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Speaker 1: Hmm, what's wagon mattails? I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind

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Speaker 1: the Bastards. Uh. Sophie is giving me the thumbs up

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Speaker 1: for that. Intro this podcast, we talked about all the

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Speaker 1: bad people, stuff you don't know about him, all that

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Speaker 1: good jazz. My guest with me is James Heeney, actor

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Speaker 1: comedian James. Welcome to the show. Hi, it's a super

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Speaker 1: big pleasure to come in here. I've listened to a

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Speaker 1: lot of episodes. I've spoken towards the speakers in my car.

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Speaker 1: This is the first time I'm gonna get responses. I'm

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Speaker 1: really happy about that. Well, I'm I'm glad to hear

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Speaker 1: that you you shout at my disembodied voice. I like

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Speaker 1: to imagine thousands of people doing that into their cars

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Speaker 1: every morning. Whenever I see somebody else talking to themselves

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Speaker 1: in the car, I imagine they're listening to Behind the Bastards.

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Speaker 1: So do I, So do I. It's narcissism in my case,

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Speaker 1: but it's very flattering in yours. Thank you. You know.

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Speaker 1: I don't want to blow too much time, but I

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Speaker 1: always start the first episode thinking to myself, Gosh, this

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Speaker 1: person could be me, and then the second episodes. I'm like,

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Speaker 1: thank God, there's some distant between myself and this monster. Well, James,

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Speaker 1: you get anything you want to plug in the p

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Speaker 1: zone would uh. I'm part of the same network alchemy

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Speaker 1: this it's twice a week Tuesdays and Thursdays Improv podcast

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Speaker 1: with Kevin Pollock. Yes, that Kevin Pollock, and specifically we

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Speaker 1: have a live show at the Dynasty Typewriter Theater on

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Speaker 1: May seven at eight pm. Gosh, it would be great

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Speaker 1: if everyone came. It would everyone book a ticket to

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Speaker 1: l a flood the theater. Do not let them not

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Speaker 1: see you demand to be let in, bring weaponry, um

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Speaker 1: force your way in riot. Well, well that might be

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Speaker 1: be just just crossing a threshold there. Yeah, you might

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Speaker 1: find yourself in the second episode of Behind the Bastards

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Speaker 1: with that attitude. We're we're gearing up for that. I

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Speaker 1: do like to urge crimes every every third or fourth episode,

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Speaker 1: just just just my little way of thumb in my

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Speaker 1: nose at the FTC because they can't they can't do

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Speaker 1: anything about podcasts. I didn't realize they had no control

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Speaker 1: over there. They don't not over podcasts. It's we're in

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Speaker 1: international waters of radio. Like it's the there's there's no

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Speaker 1: law here, there's no maps for these territories. Do you

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Speaker 1: worry of her that people are going to get your

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Speaker 1: your tricks? Like I heard some stash tricks about drugs

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Speaker 1: the other week, and I thought, maybe all the cops

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Speaker 1: know it now. Yeahs. See, that's part of what I

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Speaker 1: I worry about, which is why I don't tell my

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Speaker 1: good stash tricks on the air. But if they're listening,

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Speaker 1: they've got to be cool, right, Yeah, they've gotta be

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Speaker 1: cool cops. Threshold of cool that goes along with a

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Speaker 1: listener behind the past exactly. So we assume that like

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Speaker 1: those of the cops will let you slide for a

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Speaker 1: little bit of weed, quarter pound of math or you know,

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Speaker 1: just like little stuff, you know, okay, quarter pounds a

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Speaker 1: lot of not if you're not, if you're doing a

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Speaker 1: lot of maths, that just a couple of weeks. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I guess so anyway, Uh, speaking actually of of of

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Speaker 1: drug dealers. Uh, we're talking about drug dealers today probably

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Speaker 1: the most successful, wealthiest, uh and deadliest drug dealers in

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Speaker 1: the history of the world. Have you ever heard of

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Speaker 1: the Sackler family. I have not heard of the Sackler family.

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Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of oxyconton? I have heard, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I have heard. That's actually not I don't like oxycont

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Speaker 1: never done it, never done it. I'm free to say

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Speaker 1: I've done a lot of things, never touched oxyconton. See,

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Speaker 1: I really like pain killers, and I have messed around

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Speaker 1: with oxy a couple of times in the past, and

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Speaker 1: it's one of those things where I won't let myself

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Speaker 1: buy opiates because I know I would develop a problem,

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Speaker 1: Like fucking that, because I really enjoy them. I had

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Speaker 1: an injury when I was early in college and I

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Speaker 1: had like viking in or whatever, I don't know, maybe

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Speaker 1: it was coding whatever pill they gave me, but it

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Speaker 1: wasn't as good as acid, and it wasn't as good

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Speaker 1: as the other things I was doing, and I was

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Speaker 1: so worried that it would have a counter effect that

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Speaker 1: I ended up not taking them. And I think I've

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Speaker 1: really dodged the bullocks. I've gotten addictive personality. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: that's like one of the ones to really avoid because

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Speaker 1: that'll that'll fucking kill you pretty fast, which is so

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Speaker 1: upsetting because it's legal. Yeah, it's super legal, Uh, super

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Speaker 1: hard to control and really easy to go from, like like,

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Speaker 1: if you're just taking the pills, that's reasonably safe. It

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Speaker 1: The problem is people escalate and they start extracting the

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Speaker 1: oxy from the pills where they move up to fentnel

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Speaker 1: and then they they kill themselves, and it's like it's

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Speaker 1: just so hard to moderate, Like it's even alcohol, like

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Speaker 1: you know, probably on a societal level causes more problems,

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Speaker 1: but it's harder to kill yourself with um maybe not.

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Speaker 1: I guess that's you know, it's easier to kill other

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Speaker 1: people with that ball. So nobody's nobody's ramming a car

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Speaker 1: into somebody else while they're they're hopped up on oxy.

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Speaker 1: Probably probably, Actually I would say that. I wouldn't put

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Speaker 1: my seal of guarantee that people aren't driving on oxy.

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Speaker 1: Cotton definitely are driving on it. I just think they're

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Speaker 1: less dangerous. Probably, So if you're a drunk driver switched

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Speaker 1: to oxy, we should just roll right into the scow. Wow,

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Speaker 1: I'm sweating and you're talking, don't break the law. I

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Speaker 1: heard that whisper. I'm raper. Oh wait, that was the intro.

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Speaker 1: I'm just gonna start reading the episode now. In the

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Speaker 1: early before World War One, Sophie and Isaac Sackler immigrated

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Speaker 1: to the United States from Poland and Ukraine, respectively. They

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Speaker 1: were both Jewish, which you may recall was not a

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Speaker 1: great thing to be in Poland or Ukraine around the

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Speaker 1: turn of the twentieth century or a couple of decades

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Speaker 1: after the turn of the twentieth century, or like pretty

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Speaker 1: pretty rough. Now. I don't want to sound ignorant, but

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Speaker 1: I didn't realize that early on it was bad. I

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Speaker 1: thought it was towards like the twenties. No, I mean

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Speaker 1: that it was bad. It was got worse than but

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Speaker 1: like you know, the late eighteen hundreds, the Zelnisky massacre,

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Speaker 1: which was like a bunch of Cossacks killing it might

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Speaker 1: have been as many as half a million Jewish people,

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Speaker 1: the biggest program in Russian history, and that I think

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Speaker 1: was pretty close to Ukraine. It might have been in

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Speaker 1: some of what is I don't know the exact geographical area,

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Speaker 1: but like, yeah, it was pretty rough. A lot of

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Speaker 1: bad stuff happening. Um And I don't know if the

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Speaker 1: Sacklers fled Eastern Europe because of, you know, a desire

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Speaker 1: not to get murdered, or because of crushing poverty, but

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Speaker 1: it was probably like a mix of the two. Um

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Speaker 1: So these refugees established themselves in New York City. Isaac

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Speaker 1: became a grocer. He and his wife had two children,

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Speaker 1: the eldest of which was Arthur. Arthur grew up to

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Speaker 1: become a psychiatrist. His specialty was something called biological psychiatry.

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Speaker 1: He was the very first physician in the world to

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Speaker 1: use ultrasound for a diagnosis. He was a major critic

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Speaker 1: of electro convulsive therapy and was a significant figure in

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Speaker 1: the racial integration of New York City's blood donation. So

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Speaker 1: it's pretty good so far. Kind of a critic of

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Speaker 1: the electrotherapy myself, so I've kind of them on his side.

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Speaker 1: I believe they still use it sometimes there's certain things

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Speaker 1: that it really does help, because I know some people

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Speaker 1: who have found it very helpful. But I've heard the

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Speaker 1: same thing. It's so hard for me to believe. It

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Speaker 1: seems so barbaric. I think the problem was they used

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Speaker 1: to do it for like everything, like, oh you looking

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Speaker 1: at guys, let's shocker skull, Like there's a couple of

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Speaker 1: things that really does help with and now they pretty

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Speaker 1: much only do it for those things. And I thought

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Speaker 1: the over diagnosis of a d D was a problem.

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Speaker 1: I guess we're I guess we're lucky. We're we're progressing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: if they I mean, they just hit you back then,

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Speaker 1: were having a d D. And like the fifties, like

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Speaker 1: that was that was your riddle and it was getting

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Speaker 1: bunched better than the shock therapy. I think, I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Maybe depends on the hand fair enough. Yeah. Now, at

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Speaker 1: this point, the Sackler family seemed to be living the

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Speaker 1: epitome of the America can Dream. They'd gone from dirt

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Speaker 1: poor refugees, too well off, groundbreaking physicians in fifty years.

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Speaker 1: Pretty cool, I'm impressed. Pretty cool. But in nineteen fifty two,

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Speaker 1: Arthur made a fateful purchase that would decades later crippled

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Speaker 1: the United States and secure his family a place in

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Speaker 1: historical infamy for all time. He bought a company called

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Speaker 1: Perdue Frederick, a pharmaceutical drugmaker. Now Perdue Frederick had been

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Speaker 1: established in eighteen ninety two selling what we're called patent medicines,

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Speaker 1: essentially snakewi. Prior to Arthur's purchase, Produce Frederick's main product

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Speaker 1: had been Gray's Glycerin tonic, a broad application remedy sold

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Speaker 1: as a cure for basically everything. It was mostly wine.

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Speaker 1: It cures something like I've definitely had some things cured.

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Speaker 1: But when I have a nasty case of the sobriety,

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Speaker 1: I just break open a bottle of medicinal wine and

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Speaker 1: you know that's very very quickly. Yeah, yeah, very very fast.

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Speaker 1: Now Arthur put his brothers, Mortimer and Raymond in charge

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Speaker 1: of the company. Morty had been born in nineteen sixteen

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Speaker 1: and ray in nineteen twenty. Both brothers were also psychiatrist,

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Speaker 1: so the whole family goes into psychiatry, which you know,

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Speaker 1: good for the parents. Hyh even kids. Yeah, I mean

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Speaker 1: that's impressive. They're they're owning stores. I guess colleges were

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Speaker 1: different back then. I mean, how does all yeah like

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Speaker 1: yet you mowe a couple of lawns and you can

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Speaker 1: get your bachelor's back then. Oh man, yeah, yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: one of those things you look at, like even in

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Speaker 1: the seventies, you could work part time and pay off

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Speaker 1: college by the time you graduate. And it was like,

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Speaker 1: don't make me cry on on microphone right here. Now

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Speaker 1: it costs as much as two new trucks, and that's

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Speaker 1: not a great college. So all three kids were psychologists, psychiatrists,

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Speaker 1: they're able to like at that which makes sense, Perdue,

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Speaker 1: Perdue exactly. So Arthur put his brothers Mortimer, oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: he put them in charge of the company. So Arthur

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Speaker 1: was free to vote himself to what was increasingly his

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Speaker 1: passion marketing. I'm going to quote from a fantastic Esquire

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Speaker 1: article by Christopher Glazock. Quote Arthur intuitive that print ads

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Speaker 1: and medical journals could have a revolutionary effect on pharmaceutical sales.

