dangers. So do thing with opioids because when I said when we made that short the other day and I was talking about general anesthetic, I went like general anesthetic, like diethyl ether, like 1846 diethyl ether, not like the opioids that just like bind to receptors and brain. And because that would the diethyl ether would make you unconscious, right? Yes. But then with the opioids, it would just like bind to receptors in your brain and make you like a little happy. It blocks like pain, it activates through what that's why people get like addicted. Addicted. Yeah. And so what we're talking about here resulted in people becoming addicted, spawning the greatest opioid crisis in history outside of arguably the 19th century in China with the opium wars. But that's a completely different story for another day. Wait, how I'd done the opium wars? I might have. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not a scientist. I am just a historian when going in. So if there's anything that I mess up in terms of terminology, I do apply. Apologize. Now to begin, oxycoddon is not a new molecule. It's not like it's a brand new drug or anything like that. I need to go ahead and clarify this. This was simply a new delivery system for something that already existed. Oxycodon. And this is an opioid that was used to treat bodily pain that had been around since the early 1910s and was meant to replace some of the more addictive ones that existed like morphine and heroin. A little morphine as a treat. Yeah. Now what we're talking about opium, and I'm going to give a very brief history of this when describing it. The oldest trace of opium that we have goes back to like 7,000 years ago, which is really old, but it comes from the poppy flower, though, again, we don't need to go back that far. The important thing to note though is that the milky substance that is obtained from cutting into the opium capsule contains many alkaloids that have anesthetic and analgesic properties, which analgesic, this is a term that I actually had to look up, that just means it relieves pain. That's all it is. So when someone says it's an analgesic, it means it helps alleviate pain. That's all. So the primary compounds among these is morphine, which was the first one to really be discovered in the early 1800s, which is fine on its own. But the invention of the hypodermic syringe by Charles Gabriel Provas in 1850, this greatly facilitated the use of morphine because instead of it being smoked, you could inject it. So heroin, if they hadn't, they didn't have syringes. How are they doing heroin? You can smoke it. Smoke heroin? Yeah. That's shocking. And other times, if you would ingest, you would literally just mix it into a tincture. Like, as an example, the first things that would happen with cocaine, cocaine, you would like mix in water or other, or with alcohol and then drink it. Cocaine and alcohol? Yes. What do you think, Sigmund Freud was literally a co-cat? Wouldn't that strain your heart like an insane amount? Like, I just think back to everything, like two drinks in my heart is like, I need to do a history on miracle cures because that would actually be a great episode. Well, actually, you would feel like you were cured if you were on alcohol and cocaine. And I've talked about this before with mercury. One of the reasons why that in ancient China, they thought mercury was the substance of the gods and it could make you immortal was because even when you were really sick, one of the side effects of mercury poisoning is that it gives you a sense of euphoria and feeling alive and young again. So when you had these 50-year-old Chinese emperors that are taking mercury pills and it's like, "Wow, I feel so alive and young again." Yeah, that's one of the side effects is literally poisoning you and killing you from the inside. That's wild because after two drinks, I'm doing karaoke until 3am. So I couldn't imagine what I'd do. Yeah. So, the scientists go and develop morphine, but it becomes very quickly apparent just like in the case of opium, like just straight opium, that morphine is addictive. Go figure. But don't worry, my friends. Science is always advancing. And remember, we live in the current day and age at this time and they will surely come up with something that is far less addictive. So that's exactly what they did. In 1874, the Bayer Company, and yes, this is the company that makes aspirin for those of you who are curious about that, they invented something significantly better. Heroin. Yes, heroin was developed by the company that makes aspirin. That is indeed how that actually went down. Yeah. They quickly found that yes, this was far more potent than morphine. It was stronger, but at the same time, stronger also made it far more addictive. And it was, I think, the original purpose was they were trying to make it less addictive and they just made it worse. Yeah. Yes. Well, they were trying to make it less addictive. Yes. Okay. So the thing is, right, it's back to like the don't solve a problem that doesn't exist. If it's highly addictive, that's the problem, right? Like, we don't need to give it to people and then try to figure out how to make it less addictive. Like we can just leave it alone. Yeah, that's, I don't know. That's, that's the issue. So a few years later than in 1916, oxycodone was synthesized not in the United States, rather in Germany from the bane or the bane, the bane. This is another oxy. This is why I said I can't really pronounce the things here in the first place, but this is another alkaloid that is found in opium. And that is the thing that would eventually become oxycodone. From that later in 1928, the Merck company, which yes, that's the company from one of the videos that we watched the other day, they would introduce an injectable product called scophidal, which includes scoplamine, oxycodone, and effinedron. All in one, this was a very strong pain reliever. And as a result, it was highly used over the course of World War II for very obvious reasons. But still the whole opiate addiction thing was a bit of a problem. And so you didn't want to just put this out into the public. Eventually, the United States would classify oxycodone in 1970 under Nixon as a schedule to substance. And these are substances that the drug enforcement agency considers. And I quote, drugs with a high potential for abuse with use potentially leading to severe psychological or physical dependence and are also considered dangerous. And quote, yeah, governments around the world acknowledge that oxycodone could create health and addiction issues, but awareness didn't really spread all that much beyond policing in government bodies. Like, it wasn't a substance that was necessarily widely constantly being used by the public recreationally. And so it wasn't pushed very heavily, but everything changed when the oxycodone attacked. Yeah. So in order to be able to talk about this, and this is where I said, like, oh, I could potentially make a lot of enemies from this episode. The real story of oxycodone begins with the Sackler family, especially three brothers, Arthur Mortimer and Raymond Sackler, who were physicians and businessmen. So Arthur Sackler was a pioneer in pharmaceutical advertising and marketing. And he revolutionized how drugs were sold to doctors. Like I think he worked for a couple of companies over the course of like the 1950s and 60s. And this is the guy, like if you want to blame anyone for a lot of the marketing that we would have on television radio and more stuff for drugs, this is the guy you want to blame. Like he pioneered a lot of the stuff for getting sample drugs into doctors to try things, etc. He did a lot of this. So which year did he do that? He was doing this over the course like the 1950s and 60s. Oh, because you remember with Was it the little mind? Yes. In the 60s heading into the seven. Yes. Where they were sneaking in it. Like they were giving it as like a test drug. Yes. They didn't experimental or whatever. Investigative drug. And then viox. No, that one day was for selling. Yes. But the other one was like over the course of the 60s. I think it was the 50s, 60s. And then they stopped it in like 