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Speaker 1: Espec actually given the excitement surrounding the miracle drugs of

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Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties steroids, antibiotics, antihistamines, in psychotropics. In nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty two, the same year that he and his brothers

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Speaker 1: acquired Perdue, Arthur became the first admin to convince the

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Speaker 1: Journal of the American Medical Association, one of the profession's

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Speaker 1: most of best publications, to include a color advertorial brochure.

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Speaker 1: So that's this guy's like, well, that's the fucking problem.

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Speaker 1: That's like, if you start marketing, if you start marketing drugs,

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Speaker 1: then that means you're spending money because you want to

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Speaker 1: make more money. And is that not the whole fucking sorry?

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Speaker 1: Are you? I don't know if there's a cursing on this.

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Speaker 1: There's plenty occurs, but it's just upsetting because that's the

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Speaker 1: root of the problem. It should never have been like, oh, marketings,

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Speaker 1: where we're going to really make our break. Your marketing

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Speaker 1: should be the doctor being like, you have this problem

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Speaker 1: in this medicine will help for That's the only marketing

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Speaker 1: drugs should have. You should be like, looking at color,

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Speaker 1: you have these spots all over your bodies, Well, how

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Speaker 1: about a measles vaccine? I need this? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: Like you know, nobody advertises like do you want polio?

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Speaker 1: Probably not, check out this new shot that'll take kid. No,

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Speaker 1: you should give people the polio effects. They don't get

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Speaker 1: sick now. Produced first big hit was Librium, which was

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Speaker 1: the first name Valium was marketed under. Arthur pitched Librium

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Speaker 1: as the key to treating psychic tension, a phrase he

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Speaker 1: invented because it sounded sexier than saying stress are They

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Speaker 1: suggested that psychic tension was the real cause of many maladies,

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Speaker 1: from heartburn to bad poops. The tactic worked like fucking gangbusters.

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Speaker 1: Valium became the most widely prescribed medication in the United States.

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Speaker 1: The first drug to break the one hundred million dollars

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Speaker 1: sales record. Arthur was quickly inducted into the Medical Advertising

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Speaker 1: Hall of Fame, a thing which should not exist. No,

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Speaker 1: I shouldn't know. Why why would you Why would you

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Speaker 1: be proud of that? Now, this might be outside of

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Speaker 1: your realm of thought. It was valium kind of the

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Speaker 1: trade off of what they used to do, lobotomies, Like,

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Speaker 1: wasn't it was? Is there? I don't. I think they

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Speaker 1: were still lobotomizing people the point, And this is like

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Speaker 1: the fifties, So if I'm not mistaken, this is when

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Speaker 1: um I think Rosemary Kennedy was her name, the JFK's

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Speaker 1: youngest sister, when they like scrambled her brains because she

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Speaker 1: liked boys. Um So I think they were still doing

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Speaker 1: that at this point. They were. But so it has

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Speaker 1: nothing because I thought that lobotomies and valium kind of

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Speaker 1: had a crossover. They might help been like it might

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Speaker 1: have Like, I just don't know that. I could see it.

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Speaker 1: I could see it helping with that. I've taken it

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Speaker 1: recreationally a couple of times when I was living in Guatemala.

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Speaker 1: You could just pick it up from the corner store.

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Speaker 1: So we would actually pick up valium and hide your

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Speaker 1: code own and it was like that was your that

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Speaker 1: was your like Thursday night or whatever it was. It

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Speaker 1: was fun. I meant this Irish biker who was like

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Speaker 1: traveling biking all the continents. Now, when you say biker,

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Speaker 1: I need to know the difference. Is it peddling biker

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Speaker 1: or motorcycle huge fucking motorcycles. Yeah, sure, he just he

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Speaker 1: spent like three weeks just doing all of the valume.

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Speaker 1: I've never seen anyone two more values. He's crushing it

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Speaker 1: up in railing three at a time. Yeah, that's just

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Speaker 1: never been my party truck. No, I'm not a huge

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Speaker 1: fan of it um, but yeah, it's sold very well

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Speaker 1: for for Arthur Sackling. So it was Arthur who began

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Speaker 1: the Sackler family tradition of donating huge sums of money

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Speaker 1: to museums. Some of this may have been honest generosity,

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Speaker 1: but a lot of it was also a tax thing.

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Speaker 1: When he created the Sackler Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum

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Speaker 1: of Art, he gave it a huge collection of Chinese artifacts,

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Speaker 1: but he required the museum to sell him the artifacts.

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Speaker 1: He was giving them for a very low price. What

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Speaker 1: he paid originally in the nineteen twenties when he'd acquired them,

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Speaker 1: so he could then donate the artifacts back to the

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Speaker 1: museum but write them off at their nineteen sixties value,

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Speaker 1: so that he made net money donating these things to

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Speaker 1: the museum. It sounds like a scam. It's definitely the

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Speaker 1: only reason it's not a scam. It's because he has

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Speaker 1: enough lawyers to sue you for calling it. Oh, that's true.

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Speaker 1: It sounds like the art version of a shell company.

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Speaker 1: It's absolutely that, Like it's legally distinct from a scam

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Speaker 1: because he can afford to pay lawyers. Like, yeah, exactly,

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Speaker 1: but it's it's the same thing as like that guy

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Speaker 1: on the street corner putting like a dot or whatever

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Speaker 1: underneath a bunch of cups and ask you get a

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Speaker 1: bet on which, like it's it's a con for sure. Now,

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Speaker 1: Jillian Sackler, Arthur's third wife, does call this allegation fake news,

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Speaker 1: So that should tell you when that was recently to say,

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Speaker 1: that's a very new term. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: He had to re up a couple of times. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think they all did. In general, the Sackler brothers

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Speaker 1: seemed to have been the kind of rich people I

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Speaker 1: would not have gotten along with. Mortimer threw a fit

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Speaker 1: on his seventy birthday when the met agreed to let

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Speaker 1: him throw his birthday party there, but they wouldn't let

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Speaker 1: him redecorate an ancient shrine that he wanted as the

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Speaker 1: centerpiece to his party. So he got very angry at them,

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Speaker 1: like that's the attitude this family has. So that said,

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Speaker 1: there was nothing super evil about this generation of the Sacklers.

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Speaker 1: They were questionable, Okay, go ahead, yeah, yeah there was. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they were questionable, but they weren't like mustache twirling villains.

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Speaker 1: They also weren't that rich by rich people standards. They

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Speaker 1: were multimillionaires, but not billionaires or multibillionaires. Raymond and Mortimer

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Speaker 1: had paid attention to their brother's success with valium. They

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Speaker 1: realized that if you could just take a powerfully addictive

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Speaker 1: substance and then marketed as a cure all for a

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Speaker 1: bunch of different things, well that was incredibly profitable. So

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Speaker 1: they started looking for another drug that they could basically

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Speaker 1: apply the valiums ategy too. In nineteen seventy two, a

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Speaker 1: London doctor had developed a special slow release medicine technology.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty one, MS content entered the UK market,

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Speaker 1: was a timed release morphine pill designed to hopefully be

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Speaker 1: less addictive than traditional morphine. In nine seven, Produce Pharmaceutical

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Speaker 1: brought MS content to the US market. Now the drug

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Speaker 1: was a big hit for cancer patients, and Perdue made

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Speaker 1: a tidy sum helping suffering sick people into their mortal illnesses.

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Speaker 1: Whenever I hear something, I gotta ask them a questioner.

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Speaker 1: So when they think it's gonna be less addictive, to

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Speaker 1: think it's going to be less addictive because it's something

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Speaker 1: that is not creating a habitual use, because it's slow release.

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Speaker 1: That's exactly like, it's not like they're One of the

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Speaker 1: big things you're trying to avoid is the euphoria, because

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Speaker 1: like taking pain killers, it gives you this like feeling

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Speaker 1: of euphoria when you first come up, and that's one

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Speaker 1: of the things it's most addictive about it. So the

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Speaker 1: idea was that if it's slow release, people won't get

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Speaker 1: hooked as easily. It will be less pleasurable, but it

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Speaker 1: will fight pain more effectively. So number one, you'll have

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Speaker 1: to take fewer pills um and number two, you're less

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Speaker 1: likely to develop a habit just like show someone up

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Speaker 1: with heroin, you know, like one of the There was

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Speaker 1: a big stigma against opiates at this point in the

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Speaker 1: United States and like the seventies and eighties because a

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Speaker 1: bunch of young men had been given morphine basically UM

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Speaker 1: in Vietnam, Like they get shot and they get shot

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Speaker 1: up with morphine and then they wound up horribly addicted

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Speaker 1: to morphine and so like, there was a real stigma

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Speaker 1: against taking any kind of opiate pain killer in the

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Speaker 1: US for like during this period. So MS content was

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Speaker 1: really only used by cancer patients, Like it was the

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Speaker 1: only people who would get prescribed in this kind of

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Speaker 1: medicine where people who were like dying essentially um. So,

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Speaker 1: you know, Purdue made a decent amount of money off

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Speaker 1: of it, but it was impossible to make a lot

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Speaker 1: of money off of it because it wasn't being prescribed

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Speaker 1: for anything but mortal illnesses. MS content was unlikely to

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Speaker 1: ever become a valium level seller, and that was a

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Speaker 1: problem for Purdue Pharmaceuticals, fortunately for the Sackler family and

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Speaker 1: unfortunately for the entirety of rural America. In nine six,

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Speaker 1: two doctors published an article in a medical journal that suggested,

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Speaker 1: based on a thirty eight patient study that long term

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Speaker 1: opiate use was safe for patients out a history of

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Speaker 1: drug abuse. This, combined with a widespread, completely fallacious belief

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Speaker 1: that the rate of addiction for long term opiate use

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Speaker 1: was less than one percent, helped convince the leadership at

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Speaker 1: Purdue that opiates for the future of their company. It

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Speaker 1: was a future Arthur Sackler would not live to see.

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Speaker 1: He died in nineteen eighties seven. His last words to

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Speaker 1: his family were reportedly, leave the world a better place

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Speaker 1: than when you entered it. Those are great words of wisdom,

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Speaker 1: great words of wisdom. You know it, you hear about

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Speaker 1: His family didn't do any of that. From this point on.

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Speaker 1: Richard Sackler, Raymond's son and Arthur's nephew, would grow to

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Speaker 1: become the head of the family and eventually the company.