1970s, something. I think was what it was for the most part. Yeah, because they were trying to get physicians. I think it was one of them. They were trying to get the physicians a custom to prescribing it. So they just gave it out. Yeah. Exactly. Which like how is that? The rules were way more lax back in the day. That's wild. That's wild. So yeah, this guy died in 1987 before OxyContin ever existed. But his aggressive marketing philosophy is the thing that would basically establish the DNA passed down in his family for doing this stuff. That is how his relatives would then approach pharmaceutical sales. They would eventually go and buy a small company which would become Purdue pharma. And at the time here, this was a relatively modest pharmaceutical firm based in Stanford Connecticut that was, as I said, controlled by their family. And before OxyContin, the company had experienced a number of different opioid medications or had experimented with most notably MS content, which is a sustained release morphine tablet. Remember that. It's very important that we mentioned that here for MS content. Now MS content was a very significant revenue generator, but there was a bit of a problem. The patent that they had on it, which gave them exclusive rights to be able to produce it. It was set to expire in the late 1990s, which meant that okay, before the generics are able to come out, we really need to come up with a new product. And so because of this, Purdue scientists went and developed a controlled release formulation of OxyContin with the key innovation being from Purdue's content release delivery system. We had time released mechanism that was supposed to release OxyContin slowly over the course of 12 hours, thus providing sustained pain relief with allegedly because it was constant and lower fewer peaks and troughs than immediate release opioids. So you wouldn't really get a high off event, which then gave the name OxyContin. That's where that comes from. That's how that works. Which I gotta say, it's content. Everyone's just as OxyContin or Coton, but it's content. Who says Coton or Coton? Who said that? Okay. Every time I would hear someone talk about it here like OxyContin, not content. Oh, that's because you're from Kentucky. Exactly. It's the country accent where it almost like skips the end. I was listening to a girl like really Kentucky accent and I was like, wow, I just wow. Again, people oftentimes have wondered when it is that they meet me where I'm actually from. I lived 26 out of my 31 years in Kentucky. I turned 31 a couple days ago by the way, guys. That's all. Oh, how is it being a hunter gatherer, bro? Did you meet the dinosaurs? Did you own a pet, William Amit? How was it when you discovered fire? Were you mind blown? Those YouTube trap remixes were. Did you catch it from like of alcano? I was at lightning. But no, it's actually from eating horrible things and then my butt being so hot and the fire from the friction that it just. See, I got her to shut up that way. Oh my God. Listen, doesn't buddy. Listen, buddy. I know you're getting tired. We got to wrap this up so you can go lie down. I could use a nap, actually, because they stayed up late. I stayed up late in the first place writing this episode. That's the thing. She went to bed and then I got out of bed and then stayed up for another hour and a half writing. You turned 31 and all of a sudden you can't stay up all night? Dude, I work all the time constantly on different things. And you were 21. You would have been able to do that more. Okay, sure. So from here, then, my friends, Purdue would go and file its patent for the control release oxycodone formulation in the early 1990s and they submitted a new drug application and NDA to the FDA, which was approved in 1995. And I want to point out something here. This is like the first case of like, "Uh, uh, hold on. This is a little bit suspicious here." The FDA reviewer, a doctor by the name of Curtis Wright, would approve the label that included extraordinary language stating the delayed absorption of oxycodone was, and I quote, "believed to reduce the abuse liability," end quote, of the drug, compared to immediate release oxycodone. This claim became the foundation of Purdue's entire marketing strategy. Wright would leave the FDA shortly after this and guess where he went to work. For that Purdue. He went to work for Purdue. Okay, because I was about to ask, what did he base that claim off of? Because like, isn't FDA reviewer supposed to look at all of the studies very, very carefully? You know what I mean? Also, is it just one reviewer? Because remember, we watched that episode about the little mind. It was one reviewer. It was left to one reviewer. And she was the one. Yeah, I'm pretty sure at the time here, it had less peer review. It's not like I count. So I hope it's that count. So look, I haven't looked into the FDA. We should do an episode on the FDA. Should do an episode on the FDA. That would actually be a good idea. Yeah. I like that. I feel like they're doing their best, but like. Yeah. Like there's obviously problems, but believe it or not. When you're developing something new, it's a whole new, manner of regulation, because they couldn't just have people selling snakewale. It's going to have some hiccups. Yes. It's just unfortunate that a lot of the rules are in place because there were so many hiccups. And remember, the majority of new drugs and innovations and developments comes out of the United States, meaning the FDA is quite literally the thing that handles the majority of medical innovation in the world. Is that true? Yes. I just don't believe it. I'm not saying you're a liar, but I ain't saying you're a truiser. So it is by far the largest. It is by far. Also, if you guys, I hope you guys saw a Dracon Josh. I don't know. It's spherical. I always have them on my head. I mean, that makes a lot of sense. The FDA probably guys like so much pressure on them. Who would work there? Beard crats and some people who care, others who don't. As we can actually, that's the thing with scandals in the past. Are there rules in place to stop people from doing exactly that? I think there are now or at least there's things that could raise red flags about that. I don't, I need to go back and verify that. But when I'm going and describing this, even before 1995, when the stuff was actually approved, or was it approved in 1996, either way, before that, the action of an emails between people within the company raised some serious questions. So between June 15th, 1993 and April 15th, 1994, Purdue would conduct a clinical trial in elderly patients with osteoarthritis to test the safety and efficacy of oxycontin. It enrolled 133 patients, but only 63 of them actually completed the trial. About 82% of the patients had some sort of adverse event related to the treatment. But Purdue would conclude that the study, quote, demonstrated that controlled release oxy codon is safe and effective and logistic for the control of osteoarthritis-related pain. And quote, "Athritis?" Yes. And this is going to be extremely important as to why they're trying to prescribe this for just like arthritis and stuff. You'll see why. On December 29th, 1994, the sales and marketing executive Michael Friedman, who had later become Purdue CEO, would send a memo marked very confidential to three members of the Sackler family, including Richard, outlining the planned marketing strategy, saying, and I quote, "Our current MS content business has created a franchise with certain physicians who routinely write prescriptions for the drug. These family physicians, general physicians, and internists may be the bridge that we can use to expand the use of oxycontin beyond cancer patients to chronic non-malignant pain." And quote, "A market that he noted accounted for 68.7 million prescriptions a year." So I want to clarify this. Originally, these very strong opiates and whatnot like his specific oxycodon and like the original purpose of oxycontin was not for like general pain. This was for cancer treatments for people who were suffering from acute pain, not chronic pain. So actually, I should go on, I should look for this. My dad, back in New