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Speaker 1: Here's how Esquire described him quote, perhaps the most private

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Speaker 1: member of a generally secretive family. Richard appears nowhere on

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Speaker 1: produced website from public records and conversations with former employees,

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Speaker 1: though a rough portrait emerges of a testy, eccentric with

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Speaker 1: ardent relentless ambitions. Born in nineteen forty five, he holds

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Speaker 1: degrees from Columbia University and n y U Medical School,

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Speaker 1: according to a bio on the website of the Coke

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Speaker 1: Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at m i T, where

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Speaker 1: Richard serves on the advisory board. He started working at

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Speaker 1: Perdue as his father's assistant at age twenty six, before

355
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Speaker 1: eventually leading the firm's R and D division and separately

356
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Speaker 1: it's sales and marketing division. So like Arthur, he's not

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Speaker 1: just a doctor who likes research. He's really into marketing

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Speaker 1: and advertisement. Maybe he should have just done that, like

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Speaker 1: she could have been making ads. And there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of money in advertisement. Yeah, I mean, he makes a

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Speaker 1: lot of money in advertisement. It's just forty it's not

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Speaker 1: the thing you want to advertise it now. Raymond took

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Speaker 1: a step back during this period, presumably to allow his

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Speaker 1: son to shine. One of Richard's colleagues during this time,

365
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Speaker 1: who lived through the transition, recalled that the new boss

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Speaker 1: brought a new intensity to the job. Richard really wanted

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Speaker 1: Perdue to be big, I mean really big. The best

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Speaker 1: opportunity for that was, of course, a new drug based

369
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Speaker 1: on the content system. The patent for m S content

370
00:17:47,680 --> 00:17:49,879
Speaker 1: was about to run out but produce. Scientists were developing

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Speaker 1: a similar drug, basically a time release version of an

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Speaker 1: old opiate called oxycodon. Now in the nineteen thirties, oxycodon's

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Speaker 1: most popular formation was scope at all, a mix of

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Speaker 1: ox e cod own, scope, lamine, and aphedron. Was basically

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Speaker 1: an early speedball. The Wehrmacht loved it. It It was like

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Speaker 1: one of the most popular Nazi drugs of the whole

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Speaker 1: Nazi era. During Operation to Himmler, when the German staged

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Speaker 1: a false flag attack on themselves to justify the invasion

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Speaker 1: of Poland, the prisoners they dressed as Polish soldiers were

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Speaker 1: all killed via massive injections of Scope at all. So

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Speaker 1: oxycodone as a fun history before it became oxy content,

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Speaker 1: and Perdue was about to add a new chapter to

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Speaker 1: that history. Esquire talked to Peter Lacoutree uh, a senior

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Speaker 1: director of clinical research at Perdue from two thousand one,

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Speaker 1: and he explained how the idea evolved. At all the meetings.

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Speaker 1: That was a constant source of discussion. What else can

387
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Speaker 1: we use the content system for? And that's where Richard

388
00:18:38,440 --> 00:18:41,600
Speaker 1: would fire some ideas, maybe antibiotics, maybe chemotherapy. He was

389
00:18:41,600 --> 00:18:45,400
Speaker 1: always out there digging. So Sally Allen, a former executive

390
00:18:45,440 --> 00:18:48,159
Speaker 1: director for Product Management, added that Richard was very interested

391
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Speaker 1: in the commercial side and also very interested in marketing approaches.

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Speaker 1: He didn't always wait for the research results. So by

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Speaker 1: nine there was ample evidence that MS content had a

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Speaker 1: dangerous potential for abuse. It had already become one of

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Speaker 1: the most used prescription opioids in the United States, but that,

396
00:19:03,560 --> 00:19:06,119
Speaker 1: of course did not make Richard any less likely to

397
00:19:06,760 --> 00:19:08,359
Speaker 1: think it was a good product to market. You know,

398
00:19:08,480 --> 00:19:10,800
Speaker 1: they kind of ignored the fact that there were already

399
00:19:10,840 --> 00:19:14,280
Speaker 1: signs that time release morphine was no less addictive than

400
00:19:14,320 --> 00:19:18,240
Speaker 1: regular morphine and just sort of made time release oxycodon't

401
00:19:18,400 --> 00:19:20,320
Speaker 1: assumed it would work. Wouldn't the world be a better

402
00:19:20,359 --> 00:19:22,480
Speaker 1: place if they were, like, we really should do time

403
00:19:22,520 --> 00:19:26,920
Speaker 1: released antibiotics. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they decided not to do. No.

404
00:19:27,160 --> 00:19:28,919
Speaker 1: I mean, I think they probably made those at some

405
00:19:28,960 --> 00:19:31,520
Speaker 1: point too, But antibiotics. Nobody's gonna want to take a

406
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Speaker 1: shipload of antibiotics. What about with the right advertising, You

407
00:19:34,560 --> 00:19:38,440
Speaker 1: don't think with the right pitch, don't you won't die? Yeah?

408
00:19:38,560 --> 00:19:40,960
Speaker 1: I don't even sure how you advertise that stuff. Yeah,

409
00:19:41,000 --> 00:19:42,960
Speaker 1: I guess you're right, yeah, oxyconton You just have a

410
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Speaker 1: picture of some guy sitting out at like a beach

411
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Speaker 1: and looks like he's an old guy surgery scar in

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Speaker 1: his arm, but he's smiling, and it's just like freedom. Oxycontent. Yeah,

413
00:19:54,080 --> 00:19:56,040
Speaker 1: it's kind of good name too. I hate to say it,

414
00:19:56,080 --> 00:19:58,480
Speaker 1: but it's an exciting name to just say. Yeah, and

415
00:19:58,520 --> 00:20:00,439
Speaker 1: it's got one of those names that sure it's well

416
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Speaker 1: to a street drug. You got any oxy bro like

417
00:20:02,760 --> 00:20:04,960
Speaker 1: you know? MS content like you? No one's gonna be

418
00:20:04,960 --> 00:20:08,480
Speaker 1: like you got any MS content, I guess, but yeah, anyway,

419
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Speaker 1: we're gonna find out what happens next with Richard Sackler,

420
00:20:11,600 --> 00:20:15,439
Speaker 1: the other Sacklers and Oxycontent. But first some ads for

421
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Speaker 1: products that hopefully aren't produced pharmaceuticals that that that might be.

422
00:20:19,840 --> 00:20:24,080
Speaker 1: There's there's no knowing. It's randomly slotted in, so uh

423
00:20:24,400 --> 00:20:36,879
Speaker 1: hopefully not. We're back so Due Pharmaceutical convened a series

424
00:20:36,920 --> 00:20:39,240
Speaker 1: of focus groups with physicians trying to decide if they'd

425
00:20:39,240 --> 00:20:41,960
Speaker 1: be willing to prescribe oxycontent, the company's new drug for

426
00:20:42,040 --> 00:20:45,000
Speaker 1: non cancer pain. Most doctors were unwilling to do this.

427
00:20:45,040 --> 00:20:47,119
Speaker 1: They worried about getting their patients horribly addicted. To a

428
00:20:47,200 --> 00:20:50,520
Speaker 1: dangerous drug and perhaps igniting an opioid epidemic. Pretty learned

429
00:20:50,520 --> 00:20:52,760
Speaker 1: that physicians did want a long lasting pain reliever that

430
00:20:52,800 --> 00:20:54,960
Speaker 1: was less addictive than morphineous, considered kind of like the

431
00:20:54,960 --> 00:20:57,680
Speaker 1: holy grail of medicine at that point. Now they didn't

432
00:20:57,720 --> 00:21:00,280
Speaker 1: have such a drug. Oxycontent was just as it active

433
00:21:00,280 --> 00:21:02,639
Speaker 1: as the old bills, perhaps even more addictive. But the

434
00:21:02,640 --> 00:21:04,840
Speaker 1: focus groups taught them that there was an incredible potential

435
00:21:04,840 --> 00:21:07,080
Speaker 1: in selling such a product, whether or not they actually

436
00:21:07,119 --> 00:21:12,000
Speaker 1: had one. Pharmaceutical released oxycontent onto the open market that

437
00:21:12,119 --> 00:21:14,520
Speaker 1: the company launch party for the new drug, Richard Sackler

438
00:21:14,560 --> 00:21:17,560
Speaker 1: compared the launch of oxycontent to a natural disaster, asking

439
00:21:17,600 --> 00:21:20,159
Speaker 1: the audience to imagine a blizzard or a hurricane, and saying,

440
00:21:20,480 --> 00:21:22,600
Speaker 1: the launch of oxycontent tablets will be followed by a

441
00:21:22,600 --> 00:21:25,680
Speaker 1: blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition. The prescription

442
00:21:25,720 --> 00:21:31,439
Speaker 1: blizzard will be so deep, dense and white. Oh wow, Richard, No,

443
00:21:31,880 --> 00:21:36,160
Speaker 1: don't like you know what you're doing. Like he must

444
00:21:36,160 --> 00:21:39,920
Speaker 1: have suspected it sounds it sounds like he was thinking

445
00:21:39,960 --> 00:21:42,080
Speaker 1: money was more important than people. It sounds like that

446
00:21:42,200 --> 00:21:46,440
Speaker 1: might have been his only motivating factor. Yeah, the predecessor

447
00:21:46,480 --> 00:21:48,720
Speaker 1: drug MS content had a reputation from being very prone

448
00:21:48,720 --> 00:21:50,760
Speaker 1: to abuse. Many patients had figured out how to crush

449
00:21:50,760 --> 00:21:53,040
Speaker 1: it and extract pure oxy code on, thus getting past

450
00:21:53,040 --> 00:21:54,959
Speaker 1: that nasty time release thing and giving them a much

451
00:21:55,000 --> 00:21:57,879
Speaker 1: more addictive drub. So PERTTU instructed at sales staff to

452
00:21:57,960 --> 00:21:59,600
Speaker 1: light to doctors and say that this could not be

453
00:21:59,640 --> 00:22:02,440
Speaker 1: done oxy content, even though their own internal studies showed

454
00:22:02,440 --> 00:22:05,480
Speaker 1: that it was actually super easy to do with oxy content. Well,

455
00:22:05,520 --> 00:22:08,119
Speaker 1: I mean, I might be wrong. I grew up in

456
00:22:08,160 --> 00:22:11,160
Speaker 1: the nineties, But was it a new invention crushing pills,

457
00:22:11,160 --> 00:22:13,280
Speaker 1: because that's always been like, oh, you want to just

458
00:22:13,320 --> 00:22:15,600
Speaker 1: crush it up? They they didn't think that was part

459
00:22:15,640 --> 00:22:18,960
Speaker 1: of well they did abuse strategy. They did. They knew

460
00:22:18,960 --> 00:22:20,960
Speaker 1: it could be done. They done studies showing that it

461
00:22:21,040 --> 00:22:23,600
Speaker 1: was really easy to extract pureoxy code on from oxycontent.

462
00:22:23,640 --> 00:22:26,160
Speaker 1: They just lied to doctors and said it couldn't be done,

463
00:22:26,720 --> 00:22:29,240
Speaker 1: like trick, you know exactly. It was like, it's really

464
00:22:29,240 --> 00:22:31,040
Speaker 1: hard to make a pill people can't crush and then

465
00:22:31,760 --> 00:22:35,399
Speaker 1: purifying store, Why don't we just lie? This pill is

466
00:22:35,440 --> 00:22:39,919
Speaker 1: fortified with iron? Who can bend iron? Superman, Superman? This

467
00:22:40,040 --> 00:22:43,720
Speaker 1: pills they have like one trial pill that's just made

468
00:22:43,720 --> 00:22:45,719
Speaker 1: out of steel, and they're like, look, you can't crush it.