York, it had to be like 80s, maybe 70s, but he was part of a study at one of the hospitals there over the prescription of meds like these to people. Because they had really, really strict, it wasn't strict at that time, but they were getting stricter with it. So like obviously they knew and to be cautious. So like being comfortable for describing, that's wild. So the opioid epidemic, right? We have that in Kentucky. It's really bad. Yes, it is. It wasn't getting better. I don't know if it's getting better or worse, but it's a thing. Oh, oh, explain. Was it because of this? Yes. This is the company that spawned the opioid crisis. Because I didn't know a thing about opioids till I moved to Kentucky as like a 8, 17, 18 year old when I was like going to college and I bunch of my friends were like, they've lost parents. Yes. A lot of people died from this. Weirdly common in Kentucky. Someone's like, oh yeah, that happened to my boyfriend's dad or like my dad. It's like, it's wild. A lot of people died from this and what's what arguably sucks as well is that you're going to learn of the course of this. The actual timeline of oxy cotton is very short. Like this stuff was only really prominent for a period of about 10 years. And it did that much damage. Yes. And it's still doing that much damage. Yes. And then afterwards because of the addiction it created, we're going to go into it. It spawned even more issues because the problem is not necessarily like, oh, it's still something that people are just trying to get constantly now. It's that it created millions of addicts. That's the issue. And you're going to see this as we go on on March 31st, 1995 in the minutes of the marketing team meeting of the in just right before the launch of oxy cotton in the US, Purdue staff emphasized that the drug needs to be used for a broader range of pain patients and that twice daily dosing of oxy cotton is, and I quote, most important benefit and quote, it was reinforced that we do not want niche oxy cotton just for cancer pain. They wanted this shit everywhere. You have a pain, you suffer from arthritis, maybe you have like a little bit of a back issue oxy cotton. You don't need to have it from debilitating cancer. It can be used for anything. That is crazy. Yeah. And these guys damn well knew what they were doing. And this is where the scandal really actually begins because Purdue from this point would launch one of the most aggressive pharmaceutical marketing campaigns in history. They would spend over $200 million a year on just straight up advertising to advertise only oxy cotton. They had other products. They were spending $200 million a year advertising just this one pill. So remember when I had joy and they gave me percuss that yes. So percuss that is oxy codon oxy codon and I said I'm an infant. Yes. And that's usually what it was. So the thing with oxy codon and this was the thing that I was looking at for the research is that oxy codon was usually used as a small part of with another drug. It wasn't usually used on its own because of its strong addictive qualities. So that's how they would do it. This was thought oh well we can do oxy codon on its own full dose but it's going to be a slow release so you don't mix it with other stuff. That's crazy. Yeah. And even those percusses that they gave me I took one pill at the hospital after my C section was like how am I supposed to take care of a kid and take this pill and then I just took I be profan and toughed it out. I was like I'm never taking that again. And the stuff can be strong so what would happen here is that Purdue would deploy a massive sales force eventually numbering over 1000 representatives for the company to go and visit doctor's offices all over the country. The sales reps would use sophisticated data tools to identify the highest opioid prescribers in each region and then they would target those specifically. Like if you had a place where it's like oh hey here's a place that a higher number of opiates are being used on average they would go there specifically first and then focus a lot of their efforts on it. And the company would then push for physicians to prescribe oxy cotton not just for cancer patients but as I said for literally everyone if you had back pain if you had knee pain if you had arthritis injuries. Any other common conditions they would want to give this to you it was a rapid explosion of the opioid market. They leaned heavily in this time on the claim that addiction risk for opioids was extremely low and this was something that was good to treat pain. They frequently would cite a brief 1980 letter to the editor in the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Herschel Jic who noted that among nearly 12,000 hospitalized patients who received opioids only four developed what they would call addiction. This one paragraph letter mind you this is not a study this was never peer reviewed there was never anything like this they pulled a letter that a doctor wrote to the New England Medical Journal and was like yeah we're going to run with this and they would then use an excerpt of that letter showing a less than 1% claim to say that the people who would use the product less than 1% would get addicted. So they didn't do any studies of their own. Yes, they did that was one of the things in 1993 that I talked about here and it showed 60 something percent who had adverse effects. Oh, so they're just lying. That's why I'm asking because I can't imagine just doing that. But I guess you know what is it that they say about what happens when you tell a lie often enough that you start to believe it yourself. Yeah, they gaslighted themselves. They gaslighted themselves into there. They would stand by this product until the very fricking end and Purdue would drown the world here with its promotional tactics and pills. I mean, we're talking anything and everything that Purdue could do to get the name of oxycotton out there. They would do they use oxycotton branded hats stuffed animals, fishing hats, music CDs, all kinds of swag were just given out everywhere. Doctors were given seven to 30 day free supply coupons for patients to try oxycotton at no cost. Literally, they gave away their pills for free in the beginning, which I got to say, for anyone who's curious about this, if this sounds a little bit suspicious for like why is an example, you know, with illegal drugs dealers sometimes go to parties and then give out small samples of their stuff. So it is that they can get people addicted and come back to them and buy stuff. This is literally a tactic straight out of a drug dealer playbook. Like this. I can't be more blatant about this. Like it's it's it's that obvious. They gave people a taste for free. Did they take this out of that one rule book if that one opioid war? Yeah, I mean, that was a thing is like once you get people addicted, there's a market and the market will just keep on growing until the people die. Did they make a lot of money over this? I just see them so. Oh my God. So I'm going to settle man matched. I'm going to go into this later. Never is. Do you remember the term the blockbuster when it comes to pills like for pharmaceuticals? No, I know blockbuster when it comes to movies. Okay. So a blockbuster if I recall correctly is supposed to be anything that's over $200 million to spend on the budget, I think. I think that's what that is. In pharmaceutical terms, a blockbuster is a product that makes over a billion dollars. And this did that. It made over a million dollars, a billion dollars annually. Wow. Every single freaking year. And that's actually putting it mildly. I think from the study for what ended up happening, they beat their sales target for the year four months early when they were initially doing this. How you look really sexy. Really? Yeah, you do. Really? Yeah, you do. Nice. So they would give out all these pills for free. They would sponsor thousands of pain management seminars and conferences at resorts where it was all expenses paid. They would just pay to fly doctors and stuff out to these seminars where they would harp on and on and on about pain in America and about how opiates were being under prescribed and