469
00:22:46,000 --> 00:22:52,400
Speaker 1: Don't try the others. Don't try the other not now.

470
00:22:52,600 --> 00:22:55,480
Speaker 1: As a pending Massachusetts lawsuit against the company alleges quote

471
00:22:55,640 --> 00:22:59,119
Speaker 1: doctors had the crucial misconception that oxycontent was weaker than morphine,

472
00:22:59,119 --> 00:23:01,560
Speaker 1: which led them to pursue iboxy content much more often.

473
00:23:02,960 --> 00:23:05,960
Speaker 1: Michael Colon, a Pretty executive, wrote this letter to Richard Sackler.

474
00:23:06,800 --> 00:23:09,880
Speaker 1: Since oxycodone is perceived as being weaker a weaker opioid

475
00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:12,320
Speaker 1: than morphine, it has results of oxy contin being used

476
00:23:12,359 --> 00:23:15,000
Speaker 1: much earlier for non cancer pain. Physicians are positioning this

477
00:23:15,040 --> 00:23:17,880
Speaker 1: product where perkose at hydrocdone and tailan al with codeine

478
00:23:17,880 --> 00:23:20,080
Speaker 1: have traditionally been used. It is important that we be

479
00:23:20,119 --> 00:23:23,080
Speaker 1: careful not to change the perception of physicians towards oxycodone

480
00:23:23,080 --> 00:23:27,960
Speaker 1: when developing promotional pieces, symposia, review studies, articles, etcetera. Sackler's

481
00:23:28,000 --> 00:23:29,919
Speaker 1: response to this was short and sweet. I think that

482
00:23:30,000 --> 00:23:33,400
Speaker 1: you have this issue well in hand. Again, they think

483
00:23:33,440 --> 00:23:37,680
Speaker 1: it's not addictive. Don't tell them the truth. Yeah, they

484
00:23:37,680 --> 00:23:40,320
Speaker 1: know what they're doing. That same year, Michael Friedman, the

485
00:23:40,359 --> 00:23:42,920
Speaker 1: company head of sales, emailed his boss with similar concerns.

486
00:23:42,960 --> 00:23:45,520
Speaker 1: Correcting the false impression that doctors had about oxy would

487
00:23:45,560 --> 00:23:48,320
Speaker 1: be bad for business. Quote, it would be extremely dangerous

488
00:23:48,320 --> 00:23:50,080
Speaker 1: at this early stage in the life of the product

489
00:23:50,160 --> 00:23:52,280
Speaker 1: to make physicians think the drug is stronger or equal

490
00:23:52,320 --> 00:23:54,440
Speaker 1: to morphine. We are well aware of the view held

491
00:23:54,440 --> 00:23:57,119
Speaker 1: by many physicians that oxycodon is weaker than morphine. I

492
00:23:57,160 --> 00:24:00,000
Speaker 1: do not plan to do anything about it. Again, Richard's

493
00:24:00,000 --> 00:24:02,960
Speaker 1: actually replied, I agree with you. He then asked, is

494
00:24:03,000 --> 00:24:05,560
Speaker 1: there a general agreement or are there some holdouts? Everybody

495
00:24:05,600 --> 00:24:08,240
Speaker 1: on board about lieing to doctors. We all in the

496
00:24:08,280 --> 00:24:11,600
Speaker 1: same the same boat here. Yeah, it's it's it's pretty

497
00:24:11,600 --> 00:24:14,639
Speaker 1: blatant criming. I mean, and there's a paper trail for this.

498
00:24:14,720 --> 00:24:18,800
Speaker 1: It seems like like thousands of emails. And it's unless

499
00:24:18,800 --> 00:24:22,760
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, they're still selling oxyconton today, right, Oh, I

500
00:24:22,760 --> 00:24:24,800
Speaker 1: mean yeah, I mean unless it was this morning that

501
00:24:24,840 --> 00:24:26,560
Speaker 1: there was a breaking news I missed. You're not gonna

502
00:24:26,600 --> 00:24:28,640
Speaker 1: stop selling and this is all like that. You don't

503
00:24:28,680 --> 00:24:32,239
Speaker 1: have exclusive access to this information. No, no, no, no no.

504
00:24:32,280 --> 00:24:34,000
Speaker 1: There's been a number of big stories. We'll get to

505
00:24:34,040 --> 00:24:37,119
Speaker 1: that in a little bit. How this all came out. Sorry, sorry, no,

506
00:24:37,280 --> 00:24:39,639
Speaker 1: it's all good. Now. All this was to volage of

507
00:24:39,680 --> 00:24:41,760
Speaker 1: the result of a lawsuit followed by the state of

508
00:24:41,800 --> 00:24:44,959
Speaker 1: Kentucky against Perdue in two thousand fifteen. As you'd expect,

509
00:24:45,000 --> 00:24:48,000
Speaker 1: the company had already explanationist what Sackler and his executives

510
00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:52,120
Speaker 1: did was not fraud. Here's pro publica quote Sackler, it said,

511
00:24:52,119 --> 00:24:55,399
Speaker 1: supports that the company accurately discloses the potency of oxycontent

512
00:24:55,440 --> 00:24:57,720
Speaker 1: to healthcare providers. He takes great care to explain that

513
00:24:57,760 --> 00:24:59,879
Speaker 1: the drugs label made it clear that oxycontent is to

514
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:03,400
Speaker 1: wise is potent as morphine produced set Still, Perdu acknowledged

515
00:25:03,400 --> 00:25:06,520
Speaker 1: it had made a determination to avoid emphasizing oxycontent as

516
00:25:06,520 --> 00:25:09,359
Speaker 1: a powerful cancer pain drug out of a concern that

517
00:25:09,400 --> 00:25:12,120
Speaker 1: non cancer patients would be reluctant to take a cancer drug.

518
00:25:13,119 --> 00:25:16,280
Speaker 1: So we, in light of doctors, we just didn't emphasize

519
00:25:16,320 --> 00:25:18,560
Speaker 1: the truth so that people would keep taking the pills.

520
00:25:19,200 --> 00:25:22,199
Speaker 1: Since that's different from a lie. Yeah, it's a it's

521
00:25:22,200 --> 00:25:24,760
Speaker 1: not really that different. It's it's not really it's kind

522
00:25:24,760 --> 00:25:26,760
Speaker 1: of just a lie. It's it's a lie. Yeah, it's

523
00:25:26,800 --> 00:25:28,879
Speaker 1: kind of just a lie. No documents released from the

524
00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:31,120
Speaker 1: Kentucky suit as well as a lawsuit in Massachusetts paint

525
00:25:31,119 --> 00:25:33,080
Speaker 1: a picture that puts Richard Sackler square in the middle

526
00:25:33,119 --> 00:25:35,840
Speaker 1: of produced strategy to silly shipload of oxycontent by lying

527
00:25:35,880 --> 00:25:38,760
Speaker 1: about how strong it was. Seven other Sackler family members

528
00:25:38,800 --> 00:25:41,879
Speaker 1: were also implicated. The strategy worked like gangbusters, ending the

529
00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:44,080
Speaker 1: company forty eight million dollars in the first full year

530
00:25:44,119 --> 00:25:47,320
Speaker 1: of sales. In an email to the company, Richard noted, clearly,

531
00:25:47,359 --> 00:25:51,479
Speaker 1: this strategy has outperformed our expectations, market research, and fondest dreams.

532
00:25:51,600 --> 00:25:53,879
Speaker 1: So forty eight million dollars. This is back in the nineties.

533
00:25:53,920 --> 00:25:57,560
Speaker 1: This is I think. Yeah, that's the first year. Three

534
00:25:57,640 --> 00:26:00,199
Speaker 1: years later, after tens of millions more in sale. He

535
00:26:00,240 --> 00:26:02,800
Speaker 1: emailed this to an executive a perdue quote. You won't

536
00:26:02,800 --> 00:26:05,720
Speaker 1: believe how committed I am to make OxyContin a huge success.

537
00:26:05,760 --> 00:26:07,760
Speaker 1: It is almost that I dedicated my life to it.

538
00:26:07,840 --> 00:26:09,720
Speaker 1: After the initial launce phase, I will have to catch

539
00:26:09,760 --> 00:26:12,440
Speaker 1: up with my private life again. Just working too hard.

540
00:26:12,520 --> 00:26:15,840
Speaker 1: Line to doctors, poor guy, it sounds like he's got

541
00:26:15,840 --> 00:26:19,920
Speaker 1: psychic stress or psychic You should try try some liberal here.

542
00:26:19,920 --> 00:26:22,960
Speaker 1: It's great for psychic stress. It's so liberating. It's liberating.

543
00:26:23,400 --> 00:26:25,399
Speaker 1: It wasn't psychic stress. What's it called psychic I think

544
00:26:26,240 --> 00:26:28,320
Speaker 1: that was the word psychic stress. Yeah, I think that

545
00:26:28,400 --> 00:26:30,560
Speaker 1: was the term he used. Yeah. Now, when he was

546
00:26:30,600 --> 00:26:33,639
Speaker 1: deposed to Massachusetts, Richard Sackler denied that he had participated

547
00:26:33,640 --> 00:26:35,720
Speaker 1: in any kind of gigantic lie to trick doctors and

548
00:26:35,880 --> 00:26:39,600
Speaker 1: over prescribing oxycontent. According to pro Publica, he quote offered

549
00:26:39,600 --> 00:26:43,000
Speaker 1: benign interpretations of emails that appeared to show perdue executives

550
00:26:43,040 --> 00:26:46,160
Speaker 1: or sales representatives minimizing the risks of OxyContin and its

551
00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:48,639
Speaker 1: euphoric effects. He denied that there was any effort to

552
00:26:48,640 --> 00:26:51,200
Speaker 1: deceive doctors about the potency of oxycontent, and argued that

553
00:26:51,280 --> 00:26:54,720
Speaker 1: lawyers for Kentucky were misconstruing words such as stronger and

554
00:26:54,760 --> 00:26:58,520
Speaker 1: weaker used in email threads. The term stronger in Freedman's email,

555
00:26:58,560 --> 00:27:01,679
Speaker 1: Sackler said, meant more threating, more frightening. There is no

556
00:27:01,720 --> 00:27:03,760
Speaker 1: way that this intended or had the effect of causing

557
00:27:03,760 --> 00:27:06,119
Speaker 1: physicians to overlook the fact that it was twice as potent.

558
00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:09,199
Speaker 1: We went saying it's not stronger. We're saying it's not

559
00:27:09,280 --> 00:27:12,280
Speaker 1: more threatening than morphine. It's just a little pill. It's

560
00:27:12,280 --> 00:27:16,240
Speaker 1: not scary. Morphine comes in a needle. Sometimes that's scary. Well,

561
00:27:16,280 --> 00:27:19,400
Speaker 1: I guess, I mean, I am not defending them already,

562
00:27:19,400 --> 00:27:22,040
Speaker 1: think that a bunch of ship backs. But honestly, there

563
00:27:22,040 --> 00:27:25,840
Speaker 1: should be more questions about this. Why did they not ask? Okay,

564
00:27:25,840 --> 00:27:28,800
Speaker 1: strength is one thing. The potency seems like a very

565
00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:31,840
Speaker 1: scientific question to ask. Yeah, I mean it does. It's

566
00:27:31,920 --> 00:27:33,560
Speaker 1: it seems like a lot of doctors fell down on

567
00:27:33,600 --> 00:27:35,960
Speaker 1: the job here. We'll get into y in a little bit,

568
00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:39,919
Speaker 1: because they they they they there's some doctors being shady

569
00:27:39,960 --> 00:27:42,720
Speaker 1: as fucking this in this story too. Actually quite a

570
00:27:42,720 --> 00:27:45,239
Speaker 1: lot of not surprising at all, not surprising at all.

571
00:27:45,280 --> 00:27:47,560
Speaker 1: Hey man, you got a lot of fucking student loans

572
00:27:47,600 --> 00:27:49,800
Speaker 1: to pay back. I get that m D Like if

573
00:27:49,840 --> 00:27:52,320
Speaker 1: you write some pill prescriptions, that makes that sh it easier.

574
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:54,639
Speaker 1: It's like all those doctors in l A, you rememberhen

575
00:27:54,640 --> 00:27:56,679
Speaker 1: it like medical marijuana was like the thing, and there

576
00:27:56,680 --> 00:27:58,760
Speaker 1: would be all those like old doctors who was just

577
00:27:58,800 --> 00:28:02,080
Speaker 1: like signing pop your scripture retirement plan. Yeah. That was

578
00:28:02,160 --> 00:28:05,520
Speaker 1: for a long time before Obamacare. My only doctor that

579
00:28:05,720 --> 00:28:09,439
Speaker 1: was one doctor appointment. I get the only doctor scary

580
00:28:09,480 --> 00:28:12,080
Speaker 1: when he'd give me advice of like, oh it's pretty high,

581
00:28:12,119 --> 00:28:14,280
Speaker 1: Oh my god, the pot doctor wants me to cool off.

582
00:28:14,880 --> 00:28:18,320
Speaker 1: When the pot doctor gives you real medical advice, should

583
00:28:18,359 --> 00:28:21,000
Speaker 1: go see someone like, no way, you're scaring me, sir.

584
00:28:21,280 --> 00:28:24,080
Speaker 1: I remember my first pot doctor. It was near Venice Beach,

585
00:28:24,119 --> 00:28:27,600
Speaker 1: and I like walk into this shady, dirty office and

586
00:28:27,640 --> 00:28:30,119
Speaker 1: there's like, as I'm standing outside his office, there's a

587
00:28:30,160 --> 00:28:33,720
Speaker 1: poster of it's like a fake painting of the Mona Lisa,

588
00:28:33,800 --> 00:28:35,840
Speaker 1: but she's got a blunt and like, and then I

589
00:28:35,840 --> 00:28:37,560
Speaker 1: go to the office and the guy's wearing a lab

590
00:28:37,560 --> 00:28:39,280
Speaker 1: coat and I'm like, dude, you don't you don't need

591
00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:41,800
Speaker 1: to buy a lab coat. You got them from the

592
00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:45,640
Speaker 1: costume shot. I think we went to is it was.

593
00:28:45,680 --> 00:28:48,880
Speaker 1: He a really old guy with accent, very thick accent.

594
00:28:49,200 --> 00:28:52,320
Speaker 1: I think that he was a hot doctor back in

595
00:28:52,360 --> 00:28:54,720
Speaker 1: the I don't know what he's doing today. I hope

596
00:28:54,720 --> 00:28:56,800
Speaker 1: he made enough to retire, because he should not be

597
00:28:56,880 --> 00:28:59,800
Speaker 1: practicing medicine. I'm just crossing my fingers. There's never an

598
00:28:59,800 --> 00:29:03,040
Speaker 1: EP episode two about him. And Behind the Bastards. I mean, yeah,

599
00:29:03,160 --> 00:29:05,560
Speaker 1: I don't even remember that guy's name, but I'm sure

600
00:29:05,600 --> 00:29:07,880
Speaker 1: he did something terrible but wind up being a pot doctor.

601
00:29:08,320 --> 00:29:11,880
Speaker 1: I guess so so produced bald face lying to patients

602
00:29:11,880 --> 00:29:14,680
Speaker 1: and doctors was enabled by the f D. A. Curtis Right,

603
00:29:14,760 --> 00:29:17,920
Speaker 1: the FDA examiner who approved Oxycontin's initial application, allowed the

604
00:29:17,960 --> 00:29:21,040
Speaker 1: company to include this note on the package. The late

605
00:29:21,080 --> 00:29:24,160
Speaker 1: absorption is provided by oxyconton tablets is believed to reduce

606
00:29:24,200 --> 00:29:28,720
Speaker 1: the abuse liability of a drug. Wow, that word believed.

607
00:29:29,600 --> 00:29:33,200
Speaker 1: That word is doing a lot of weightlifting there carrying

608
00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:35,719
Speaker 1: the others. Really, I mean, I'm a critical thinker, but

609
00:29:35,760 --> 00:29:37,760
Speaker 1: when I see a word like believe, the first thing

610
00:29:37,800 --> 00:29:41,360
Speaker 1: I do is stop believing and start like looking things up. Yeah,

611
00:29:41,440 --> 00:29:46,000
Speaker 1: looking things up, seeing maybe believe. There's nine times out

612
00:29:46,000 --> 00:29:49,080
Speaker 1: of ten clue that you shouldn't. You don't want to

613
00:29:49,080 --> 00:29:50,800
Speaker 1: hear that from a doctor like you have. We believe

614
00:29:50,880 --> 00:29:53,840
Speaker 1: this will help, Like, oh, I feel like you should

615
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:57,080
Speaker 1: know a little better. I mean, I know a medicine

616
00:29:57,640 --> 00:30:00,160
Speaker 1: sometimes it's a crapshoot, but it's not not comfort to

617
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:04,000
Speaker 1: hear that. In the year after oxy Content's release, Curtis

618
00:30:04,040 --> 00:30:06,200
Speaker 1: Right quit the f DA. He was hired by another

619
00:30:06,200 --> 00:30:08,760
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical company for a short while, and then hired by

620
00:30:08,760 --> 00:30:11,880
Speaker 1: Perdue Pharmaceuticals. Esquire talked to him years later, and he

621
00:30:11,920 --> 00:30:14,560
Speaker 1: offered this defense quote. At the time, it was believed

622
00:30:14,560 --> 00:30:18,120
Speaker 1: that extended release formulations were intrinsically less abusable. It came

623
00:30:18,160 --> 00:30:20,240
Speaker 1: as rather a big shock to everybody, the government and

624
00:30:20,320 --> 00:30:23,160
Speaker 1: Purdue that people found ways to grind up, chew up, snort,

625
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:26,240
Speaker 1: dissolve and in check the pills. We didn't we know

626
00:30:26,280 --> 00:30:28,920
Speaker 1: people would do the thing that they do with every drug,

627
00:30:29,480 --> 00:30:32,200
Speaker 1: like every every single drug. It's like, of course they

628
00:30:32,240 --> 00:30:34,480
Speaker 1: predicted people would be booping and putting it in their

629
00:30:34,960 --> 00:30:38,960
Speaker 1: crushing the crushing. God, where did they think. We'd never

630
00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:40,800
Speaker 1: heard of this drug we made in the eighties, We

631
00:30:40,840 --> 00:30:44,120
Speaker 1: had never heard of people railing drugs. Who would I

632
00:30:44,120 --> 00:30:48,960
Speaker 1: guess that? Come on, come on, dude, I mean people

633
00:30:49,000 --> 00:30:50,520
Speaker 1: are going to find a way to get high off

634
00:30:50,520 --> 00:30:53,040
Speaker 1: of a drug like this is this is people we're

635
00:30:53,040 --> 00:30:55,480
Speaker 1: talking about. You can get high on holding your breath. Yeah,

636
00:30:55,600 --> 00:30:59,600
Speaker 1: you can get and we do. Oh boy. Like I'm

637
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:02,400
Speaker 1: sure after that video of the dolphins passing pupper fish

638
00:31:02,440 --> 00:31:06,280
Speaker 1: around went viral, there's people that are trying to figure out.

639
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:08,760
Speaker 1: But I haven't seen it yet. I think you're going

640
00:31:08,800 --> 00:31:11,120
Speaker 1: to have like a scuba club that all dies. I

641
00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:13,400
Speaker 1: want to do it, but could I get high on

642
00:31:13,400 --> 00:31:15,440
Speaker 1: puffer fish. I don't know. You know, I know a guy.

643
00:31:15,480 --> 00:31:19,440
Speaker 1: He's a dolphin, but I know a dolphin. Okay, we'll

644
00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:21,720
Speaker 1: talk after him, we'll talk afterwards. I don't want to.

645
00:31:21,720 --> 00:31:22,920
Speaker 1: I don't want to get the d a on my

646
00:31:23,000 --> 00:31:28,760
Speaker 1: asked for selling dolphin drugs. Uh. Yeah. So a major

647
00:31:28,800 --> 00:31:31,800
Speaker 1: part of oxycoton success was produced novel strategy of declaring

648
00:31:31,840 --> 00:31:34,920
Speaker 1: a war on pain. Over the course of late nineteen nineties,

649
00:31:34,960 --> 00:31:37,440
Speaker 1: they poured millions and millions of dollars into backing doctors

650
00:31:37,480 --> 00:31:40,840
Speaker 1: who supported opioid treatment for chronic pain. These doctors formed

651
00:31:40,840 --> 00:31:44,360
Speaker 1: advocacy groups like the American Pain Society, the American Academy

652
00:31:44,360 --> 00:31:48,560
Speaker 1: of Pain Medicine, and produce own lobbying organization Partners against Pain,

653
00:31:49,080 --> 00:31:54,200
Speaker 1: Partners You Me and this Crippling pill Addiction Partners against Pain.

654
00:31:54,360 --> 00:31:56,520
Speaker 1: Did they really call it a war on pain? Yeah?

655
00:31:56,600 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 1: And that was again I'm not great at history, but

656
00:31:59,400 --> 00:32:02,240
Speaker 1: that's the same time the war on drugs was going on. Yeah.

657
00:32:02,360 --> 00:32:05,640
Speaker 1: That's like a gorilla like like clandescent war that we

658
00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:08,120
Speaker 1: were running. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's like it's like the

659
00:32:08,160 --> 00:32:12,080
Speaker 1: war in Nicaragua where Yeah, so that's kind of similar.

660
00:32:12,120 --> 00:32:13,760
Speaker 1: If we have a war on drugs and a war

661
00:32:13,840 --> 00:32:17,440
Speaker 1: on pain using oxycon using oxyconton, which is different from

662
00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:22,200
Speaker 1: a drug for reasons. It's supplying arms to the talent band. Okay,

663
00:32:22,200 --> 00:32:25,600
Speaker 1: that's that's a different story, but it would be. It's

664
00:32:25,640 --> 00:32:29,160
Speaker 1: like when we sold missiles to Iran while giving missiles

665
00:32:29,200 --> 00:32:32,360
Speaker 1: to Iraq to fight Iran. That's it's the v of drugs.

666
00:32:32,480 --> 00:32:36,720
Speaker 1: That's the lines I'm making. Yeah, yeah, yeah. These groups,

667
00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:38,880
Speaker 1: which many consider to just be fronts for big pharma

668
00:32:39,040 --> 00:32:42,000
Speaker 1: operated by crooked doctors, pushed regulators to treat pain like

669
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:45,120
Speaker 1: the fifth vital sign. They advocated for a ten point

670
00:32:45,120 --> 00:32:48,120
Speaker 1: pain scale, which doctors should ask patients about during every visit.