that concerns of addiction were actually overblown. They would hire prominent physicians to come in as speakers and advocates, which would lend credibility to their message. And it created this atmosphere in the early 2000s of the United States that pain was something that was actually a major problem that you had a right to have addressed. Like if you were in pain, you had a right to get that fixed instead of it, you know, potentially having your other health aspects be prioritized. So to increase demand, Purdue would support and amplify the movement to make pain assessment a routine vital sign alongside temperature, pulse, respiration and blood pressure. So you know when they would do this and they go, it's like, oh, are you in pain? Yes. What's the scale of your pain from a one through 10? They heavily pushed for that to be included in just standard procedure of medicine. Yeah. But how do people self, because everybody has a different level of pain. So is it just your idea of how much a 10 would hurt most of the time? I think I've ever felt a level 10 pain. Yes. Yes. Have I? No, I haven't felt a level 10 pain and I got cut open. Yeah. Crazy work. Yeah. I think in my mind, I can't remember. There is a scale that they actually use now in order to be able to talk about the levels of pain that people are in and what it typically means. I think that if you are in level 10 pain, you're not even capable of speaking. It's just like, like, basically scream like you, you, it's taking everything from you for that pain. I think that that's what it is, though I may be speaking out my ass when I actually say that. So organizations like the American Pain Society and the Joint Commission would adopt this framework and would pressure health care systems to aggressively treat pain, which in practice, you know what that means? If you, you know how to treat pain, you prescribe more opioids. As one does. But here's the thing. For a chronic leg, it was arthritis, right? Yeah. Arthritis is one of the things that we do. Back pain, knee pain, osteoporosis, not osteoporosis, but like osteoarthritis, etc. All of it. It's annoying enough that if somebody was like, here you go, because you know. Yes. No, it's completely understandable why people jumped in. It's like when I'm running regularly and I have those like stupid splints, I'd be like, sure, I'll take a miracle, Doug. Dap me up, bro. The thing is though, remember what you're saying like, hey, did they know that all this was actually kind of bullshit? Yeah. Yeah, they did. Internal Purdue documents, because remember, a lot of the stuff ended up going into court. Later revealed through litigation that showed that the company was aware of a number of very significant problems. The big one, and this is something they refused to ever do anything for, they knew that the 12-hour dosing, because remember, it was that slow release capsule that over the course of 12 hours is supposed to do this. Their 12-hour formula did not actually last 12 hours. Oftentimes it was running out between six to eight hours. So did people just take more? That's the thing. That's the thing. So they were like, okay, well, we could reformulate it so that you're actually supposed to take it three times a day in like six to eight hour increments. You could do that. And that would be arguably safer. It's like those pills that are like, take as often as needed. It's not really pills, but no time medicine. That was got me, because I'm like, sure. Yeah. So in their case, because they would save for this after 12 hours, this would drive patients to experience withdrawal symptoms faster, which would drive them to escalate the amount of pills that they were taking in more frequent use. But rather than reformulating it in order to be able to fix this issue, because remember, their marketing, one of the cornerstones of their entire marketing plan was, it's a 12-hour system. You don't need anything else. It's just 12 hours. Well, also the 12 hours was important because the whole point of the slow release was why it was less addictive. So if it was all of a sudden no longer a really slow release, then the whole basis just collapsed. So rather than reformulating or recommending shorter dosing intervals, which would undermine OxyCotin's competitive advantage, Purdue would instruct sales reps to recommend increasing the dose rather than the frequency. So remember, remember, it still would expire before that 12 hours, but you just took a stronger amount. So that stronger amount creates a stronger peak, but then it expires at the same time. That's just not great. Yeah. I'll be honest. It's not good. Yeah. From the beginning, they were receiving a number of reports of abuse, diversion and addiction from the field immediately after launch. And what do they do? They ignored it. From the addiction. They ignored the addiction. Oh, they ignored it. They knew they were getting reports of people actually being addicted, but that was going against the marketing. So they ignored it. Initially, the 12 hours were people actually not getting addicted, but they were going through a draw. So they weren't they addicted. Yes. So they were already addicted. Yes. And then they were like, ah, risk. Yes. But isn't there like a benefit, risk benefit, the risk benefit calculation of the drug. Also people were realizing they were getting addicted and were they just chilling? No, that's nobody brought it up. No, we're going to get into that like news stations. People love to go to the news stations. It ticked off with their own bro. We are going to get into that. And that's the thing. It is a part of the overall story for when people actually really start to addressing this, but at the time it didn't matter. It happened because the doctors were basically becoming pill farms. There's a whole issue with doctors who would basically be accepting bribes to prescribe more oxy cotton. That is a problem that had to be addressed from doctors who were receiving basically kickbacks from the company or they were being given all these free samples for things that they could turn around and basically sell. Yeah, there were basically drug dealer doctors at different points. Yeah. So, oxy cotton, as I said, it quickly became a blockbuster drug generating over a billion dollars annually by 2001. And this, that was when, you know, that's just when it became a blockbuster. It peaked eventually making three billion dollars a year. Simultaneously, you can imagine from this abuse levels with skyrocket. See, produce marketing created what was effectively a perfect storm. Patients now convinced that they had the right to pain relief would demand oxy cotton. Doctors who were armed with produce misleading information would then prescribe it, which would release a would would real out. This would then lead to the rise of pill farms where clinics would exist solely to dull out massive prescriptions in exchange for cash. Patients would go and engage in doctor shopping then where they could go to multiple doctors on the same day and get prescribed oxy cotton. That was part of my dad's report. Like it was like a big study they did because, um, yeah, they would go to different or they come back to the same one at different points so they were starting to track. Like, hey, you've been here a bunch guy. Yeah. Hey, you were given a 60 day supply. Why are you here back after 12 days? Actually, what's crazy is my friend had some medical issues with like hip. And free replacement ended up, he sent me a like he posted on his Instagram story just like a bag of pills and it was like, it's bag of like, really strong pain meds 30 days and he had like enough to take like three to six pills a day. Like just a bag of them. So they still sometimes might it might occur occasionally. Yeah, it was bad. And it can still technically speaking happen those usually more restrictions. Oh, yeah. You have like a lot of like you have to be registered because like in order to prescribe in the first place, you're registered and then depending on what you're prescribing, it's really regulated. I know this because you have to like do this renewal to prescribe medication. I don't know how often they do it if it was every year or every few years, but my dad's a doctor and my brother is a doctor. So my aunt said doctor and my other aunt's a doctor and you got the idea. Well, the big thing about this is remember how we just talked about the 12 hour release system and how you know as part of the coding and it's slowly releasing over time. One of the things that happened with the course of the 50s and 60s is that while oxycodone technically existed, it was usually combined with other drugs. So that's where you have like percassette. And this was pure oxycodone just slower release. Well, users found that since this was pure oxycodone, if you crush the tablet, that destroyed the time release mechanism, which meant that the full dose of oxycodone could be released all at once for a very powerful high. Yeah, this could then be snorted or dissolved and injected or all kinds of stuff. As a result, oxycodone very quickly became known in the street as, and I kid you not, hillbilly heroin. This is because it would devastate a lot of the Appalachian communities, Eastern Kentucky, Western Virginia, Southwestern Virginia, Maine, all over Appalachia before from there, spreading out across the country. That's so upsetting because the populations that had basically devastated was already like not even the VP. Like what was it? I can't remember the exact story. JD Vance's mother. This happened to her. Have they looked at the proportion of people, like how would affect if people like, yeah, drugs don't discriminate, but I feel like at a certain point, if you're doing harder, like Appalachia, if you're doing harder labor, you're going to have a little bit more pain, which means you're probably going to get prescribed more of those opioids, which means you're probably going to be more affected than the guy sitting at a desk all day. Not that the guy sitting at a desk won't have neck pain or anything, but it's very different. He doesn't need to pain management to do his job. It ends up targeting the people that are arguably some of the most vulnerable. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Because there have to be studies on this, right? Yes. Okay. I'm just checking because that's really upsetting. Yep. So yes, as you can imagine, overdose deaths would begin to climb dramatically emergency room visits involving oxycodone with surge and communities that had never dealt with any kind of really major drug or heroin addiction or something like this before. They were suddenly very, very overwhelmed. So obviously there was a problem. They're very clearly was a problem. People knew they knew it was oxycodone, the authorities knew. And so they stepped in with a freaking hammer only for people to realize that that hammer that they were wielding had a very lightweight at the end of it. So so wasn't a sledgehammer. Anything. It probably wasn't even one town hammer. It might have just been one of those like six ounce hammers that was like, oh, did I just get bumped by a toy mallet? Yeah, I mallet. That's what it is. So they weren't actually trying to shut it down because it was too beneficial, profitable. It hadn't gotten that bad yet until the major litigation came in. This is when there was an initial step in from the federal government. In the year 2007, Purdue Farman, three of its top executives, Michael Friedman, who was the CEO that had was that head of marketing that I was describing before. Howard Udel, the general counsel and Dr. Paul Goldenheim, the chief medical officer all pled guilty in federal court in Virginia to criminal charges of misbranding oxy cotton, essentially misleading doctors and patients about its addiction risks. Because of this, Purdue paid $600 million in fines and penalties, which was at the time one of the largest settlements in all of pharmaceutical history. The three top executives also had to plead guilty as individuals to misdemeanor misbranding charges and paid a combined between the three of them $34.5 million, which yes, again, that is a lot of money. Like $600 million is a lot and $34.5 million between three people individually. That is a lot, but what was it that I said before about oxy cotton being a blockbuster drug? In 2001, it was making over a billion dollars in profit, not sales, profit annually. So $600 and that peaked at $3 billion. So this was basically a bad parking ticket for the company. Did it go global? It did go. I'd imagine other countries are more right because look at Japan. You can't even like take in strong ibuprofen. You can. But like, you know what I mean? Like when you buy medicines over there, sometimes they're like, wow. It was primarily within the United States. I think there was cases of it going overseas, but especially it was primarily within the United States. This was the thing. This is where all the aggressive marketing and whatnot was coming into play. That's because we're allowed to aggressively market like that. It's crazy to me. So this was a fraction of what they had actually earned and guess what? Did any of them go to prison? No, they never do. They never do because I remember we listened to two of these things yesterday into the shadows is what we listened to it on Simon Whistler, man. So many channels. I've literally lost count. Anyway. So they all just, they don't lose their personal fortune. So they have all of their money. They never get like the charges usually got dropped. They dissettlement never actually does anything to the company because like they made so much money. I don't know. It's just because then all the people that were affected are like SLO. Oh, it's really bad. And so they not only is that bad, but we're still despite paying $600 million dollars and pleading guilty to federal charges. Who Farma did not slow down? It still kept going. In fact, OxyContin sales continued to climb. And it was after this that they managed to reach their peak of $3 billion in 2007 in terms of sales. That $600 million fine was nothing more than a fraction. So what Purdue did is they made some cosmetic changes to their marketing, but they continued to promote OxyContin aggressively. The company also began to quietly prepare for the next stage of their strategy. And Purdue would introduce its abuse deterrent formulation, the ADF in 2010. This was something that was hailed as a solution to the budding opioid crisis. But this had two really bad effects. First off, people started to shift to just straight up heroin. The ADF was more expensive and it was harder to abuse. Addix who had been introduced to opioids through OxyContin, which remember was cheap and it was everywhere and you could get it so stupidly easy, they thought, okay, this is just becoming harder to get. But I'm still addicted to opiates. So what am I going to get? Heroin. And that's what they did. Drug traffickers, especially from Mexico, would aggressively expand their operations to meet this new demand that they didn't have to do anything for. Like the drug traffickers in cartels in Mexico were just like, wait, hold on. They went ahead and got themselves addicted to opiates and I didn't even have to do anything. What? And then they stepped in to now this new open market since the cheap pills were largely removed and they replaced it with their super not safe alternative. So when people say like the opioid crisis, yes, they're talking about OxyContin, but OxyContin didn't continue the opioid crisis. It just set the stage to create the ADFs that made them then buy a bunch of illegal drugs. It's that nasty. It is that nasty. So are there programs like free programs to help the people who were affected? Like that should have been eventually, eventually there would be. But I mean, ultimately, once you're an addict, it's really hard to. Yes. Undo it's not impossible. It's just like, it's a battle. And then the ADF also gave Purdue a bit of a PR shield because now this company could go out into the public and say, no, look, look, we're helping to fight addiction. We've done this and the whole while they're still selling, they're still selling the whole damn time. They're still making money off of this stuff. Well, they'd have to though, because then otherwise people will use more illegal drugs which could