671
00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:51,000
Speaker 1: An internal produced strategy document explained that the goal of

672
00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:53,920
Speaker 1: this was to quote attach an emotional aspect to non

673
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:56,960
Speaker 1: cancer pain. This would hopefully cause doctors to treat it

674
00:32:57,000 --> 00:33:01,360
Speaker 1: more seriously and aggressively a k A with a C content. Now,

675
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:03,520
Speaker 1: until that point, pain had, to a certain extent, been

676
00:33:03,600 --> 00:33:07,040
Speaker 1: something chronic suffers just dealt with. Uh. There were obviously

677
00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:09,560
Speaker 1: attempts to mitigate it as best as possible, but complete

678
00:33:09,560 --> 00:33:12,160
Speaker 1: cessation of pain was seen as simply unrealistic and the

679
00:33:12,240 --> 00:33:15,600
Speaker 1: risk of giving chronic pain sufferers, morphine was considered too high.

680
00:33:16,120 --> 00:33:19,880
Speaker 1: With OxyContin produce changed all that. The ironic thing is

681
00:33:19,920 --> 00:33:22,760
Speaker 1: it wasn't actually super effective against chronic pain. It was

682
00:33:22,760 --> 00:33:25,160
Speaker 1: marked as lasting twelve hours, so patients could sleep through

683
00:33:25,160 --> 00:33:27,480
Speaker 1: a night free of agony, but most patients only got

684
00:33:27,480 --> 00:33:29,680
Speaker 1: about six to eight hours of relief. This meant they

685
00:33:29,680 --> 00:33:32,640
Speaker 1: took more oxycontent, which meant they ran through their prescriptions faster,

686
00:33:32,680 --> 00:33:35,360
Speaker 1: which led them to calling doctors in agony. When doctor's

687
00:33:35,440 --> 00:33:37,960
Speaker 1: questions sales reps about this cycle, Perdue advised them to

688
00:33:38,040 --> 00:33:41,480
Speaker 1: increase the dose rather than the dosing frequency, which guaranteed

689
00:33:41,520 --> 00:33:43,560
Speaker 1: that the cycle would keep on keeping on and also

690
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:47,320
Speaker 1: increased produce profits. Now, doctors aren't dumb, and many of

691
00:33:47,320 --> 00:33:49,520
Speaker 1: them were hesitant about some of the claims Perdue was making.

692
00:33:49,760 --> 00:33:53,880
Speaker 1: They were particularly considering a moment now when when I

693
00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:56,959
Speaker 1: like everything with oxycotton right now, I understand that's its

694
00:33:57,000 --> 00:33:59,960
Speaker 1: own beast, But the whole one to ten scale of pain,

695
00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:03,160
Speaker 1: I'm a little confused and how authentic that is? Is

696
00:34:03,160 --> 00:34:05,840
Speaker 1: that really a scientific method? Because I've heard that before,

697
00:34:05,880 --> 00:34:09,000
Speaker 1: But what's to stop somebody? And I'm not telling anyone

698
00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:10,920
Speaker 1: that their pain is not the number, they say, yea,

699
00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:13,000
Speaker 1: but what's to stop someone from saying their pain is

700
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:16,000
Speaker 1: something higher than it is nothing? Okay, I just want

701
00:34:16,040 --> 00:34:17,960
Speaker 1: to make sure that there wasn't something I was missing. No,

702
00:34:18,360 --> 00:34:21,960
Speaker 1: there's no way to, like, you can't there's not like

703
00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:25,000
Speaker 1: an objective measurement of pain, Like you know, I know

704
00:34:25,120 --> 00:34:29,759
Speaker 1: people who have chronic pain conditions, for whom like you know,

705
00:34:29,960 --> 00:34:32,200
Speaker 1: they'll get hurt like in a way that would like

706
00:34:32,360 --> 00:34:34,200
Speaker 1: fuck me up for a day or two, and they

707
00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:35,879
Speaker 1: just like sort of grin and bear it because they're

708
00:34:35,920 --> 00:34:38,120
Speaker 1: so used to dealing with pain. So yeah, like there's

709
00:34:38,160 --> 00:34:41,479
Speaker 1: no way to objectively measure pain. And I'm not saying

710
00:34:41,480 --> 00:34:44,080
Speaker 1: like a tin point pain scale is necessarily a bad idea,

711
00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:48,239
Speaker 1: but Purdue introduced it specifically so that because it would

712
00:34:48,239 --> 00:34:51,000
Speaker 1: make it easier for people to get prescribed introduced. Ye

713
00:34:51,920 --> 00:34:54,960
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that it was doctors and stuff that

714
00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:56,960
Speaker 1: they were fun that they were like it was it

715
00:34:57,040 --> 00:34:59,800
Speaker 1: was a thing there. I know, the marionette man controls

716
00:34:59,800 --> 00:35:02,520
Speaker 1: all the puppets exactly, a fool. They were like, if

717
00:35:02,560 --> 00:35:04,120
Speaker 1: we have this, if this is the way people do

718
00:35:04,200 --> 00:35:05,920
Speaker 1: this stuff, it'll be a lot easier to sell a

719
00:35:05,920 --> 00:35:09,759
Speaker 1: shipload of Oxyconton, and it was speaking of selling a

720
00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:13,440
Speaker 1: shipload of things that aren't oxyconton unless the ad that

721
00:35:13,480 --> 00:35:16,520
Speaker 1: gets randomly slotted in is for oxycon. God, I hope not.

722
00:35:16,960 --> 00:35:18,719
Speaker 1: It might be. There's no way to know. We've been

723
00:35:18,760 --> 00:35:22,000
Speaker 1: having Koke Brothers ads. You know, I'm sure a Blackwater

724
00:35:22,040 --> 00:35:24,279
Speaker 1: ad will wind up soon. Like the Koke Brothers are

725
00:35:24,360 --> 00:35:26,560
Speaker 1: avid listeners. Oh yeah, and they are, and you know what,

726
00:35:26,800 --> 00:35:28,960
Speaker 1: in fairness to them, an awful lot of behind the

727
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:31,759
Speaker 1: bastards listeners need a lot of oil refined. I mean

728
00:35:31,800 --> 00:35:33,440
Speaker 1: I get that. I get a fan email in me

729
00:35:33,480 --> 00:35:35,880
Speaker 1: every week saying like, I have all this crude oil

730
00:35:36,000 --> 00:35:38,200
Speaker 1: and no way to refine it. Do you know where

731
00:35:38,239 --> 00:35:39,880
Speaker 1: I can do that in such a way that it

732
00:35:39,920 --> 00:35:44,640
Speaker 1: pollutes the Bay of Galveston beyond ecological salvage. And I'd

733
00:35:44,640 --> 00:35:47,640
Speaker 1: say the Koke Brothers, Oh wow, yeah, yeah, that's great

734
00:35:47,680 --> 00:35:50,600
Speaker 1: for that. So if you need your crude oil refined,

735
00:35:50,760 --> 00:35:54,279
Speaker 1: check out the Koke Brothers refineries. And if you need

736
00:35:54,280 --> 00:36:05,160
Speaker 1: anything else that we advertise products, we're back. So as

737
00:36:05,200 --> 00:36:06,840
Speaker 1: I was saying, doctors are not dumb, and many of

738
00:36:06,880 --> 00:36:08,680
Speaker 1: them were hesitant about some of the claims Perdue was

739
00:36:08,719 --> 00:36:11,759
Speaker 1: making They were particularly concerned about whether or not oxycontent

740
00:36:11,840 --> 00:36:15,480
Speaker 1: caused euphoria. If you've never taken opiates recreationally, you should

741
00:36:15,480 --> 00:36:18,239
Speaker 1: know that they have a strong mood altering component. Pain

742
00:36:18,320 --> 00:36:20,880
Speaker 1: Killers work on your emotions too. You feel very happy,

743
00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:23,959
Speaker 1: especially when coming up. It's kind of incredible. Of course,

744
00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:26,560
Speaker 1: this is something that concerns doctors because euphoria is the

745
00:36:26,600 --> 00:36:30,719
Speaker 1: most addictive thing in the world. Like if OxyContin caused it,

746
00:36:30,800 --> 00:36:32,920
Speaker 1: then that that might make it too dangerous to prescribe.

747
00:36:32,920 --> 00:36:35,799
Speaker 1: All willie nilly. Thankfully Perdue was there to lie to

748
00:36:35,840 --> 00:36:39,000
Speaker 1: doctors and say their pills did not cause euphoria. Sometimes

749
00:36:39,040 --> 00:36:41,160
Speaker 1: they'd admit that it could, but that it did so

750
00:36:41,280 --> 00:36:44,040
Speaker 1: less than other opiates, which of course there was no

751
00:36:44,160 --> 00:36:47,279
Speaker 1: evidence for. During the deposition, Richard Sackler was confronted with

752
00:36:47,320 --> 00:36:50,200
Speaker 1: a nineteen ninety note from a company salesman admitting that

753
00:36:50,239 --> 00:36:52,839
Speaker 1: he quote talked of less euphoria when selling the drug

754
00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:55,239
Speaker 1: to a doctor. Sackler argued in court that this was

755
00:36:55,320 --> 00:36:58,520
Speaker 1: fine because nine was before there was quote an agreed

756
00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:02,360
Speaker 1: statement of facts now in legally's an agreed statement of

757
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:04,239
Speaker 1: facts is a list of facts both parties in a

758
00:37:04,320 --> 00:37:06,279
Speaker 1: lawsuit agree on and submit to a judge at the

759
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:08,919
Speaker 1: start of a case. So, if I understand right, Richard

760
00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:10,960
Speaker 1: Sackley was saying it was fine for his employees to

761
00:37:11,040 --> 00:37:13,200
Speaker 1: light at doctors about the fact that his pain medicine

762
00:37:13,200 --> 00:37:16,239
Speaker 1: didn't cause euphoria because the company hadn't been sued yet

763
00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:18,719
Speaker 1: and so there wasn't an agreed upon statement of facts

764
00:37:18,719 --> 00:37:21,400
Speaker 1: like that. I think that's the argument he was making.

765
00:37:21,440 --> 00:37:23,719
Speaker 1: I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a murderer because I

766
00:37:23,760 --> 00:37:26,560
Speaker 1: haven't been I haven't been caught. You have you seen

767
00:37:26,560 --> 00:37:30,680
Speaker 1: me kill anyone in this courtroom today? I rest my case.