ultimately be more dangerous. So like at this point, they've made sure they're always going to have a market and they're going to have to sell it until everybody's kind of, because I don't know they would draw for oxycontin, but they would draw, could be. It's brutal. Like that's the thing. It is actually very addictive. It is brutal. Like, typically for certain things, you can't just quit cold. If you can't quit ADHD, Mads, cold turkey, I'm pretty sure you can't quit oxycontin cold turkey. Yeah. So one of the most damning revelations that emerged through later litigation was the extent to which the members of the Sackler family that we've been talking about in here in the beginning, they weren't just passive owners. They were just like owners of the company that sat back and did nothing. They were actively directing a lot of the marketing and sales strategy. They were involved in just about every step of the way here. From court documents, we know that Richard Sackler, who is Raymond's son, who served as produce president from 1999 to 2003, he remained on the board and sent emails pushing for more aggressive sales targets and expressing frustration when growth slowed. And one infamous email from 2001 as the abuse crisis was becoming front page news, because again, you were asking to people talk about this. Yes, it was all over the news that people were getting addicted to opiates and it was a major problem. Richard Sackler wrote that the company should blame the victims, saying, and I quote, "We have to hammer on the abusers in every possible way. They are the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals." They literally did this to people and then blamed them. It is the ultimate form of victim blaming. Yeah. All the while as this is happening, family members were being given detailed reports on the abuse levels, the gradual increasing rates of addiction, the potential legal problems that could arise from this. And while the public was being kept in the dark and much of the company was being kept in the dark, the Sackler family and the higher ups were like, "Okay, we need to make her money and then we need to get the dog." And that's exactly what they did. So over the course of 2008 to 2018, there was a series of offshore accounts and alternative investments, etc. The Sackler family would drain over $10 billion from the company and put it into their own accounts. Is that a bezel man? No, like they were, they owned the company. That's the thing. They owned it. So through their investments and other things. You could just take the money. It's mixed. You can't just do that, but they would do it in a legal way. Okay, because we own our own company, but you can't just take the money. No, no, you can't. But what they would do to you. Can you? No, you can't just do it like that. Or if you do, it becomes a payout to you that you then have to pay taxes on. So that's the thing. But they would invest into stuff that they also owned or they would split the monies. They would take some of the stuff and cash. They would withdraw others. It's a bit complicated for how you would do this. Was that a private? It was private. I think, yeah. It was, it did go public, but they owned the majority share if I recall great. I've got it. I'm forgetting it before we say. It's okay. I'm not questioning it myself for what actually happened or I may be confusing that with the Vioc scandal. I may be messing that up in my head, but it's been three day, two, two full days of drugs. Don't say it like that. Don't say it like that because that sounds so wrong. I'm going to be drug research. My bad. So they essentially took billions of dollars. And then as all this was happening, lawsuits were popping up everywhere. In fact, this is one of those things that lawsuits were getting very angry about in the late 2010s going into the early 2020s because they were saying like, oh, the Sackler family knew that they were going to be facing massive legal issues. So they purposely withdrew as much money out of the company as they could so they could save their own personal fortune. And the company which now had much less money was then going to be liable for less. Or if the company was liable for more, they wouldn't have the money to lose because all of it was already gone. Like they straight up, they didn't steal, but they legally pilfered their own company to reduce their own liability, which was smart, but goddamn evil in a horrible way. So where are the ones on the ground? They directed marketing. They directed the marketing. Oh, it's a decil. They did because what if their employees were going rogue and they were just like making money off of it? Because when you're making money, I assume at a certain point you're like, what's you mad? Again, the internal emails, literally the one from 2001 where the son of like what are the guys there said, no, we have to blame them. They are criminals. Like they tried to shift as much blame as they possibly could. So at this time that this is all going on, dozens of state attorneys, state attorney generals were launching investigation to produce marketing practices. These investigations would uncover huge amounts of internal documents, emails, memo sales reports and board presentations that all painted a picture of a company that knew exactly what the hell they were doing. And they were misleading doctors and the public and lying to them. In the year 2019, Massachusetts attorney general, Mora Healy, would file an unredacted complaint that was especially bad. It named individual sacrifamily members and included internal communications that showed their direct involvement in pushing the deceptive marketing. The complaint would allege that the sacklers directed Purdue to and I quote target elderly patients and veterans. Yes. Yes. Who has bodily pain? Veterans in elderly patients. They then pushed doctors to prescribe higher doses. This is the family ordering them to do this by the way. They ordered them to downplay addiction risks even after the 2007 guilty plea. They developed a project, a secret project called Project Tango that was their own company sponsored addiction treatment centers. So yes, they created the addiction problem and then they wanted to start a new side project company to treat people for addiction that they would also get paid for. Literally creating and solving and getting paid for two problems of their own creation. Like that shit is evil. That is just bad. The US Department of Justice would conduct its own investigation, which culminated in criminal and civil charges. Thousands of lawsuits from cities, counties, tribal nations, hospitals and individuals were all consolidated into massive multi-district litigation in the northern district of Ohio under Judge Dan Polster. And this would become the largest and most complex civil litigation in American history or one of the largest. Gradually, as time went on and legal pressure became overwhelming, Purdue Pharma would eventually file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September of 2019 in the US bankruptcy court of the southern district of New York. That bankruptcy filing effectively froze the thousands of pending lawsuits and shifted the resolution into bankruptcy court. And remember the lawsuits got frozen. Where did a lot of the money go, Gabby? Offshore bank accounts, right? To the frickin' sackler family there, yes. From here, it was over. Or at least it sort of was. In October of 2020, Purdue Pharma would plead guilty to three federal charges. One, conspiracy to defraud the United States by impeding the DA's efforts to combat the diversion of prescription opioids. Two, conspiracy to violate federal anti-kickback statutes by paying doctors through a speaker's program to incentivize them to prescribe more oxy-contin. Which yes, remember how I said they had the doctors that they would bring into speakers? The kickback was like, hey, we're not paying you to prescribe our drug. We're paying you hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for you to come to our centers and speak about the drug that you happen to prescribe a good amount of and we want you to prescribe more. When they like influencers, it was just influencer PR. Literally, yes. Three, violation of the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act, which a second guilty plea from his branding, making this the company's second federal conviction. Now, as part of the plea deal, Purdue would agree to pay $8.3 billion in penalties from the company itself, though this was largely symbolic as the bankrupt company didn't actually have any money. Why? The Sackler family. The frickin Sackler family. They knew it was going to happen. How do they, do people not have like a constant level of anxiety? Because like to prep for all of that to come crashing down, you'd be like, well, actually, they wouldn't because they're rich and they wouldn't go to prison. Yep. Yep. Oh, they don't have these same fears as a normal person. That's crazy. So yeah, the company didn't have the money and the penalties were then structured to be reduced if a broader settlement was reached. Once again, no individual Sackler family member ever faced criminal charges, a fact that really, really, as you can imagine, pissed a lot of people off. So in September of 2021, a bankruptcy judge would approve a settlement plan that included approximately $4.5 billion from the Sackler family itself. In exchange, the Sacklers in giving $4.5 billion got broad legal immunity, not just from lawsuits related to Purdue, but all opioid-related civil claims, even from individuals who had not consented to the deal. Remember, this family had not stolen, but effectively taken over $10 billion dollars and they were required to give $4.5. So they got basically $5.5 billion dollars for free. Just like that. The provision, known as non-consensual third party releases, was very controversial, as you can imagine. It meant that individual victims, states and other parties who had never agreed to free the Sacklers from liability in exchange for the settlement, they would be forced to do throughout, so through the bankruptcy process. The US trustee, which is a Department of Justice watchdog for the bankruptcy system, they would eventually end up appealing this, arguing that bankruptcy law did not permit this kind of sweeping immunity for non-deadders. The Sacklers themselves did not file for bankruptcy, only Purdue had. So the Sackler family, which again had taken $10 billion dollars, couldn't say that they were bankrupt because they weren't bankrupt. Also, if you have money outside of the US, does that get wrapped up in US litigation? Well, because if they took it out to like, such bank accounts, you can hide it, but it is a part of it. This is one of the key reasons why people try to move stuff off, but you are still liable for that. Like any money that is earned outside of the US, if you're an American citizen, you are still taxed for it. Also, what would you even do with $10 million dollars? What are the only countries on earth that does this? What would you even do with $10 million dollars? Billion. Not even a million. Billion, I don't know what I would do with $10 million because technically, if you make 300 something thousand a year, right? And then you have $3 million. You can invest that and kind of like live off a certain amount every year and you should be set for like a good amount of time, right? Yeah. Oh, Gabby, if you had a million dollars and if you put it into like a CD, a CD, a low one is like 4%. Like what we have for our savings account here. If you had a million dollars, 4% of that here would be 40,000, which that is a good amount of money. It's not a lot of money by the standards of what makes a person middle class, but that is a person. If you were working $20 an hour, 40 hours a week, you make $40,000 a year. That's what that is or about that. That was my first salary, yeah. That's your first salary that you made. So that is good. If you just want to live off of that and do nothing, basically, if you have $10 billion, we'll think about it. You know, what would you even do with 10 billion dollars? That's not trying to, I'm trying to grasp. What would you do with $10 billion? I know. I know. I can't say. I can't say. But the appeal of this was huge because in appealing, in them doing this and saying like, "Hey, buddy, you can't just take $10 billion run and then not get anything like in trouble for this." So that appeal did several really big things. This is mind you. This is all recent history. If you looked at this 10 years ago, this would not have been the case. But because that appeal went through, it threw out the 2021 settlement. It forced Purdue and the Sacklers back to the negotiation table and it raised the possibility that individual Sackel family members could face personal lawsuits. And perhaps most importantly, it set a major precedent limiting the use of bankruptcy to shield wealthy individuals from liability. Like you couldn't be a billionaire. Be an absolute piece of shit that ruins the lives of millions and then just take a bunch money run and go, "Oh no, I didn't do this. My company did it." And then just go and do stuff again. This was something that actually, you're going to see more stuff in the future that because of this appeal, because of this case, it's going to be harder for people to do that. Whereas before they could. This was just arguably the largest example of it ever happening in American history, which is why it became a thing. In the end, the final settlement would be in 2025. This happened just this last year, which is why this is actually relevant to today. No, in fact, it's more relevant today because the payout that I'm going to describe from here, the settlement was in 2025. The payout is set to happen this year in 2026. Wow. That is why it is relevant. This took 20 years from the initial lawsuits for this to actually do something. Wow. Yeah. So, yeah, in the end, the final settlement of 2025 was valued at $7.4 billion with the potential to grow larger because remember, individual litigation was not off the table. So that's just the base level. That's the start. This makes it the largest settlement with a single pharmaceutical company in the entire history of national opioid litigation. Nothing else has ever matched this. The Sack of a Family would agree to pay $7 billion. This is the family, not the company. The family agreed to pay $7 billion over 15 years, providing the vast majority of the settlements cash. Approximately $1.4 to $1.5 billion had to be paid upfront right out of the gate with state, local governments, and Native American tribes receiving the bulk of the funds. Because remember, elderly veterans who was also a group of people that had a tendency to fall into addiction crises and issues. It's because, yeah. Native American tribes. So, basically, any vulnerable community. Any vulnerable community was targeted by this company. That's pure evil. Like, okay, they didn't go to prison, but at least they had to pay. But still, they have like $3 billion? Yeah. Well, that's after the initial settlement. Remember, the appeal means that they are not immune from individual litigation. They can still be sued and will be probably the next 20, 30 years. Have money to, because like at a certain point lawsuits are, you have to have the money to pursue a lawsuit. So it's not like a quick way to make money. They're going to be, the family probably has more resources for better lawyers as usually. But remember the, what was it? The viox or was it the, from the first one that we saw here where the company was trying to fight every single lawsuit initially, but it was just creating worse and worse and worse PR? I don't remember. They blend together. That's the thing. It could happen. It could go either way. I agree with you. It could be like that. Also, it could end up dragging their name through the mud so much. Wasn't worth it though. That's like the question you have to ask them because at some point they knew that we're going to get caught. They did. Of course, in 2008 to 2018, they knew they knew it was coming. That's why they were trying to extract as much money as possible at them. That's what's crazy to me. Like, was it worth it? So that initial $1.5 billion that was primarily earmarked for recovery programs. You're asking like, did they do