768
00:37:32,680 --> 00:37:35,600
Speaker 1: Ignore the blood on my shirt. Now. When the lawyer

769
00:37:35,640 --> 00:37:37,640
Speaker 1: for the state asked, what difference does that make if

770
00:37:37,680 --> 00:37:40,240
Speaker 1: it's improper in two thousand seven, wouldn't it be improper

771
00:37:40,239 --> 00:37:45,920
Speaker 1: in exactly, replied not necessarily. That's it. So you got

772
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:49,279
Speaker 1: a say in court? Yeah. I always pictured court much

773
00:37:49,280 --> 00:37:51,760
Speaker 1: different than that. The state did present him with more memos,

774
00:37:51,800 --> 00:37:53,920
Speaker 1: and Sackly defended himself by saying that the claim of

775
00:37:53,960 --> 00:37:56,520
Speaker 1: less euphoria could be true and I don't see the

776
00:37:56,560 --> 00:37:59,880
Speaker 1: harm m I'm gonna quote from pro public again. The

777
00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:01,719
Speaker 1: same issue came up regarding a note written by a

778
00:38:01,719 --> 00:38:04,680
Speaker 1: produced sales representative about one doctor got to convince him

779
00:38:04,719 --> 00:38:06,839
Speaker 1: to counsel patients that they won't get buzzed as they

780
00:38:06,840 --> 00:38:09,960
Speaker 1: will with short acting opioid pain killers. Sackly defended these

781
00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:12,040
Speaker 1: comments as well, Well, what it says there is that

782
00:38:12,080 --> 00:38:13,520
Speaker 1: they won't get a buzz, and I don't think that

783
00:38:13,560 --> 00:38:15,360
Speaker 1: telling a patient I don't think you'll get a buzz

784
00:38:15,440 --> 00:38:18,279
Speaker 1: is harmful, he said. Sackler added that the comments from

785
00:38:18,280 --> 00:38:20,840
Speaker 1: the representative to the doctor actually could be helpful because

786
00:38:20,880 --> 00:38:22,960
Speaker 1: maybe patients won't get a buzz, and if you would

787
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:24,680
Speaker 1: like to know if they do. He might have had

788
00:38:24,680 --> 00:38:27,200
Speaker 1: a good medical reason for wanting to know that, maybe

789
00:38:27,200 --> 00:38:28,440
Speaker 1: because he want to know if they were gonna get

790
00:38:28,440 --> 00:38:30,799
Speaker 1: addicted or not telling them won't get a buzz will

791
00:38:30,800 --> 00:38:33,759
Speaker 1: cause you to prescribe an addictive drug to people about

792
00:38:33,760 --> 00:38:35,759
Speaker 1: thinking we'll get them addictive, because if you're not getting

793
00:38:35,800 --> 00:38:38,000
Speaker 1: a buzz, then why would you do it addictive? Exactly

794
00:38:38,040 --> 00:38:39,600
Speaker 1: if it's not going to give you a buzz. Once

795
00:38:39,600 --> 00:38:42,400
Speaker 1: they develop a pain killer that doesn't get you high,

796
00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:45,040
Speaker 1: that's great, Like I mean, and I say, this is

797
00:38:45,040 --> 00:38:46,919
Speaker 1: the guy who loves getting high on pain killers. That's

798
00:38:46,960 --> 00:38:49,680
Speaker 1: like one of the best medicines you could possibly invent

799
00:38:49,760 --> 00:38:52,000
Speaker 1: is something that just stops pain and doesn't have an

800
00:38:52,040 --> 00:38:55,440
Speaker 1: abuse potential, which is what they were saying oxy content was.

801
00:38:56,360 --> 00:38:59,600
Speaker 1: But you know, drive through the Midwest you will see

802
00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:02,200
Speaker 1: that it is not. It causes so much pain. Yeah,

803
00:39:02,239 --> 00:39:07,000
Speaker 1: it really does. It's a nightmarish Now, between two thousand

804
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:08,759
Speaker 1: and one, the number of oxy content prescriptions in the

805
00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:12,120
Speaker 1: US went from three hundred thousand to six million. Now

806
00:39:12,360 --> 00:39:14,799
Speaker 1: this might sound to you if your podcast, Alchemy this

807
00:39:14,840 --> 00:39:16,880
Speaker 1: went from three hundred thousand downloads in a week to

808
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:19,680
Speaker 1: six million. I assume everybody at Alchemy this would be happy.

809
00:39:19,680 --> 00:39:21,239
Speaker 1: I know I'd be happy. I mean, so if he

810
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:24,200
Speaker 1: we'd be super psyched. Richard Sackler was not happy with this.

811
00:39:24,600 --> 00:39:27,480
Speaker 1: In one employee, Michael Friedman told him that Perdue was

812
00:39:27,520 --> 00:39:30,080
Speaker 1: now making more than twenty million dollars a week. Sackler

813
00:39:30,120 --> 00:39:33,319
Speaker 1: replied instantly to his email after midnight that sales were,

814
00:39:33,320 --> 00:39:36,360
Speaker 1: in his opinion, not so great. After all, if we

815
00:39:36,400 --> 00:39:38,360
Speaker 1: are to do nine million this year, we should be

816
00:39:38,440 --> 00:39:40,640
Speaker 1: running at seventy million a month, So it looks like

817
00:39:40,680 --> 00:39:44,080
Speaker 1: this month it could be eighty or ninety million. Blah humbug, yawn.

818
00:39:44,200 --> 00:39:49,719
Speaker 1: Where was I wow, only twenty million a week. Man,

819
00:39:49,280 --> 00:39:51,560
Speaker 1: you can take it with you. It's you can't take

820
00:39:51,600 --> 00:39:55,040
Speaker 1: it with you at a certain point everyone, as far

821
00:39:55,080 --> 00:39:57,520
Speaker 1: as I know, unless Perdue is figured out a cure,

822
00:39:57,760 --> 00:40:00,759
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to leave it all behind. Yeah, you

823
00:40:00,840 --> 00:40:04,200
Speaker 1: can't spend all that, But I'd sure like to be

824
00:40:04,280 --> 00:40:07,319
Speaker 1: challenged to. I mean, I feel like if I made

825
00:40:07,600 --> 00:40:10,400
Speaker 1: twenty million dollars in a lifetime, that would allow me

826
00:40:10,440 --> 00:40:13,800
Speaker 1: to live beyond my wildest dreams. That's enough money, for example,

827
00:40:14,000 --> 00:40:17,919
Speaker 1: three months rent in the bank today. I wouldn't be

828
00:40:17,960 --> 00:40:20,640
Speaker 1: crying myself home. This is one of those things I

829
00:40:20,680 --> 00:40:22,600
Speaker 1: don't tend to. I think it's actually dangerous to like

830
00:40:22,920 --> 00:40:25,279
Speaker 1: talk jokingly too much about like guillotines and stuff. But

831
00:40:25,320 --> 00:40:26,920
Speaker 1: like when you look at people living this way and

832
00:40:26,960 --> 00:40:29,640
Speaker 1: then you realize that, like some like Americans have listened

833
00:40:29,680 --> 00:40:31,319
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars in the bank, it's like, what do

834
00:40:31,360 --> 00:40:33,879
Speaker 1: you think this is going to end? Buddy? Like you're

835
00:40:33,880 --> 00:40:36,240
Speaker 1: selling poison to people and you're not happy at twenty

836
00:40:36,280 --> 00:40:39,160
Speaker 1: million a week, And there's people like worried that they

837
00:40:39,160 --> 00:40:42,080
Speaker 1: have to choose between insulin and food for the month, Like,

838
00:40:42,320 --> 00:40:44,319
Speaker 1: what do you think the long term is on this

839
00:40:44,560 --> 00:40:49,000
Speaker 1: like it's frustrating. It's like and that's the nicest way

840
00:40:49,000 --> 00:40:53,480
Speaker 1: you could put it. That's the nicest, very frustrating. Now,

841
00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:56,040
Speaker 1: by two thoe Perdu held more than half of the

842
00:40:56,080 --> 00:40:58,799
Speaker 1: market share for long acting opioids. That year was also

843
00:40:58,800 --> 00:41:02,279
Speaker 1: the first year annual sales of oxycontent broke one billion dollars,

844
00:41:02,320 --> 00:41:04,719
Speaker 1: So in the span of five years, oxyconton sales went

845
00:41:04,760 --> 00:41:07,160
Speaker 1: from forty eight million in a year to one billion

846
00:41:07,239 --> 00:41:09,520
Speaker 1: in a year. The New York Times article that announced

847
00:41:09,560 --> 00:41:12,320
Speaker 1: this noted that these sales were quote even more than viagra.

848
00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:15,080
Speaker 1: If you have found a way to sell people something

849
00:41:15,120 --> 00:41:18,480
Speaker 1: that they want more than erections, you're selling a drug,

850
00:41:18,680 --> 00:41:21,280
Speaker 1: like a dangerous druke. Like I feel like that's across

851
00:41:21,320 --> 00:41:24,560
Speaker 1: the board true now. That New York Times report also

852
00:41:24,600 --> 00:41:27,200
Speaker 1: noted that the drug had been involved in the deaths

853
00:41:27,200 --> 00:41:29,040
Speaker 1: of at least a hundred and twenty people. In the

854
00:41:29,120 --> 00:41:31,200
Speaker 1: year two thousand, the Sackler family was warned that a

855
00:41:31,280 --> 00:41:34,840
Speaker 1: journalist was quote sniffing around the oxycontent abuse story. The

856
00:41:34,880 --> 00:41:37,279
Speaker 1: family discussed this threat during their next board meeting in

857
00:41:37,280 --> 00:41:39,839
Speaker 1: CREDI this is only the year two thousand, We're just

858
00:41:39,920 --> 00:41:43,399
Speaker 1: up to two thousands I had, I had, I knew

859
00:41:43,440 --> 00:41:46,440
Speaker 1: somebody that died of oxycotton before the year two thousand.

860
00:41:47,120 --> 00:41:49,800
Speaker 1: How is there only a hundred and twenty people cases

861
00:41:49,840 --> 00:41:51,880
Speaker 1: of people dead? Oh, there were more, but like that,

862
00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:53,879
Speaker 1: this is just what they confirmed. Like we're talking about

863
00:41:53,880 --> 00:41:56,760
Speaker 1: how journalists digging into it before this was common knowledge.

864
00:41:56,760 --> 00:41:59,040
Speaker 1: So they had found a hundred and twenty cases, but like,

865
00:41:59,040 --> 00:42:01,439
Speaker 1: obviously they were probably thousands at that point. Yeah, that's

866
00:42:01,520 --> 00:42:04,120
Speaker 1: crazy that they're only starting to discover. I guess in

867
00:42:04,200 --> 00:42:07,239
Speaker 1: my world, I thought that that was something not to

868
00:42:07,280 --> 00:42:09,799
Speaker 1: go to. It's not my therapy session. But when I

869
00:42:09,840 --> 00:42:13,480
Speaker 1: was younger, people were taking oxy cotton and it was

870
00:42:13,560 --> 00:42:15,320
Speaker 1: not that bad. Like everybody's like, oh, this is just

871
00:42:15,400 --> 00:42:17,560
Speaker 1: ability to give from the doctor's office. And they abused

872
00:42:17,560 --> 00:42:18,640
Speaker 1: the ship out of it, and it's like, well, at

873
00:42:18,719 --> 00:42:21,759
Speaker 1: least it's not Heroin. But then then obviously the next

874
00:42:21,800 --> 00:42:23,840
Speaker 1: step is Heroine. The next step is Heroin. Then you

875
00:42:23,840 --> 00:42:25,759
Speaker 1: wind up in that finton All ship and then you die.

876
00:42:26,120 --> 00:42:27,719
Speaker 1: I don't think fenton All is around when I was

877
00:42:28,719 --> 00:42:33,480
Speaker 1: that's now, yeah, they were just moving to Heroin. God. Yeah, sorry.