anything for this? Recovery programs for the opioid crisis. Addiction treatment, prevention programs, healthcare service, community recovery efforts, that sort of stuff. Along with this, nearly 150,000 personal injury victims and families of babies that were born with neonatal abstinence syndrome, which is babies being born addicted to opiates. They were eligible for payments. People with addiction and survivors of those who died who could prove they were prescribed oxycontin to were able to participate and qualifying individuals would receive payments of approximately anywhere between eight to $16,000. That's what I think. Depending on how long they had been on the drug or other people were the drug and who had died and what happened. Some people don't like the portals for doctors because all your information is right there. But every single thing I've been prescribed since I moved to the US, it's been the portal. I could go back and find any medication, like every diagnosis, like everything. So if I ever get prescribed something that I shouldn't have been, I can easily just go back and be like, "Yo, right here." And so those individual payments, those are the ones that are scheduled to start here in 2026. This year, the time that we were actually making this. And I'm going to be honest, eight to $16,000, it sounds kind of nice, but for a person who's life, like their entire life, maybe lost their job, maybe lost their house, lost a sister, lost a brother, lost a mother, lost a father, lost a child. Many people died, or eight to $16,000, that it does not replace that. You get way more off of personal injuries. But the thing is, is yeah, the people who got prescribed it were affected, but then since it branched out to illegal drugs, that made the illegal drug market boom. And it made more people have access to and be exposed to it. It affected even more people. So it's just way more than just if people that were taking advantage of it, like expanded, let it blew up essentially another whole other problem. Because now the opioid crisis is like, it's still thing. Yeah, it's still thing. I don't know how it's going in Kentucky, but like the things that you occasionally hear on the news, you're like, "Wow, that sucks." Yep. Now, it does suck. It really does. Obviously, it's not fair, but people who are advocates for the deal would basically say, like, look, it is something. I know it's not perfect, but realistically, considering the sheer number of people that have been affected, you can't just magically spawn $300 billion out of the air and then say, all right, now each person is going to get like $100,000. Like, that's, you physically, you won't be able to do that. It does not work. All these set amount of money, even with enough people that have been hurt. And so this is the best that realistically could be achieved initially minus, of course, the individual lawsuits that would be done. So it sucks, but that is what it is. From here, Purdue Pharma was restructured into a new company called NOAA Pharma. This company does actually continue to exist. It is a thing. You can look it up right now. NOAA is KNOA Pharma. It does still exist. It does continue to sell drugs, including non-opioid products like seizure medication. But the thing is, it's part of this restructuring deal. And this is the thing that I actually like. And I think overall, when a company really screws with things this badly, this is the best thing that you could do. Just think about it, Gabb. That initial amount of money that we talked about, once that is used, it is gone. And that's it. It's gone. But what they have done as part of the deal is that NOAA pharmaceuticals is handled by like a trust board that is controlled by multiple states and organizations and different things. And it became effectively a public state company, if you will, from that. So I could pay back into the foundation. So the profits from it are required to go to opium treatment and then just- All of it are just a percentage, probably a percentage because you still need money to pay the employees. Because the thing is, if you have a pharmaceutical company, it's not just like light work. It takes like a certain amount of cost and research and specialized scientists and the equipment alone. So it makes sense that they just didn't- So the stuff that I saw says and I quote, the profits are to be overseen by a trust and used exclusively to fund opioid abatement programs across the country, which implies that all of it is taken. But I'm pretty sure it's the majority is taken. But then they have production costs like that's different from the profits. Yeah, different from profits. Exactly. All the profits are taken then, yeah. Exactly. So in the end, that is actually in my opinion, probably the best thing that could be done and help us modify things as time goes on. In comparison to, remember the one that we saw that was the one with the children born with defects where they don't have the philidamide. Once that money ran out, like you can't really do much in their old age. This means that it'll keep going. It has continuous treatment. Yeah, because with philidamide, now they have to fight for more money because obviously the care changes and the situation changes. And they put a set amount of money for children, but then the children aged into adults and then the adults aged into the elderly. And yeah, so yeah, that makes sense. It leaves it a little bit more fluid. So often, they still provide drugs that people need. Yes. I'm sure they weren't only producing opioid. No, that was just their big, one of their big money makers. So yeah, okay. Big thing in the end here, looking at all of it, the final death toll. People can't exactly confirm because it makes the other stuff, but it is estimated from this because of addiction rates and what they were seeing from just oxy-con overdoses, which again, you could actually track oxy-conn overdoses. Yeah. It is estimated, it is between a couple hundred thousand up to a million directly. And that's not even then counting the illegal drugs, the other potential issues that happened from heart problems or other things that could develop from addiction and constant use of the sedatives. Yeah. Wow. So, yeah, the Sackler family is responsible for killing maybe upwards of a million people directly. Allegedly. Allegedly. Without my friends, that is the end of today's episode. Yeah, I may have made some enemies on this, but I was surprised when we even did their research or when we were listening to the stuff there yesterday. I thought, oh, this would be a good one to do. This is a thing that happened a while ago, not knowing when I first, when I started it, oh, holy shit. This happened literally this last year heading into this year now. It's still relevant to this day. And who knows, maybe in a couple years, there will be more lawsuits and things that I have to do a follow up on. This whole episode, I'm probably going to do a redoing another thing of this later, literally for the history of everything podcast when talking about scandals in the United States. Damn. All right. Well, thank you all very much for watching my friends. I appreciate it. Sorry for depressing you. Farma companies can be awesome. They can also be satanic. Also, to the person who emailed us, the very niche, niche topic, okay, on car horns. Yes, someone did that. Someone requested. We got you, bro. We don't know I think about car horns, but we have a friend, Aiden Thornberry, who knows everything there is to know about vehicles. So we're going to get him to talk about cars and car horns. If you've seen history and hinged, which again, you should go back and watch the show. So Mattis sits across from me and Thornberry is the guy who sits in the middle, usually playing us off of each other, asking questions or things. That is who we would be doing. And if Mattis and my autism is like medieval history and stuff, he's his trains and cars and planes and boats. It's really. And he really. Well, without my friends, thank you all very much for watching. I'll see you all here next time. Let us know in the comments section below what it is that you would like to see and thanks. Goodbye.