878
00:42:33,920 --> 00:42:36,720
Speaker 1: When I hear them say people dead in two thousand

879
00:42:36,719 --> 00:42:39,040
Speaker 1: I'm like, that can't be. That was just like who

880
00:42:39,160 --> 00:42:41,680
Speaker 1: the New York Times could confirm. It's like, I assume

881
00:42:41,719 --> 00:42:44,239
Speaker 1: it was a lot of leg work behind. Probably I

882
00:42:44,239 --> 00:42:47,200
Speaker 1: wouldn't be surprised if maybe the pharmaceutical company was trying

883
00:42:47,200 --> 00:42:49,440
Speaker 1: to hide it. That's exactly what we're about to get to.

884
00:42:49,600 --> 00:42:51,680
Speaker 1: So the family discussed this threat during their next board

885
00:42:51,719 --> 00:42:54,319
Speaker 1: meeting and crafted a response that was their Their goal

886
00:42:54,360 --> 00:42:56,920
Speaker 1: was that the response quote deflects attention away from the

887
00:42:56,920 --> 00:43:00,880
Speaker 1: company owners. So the Sacklers made up the majority of

888
00:43:00,920 --> 00:43:03,560
Speaker 1: the Purdue board. When you hear their journals is sniffing around,

889
00:43:03,560 --> 00:43:06,040
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, well, they're gonna probably figure out that

890
00:43:06,040 --> 00:43:07,560
Speaker 1: a lot of people are dying on oxy But we

891
00:43:07,640 --> 00:43:09,279
Speaker 1: gotta keep our names out of this ship. We don't

892
00:43:09,280 --> 00:43:11,759
Speaker 1: want to hurt the family sound a little bit like

893
00:43:11,800 --> 00:43:14,680
Speaker 1: the mob. Shortly thereafter, Time put together an article on

894
00:43:14,760 --> 00:43:18,840
Speaker 1: OxyContin deaths. Concerned Purdue employees asked Richard Sackler, then the CEO,

895
00:43:18,960 --> 00:43:21,239
Speaker 1: about this. He wrote that the Times coverage was not

896
00:43:21,360 --> 00:43:24,920
Speaker 1: quote balanced, blamed the deaths on drug addicts, and assured

897
00:43:24,960 --> 00:43:26,839
Speaker 1: them we intend to stay the course and speak out

898
00:43:26,880 --> 00:43:29,720
Speaker 1: for people in pain who far outnumber the drug addicts

899
00:43:29,719 --> 00:43:33,960
Speaker 1: abusing our product. Wow, that sounds like such a familiar tone. Yeah,

900
00:43:34,000 --> 00:43:36,759
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's reminiscent of arguments have heard from

901
00:43:36,920 --> 00:43:41,359
Speaker 1: idiots to yeah, unnamed idiots. Yeah. In two thousand one,

902
00:43:41,400 --> 00:43:43,720
Speaker 1: there were about eight drug overdose deaths for every hundred

903
00:43:43,719 --> 00:43:46,800
Speaker 1: thousand Americans. By two thousand ten, that number had almost

904
00:43:46,840 --> 00:43:50,280
Speaker 1: doubled to fifteen deaths per hundred thousand. On a national scale,

905
00:43:50,280 --> 00:43:52,880
Speaker 1: this equated to tens of thousands of new dead people,

906
00:43:53,120 --> 00:43:55,440
Speaker 1: and most of them were dying from opiate pain killers,

907
00:43:55,480 --> 00:43:59,560
Speaker 1: including OxyContin. Now, many of them were actually oding on heroin,

908
00:43:59,640 --> 00:44:01,279
Speaker 1: but it just so happened that most of those deaths were,

909
00:44:01,280 --> 00:44:03,320
Speaker 1: of course, folks who got hooked initially on an opiate

910
00:44:03,320 --> 00:44:06,800
Speaker 1: pain killer like our good friend OxyContin. In January of

911
00:44:06,840 --> 00:44:09,520
Speaker 1: two thousand one, Richard Sackler received a request for help

912
00:44:09,520 --> 00:44:12,000
Speaker 1: from a produced sales associate. The rep had been to

913
00:44:12,000 --> 00:44:14,200
Speaker 1: a community meeting at a local high school convened by

914
00:44:14,200 --> 00:44:16,319
Speaker 1: a group of mothers whose kids had all overdosed and

915
00:44:16,320 --> 00:44:20,080
Speaker 1: died on OxyContin. Quote statements were made that OxyContin sales

916
00:44:20,120 --> 00:44:21,799
Speaker 1: were at the expense of dead children, and the only

917
00:44:21,840 --> 00:44:24,080
Speaker 1: difference between heroine and OxyContin is that you can get

918
00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:27,279
Speaker 1: oxycontent from a doctor. The very next month, a story

919
00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:29,279
Speaker 1: dropped that fifty nine people had died in a single

920
00:44:29,320 --> 00:44:32,600
Speaker 1: month from OxyContin in the state of Massachusetts. Richard's response

921
00:44:32,680 --> 00:44:35,160
Speaker 1: was this quote, this is not too bad. It could

922
00:44:35,200 --> 00:44:38,160
Speaker 1: have been worse. Yeah, it could have been more bable

923
00:44:38,239 --> 00:44:40,799
Speaker 1: it will be soon. Very next week, a mother wrote

924
00:44:40,840 --> 00:44:43,880
Speaker 1: a letter to Perdue Pharmaceutical stating quote, my son was

925
00:44:43,880 --> 00:44:46,160
Speaker 1: only twenty eight years old when he died from OxyContin

926
00:44:46,200 --> 00:44:48,120
Speaker 1: on New Year's Day. We all miss him very much,

927
00:44:48,160 --> 00:44:50,880
Speaker 1: his wife, especially on Valentine's Day. Why would a company

928
00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:53,200
Speaker 1: make a product that strong eighty and hundred and sixty

929
00:44:53,239 --> 00:44:55,560
Speaker 1: milgram when they know it will kill young people. My

930
00:44:55,640 --> 00:44:57,720
Speaker 1: son had a bad back and could have taken motrin,

931
00:44:57,800 --> 00:45:00,560
Speaker 1: but his doctor started him on vicodin, then ox content

932
00:45:00,640 --> 00:45:04,200
Speaker 1: than OxyContin s R. Now he is dead. A produced

933
00:45:04,200 --> 00:45:07,040
Speaker 1: staff member responded to this by saying, simply, I see

934
00:45:07,040 --> 00:45:10,719
Speaker 1: a liability issue here, any suggestions that was like the

935
00:45:10,960 --> 00:45:14,359
Speaker 1: company responses like other moms, we might. We might get

936
00:45:14,360 --> 00:45:17,480
Speaker 1: sued over this, like no other concerns. Later that month,

937
00:45:17,560 --> 00:45:20,080
Speaker 1: Richard Sackler finally came up with a solution to this problem,

938
00:45:20,120 --> 00:45:22,279
Speaker 1: so many people were whining about for some reason, He

939
00:45:22,320 --> 00:45:25,040
Speaker 1: wrote in a confidential company email quote, we have to

940
00:45:25,080 --> 00:45:27,719
Speaker 1: hammer on the abusers in every way possible. They are

941
00:45:27,719 --> 00:45:31,720
Speaker 1: the culprits and the problem. They are reckless animals. According

942
00:45:31,719 --> 00:45:35,520
Speaker 1: to a State of Massachusetts lawsuit filed like this year quote,

943
00:45:35,600 --> 00:45:37,760
Speaker 1: Richard followed that strategy for the rest of his career,

944
00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:40,440
Speaker 1: collect millions from selling addictive drugs, and blame the terrible

945
00:45:40,440 --> 00:45:43,400
Speaker 1: consequences on the people who became addicted by their misconduct.

946
00:45:43,440 --> 00:45:46,280
Speaker 1: The Sacklers have hammered Massachusetts families in every way possible,

947
00:45:46,480 --> 00:45:48,279
Speaker 1: and the stigma they used as a weapon made the

948
00:45:48,320 --> 00:45:52,880
Speaker 1: crisis worse. So get people addicted to a drug, then

949
00:45:53,160 --> 00:45:58,200
Speaker 1: encourage the criminalization of that abuse, and attack the users themselves,

950
00:45:58,280 --> 00:46:00,359
Speaker 1: which will of course make people less likely to get help,

951
00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:03,480
Speaker 1: which will make them more likely to when you're actually

952
00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:05,799
Speaker 1: a victim, keeps you buying. The only thing that would

953
00:46:05,800 --> 00:46:08,200
Speaker 1: make it worse is if the Sackler family started investing

954
00:46:08,200 --> 00:46:12,719
Speaker 1: in privatized prisons. They didn't. I mean, actually they may

955
00:46:12,719 --> 00:46:14,560
Speaker 1: have a lot of their money is dark, but we

956
00:46:14,600 --> 00:46:16,440
Speaker 1: will get to what they spend their money off a

957
00:46:16,440 --> 00:46:19,279
Speaker 1: little bit later. Yeah, I don't tell me it's pretty bad.

958
00:46:20,239 --> 00:46:22,040
Speaker 1: This strategy worked for a little while, but by two

959
00:46:22,000 --> 00:46:23,680
Speaker 1: thousand ten, the nation has started to wake up to

960
00:46:23,719 --> 00:46:25,800
Speaker 1: the dangerous of boxy content, and Purdue was forced to

961
00:46:25,840 --> 00:46:29,200
Speaker 1: carry out what Esquire describes as a breathtaking pivot quote

962
00:46:29,520 --> 00:46:31,839
Speaker 1: Embracing the arguments critics have been making for years about

963
00:46:31,840 --> 00:46:35,360
Speaker 1: oxycontinent susceptibility to abuse, the company released a new formulation

964
00:46:35,360 --> 00:46:37,560
Speaker 1: of the medication that was harder to snort or inject.

965
00:46:37,840 --> 00:46:40,400
Speaker 1: Produce sees the occasion to rebrand itself as an industry

966
00:46:40,480 --> 00:46:43,000
Speaker 1: leader in abuse to turrent technology. The change of heart

967
00:46:43,000 --> 00:46:46,320
Speaker 1: coincided with two developments. First, an increasing number of addicts

968
00:46:46,520 --> 00:46:49,440
Speaker 1: unable to afford Oxycontinent's high street price. We're turning this

969
00:46:49,560 --> 00:46:52,880
Speaker 1: cheaper alternatives like heroin. Second, oxycontent was nearing the end

970
00:46:52,880 --> 00:46:55,320
Speaker 1: of its patents. Produced suddenly argued that the drug it

971
00:46:55,360 --> 00:46:57,880
Speaker 1: had been selling for nearly fifteen years was so prone

972
00:46:57,920 --> 00:47:00,840
Speaker 1: to abuse the generic manufacturers should not be allowed to

973
00:47:00,880 --> 00:47:05,240
Speaker 1: copy it. Three years later, on April sixteenth, two thousand thirteen,

974
00:47:05,600 --> 00:47:08,560
Speaker 1: the day several OxyContin patents were set to expire, the

975
00:47:08,600 --> 00:47:11,640
Speaker 1: FDA gave Purdue what they wanted, banning anyone else from

976
00:47:11,680 --> 00:47:15,759
Speaker 1: selling generic oxy content produce basically extended the profitability of

977
00:47:15,760 --> 00:47:17,719
Speaker 1: their chief cash cow by arguing that it was too

978
00:47:17,800 --> 00:47:21,480
Speaker 1: dangerous to let anyone else sell. And did that stand. Yeah,

979
00:47:21,600 --> 00:47:25,839
Speaker 1: So now have mixed feelings. I think it's awful and

980
00:47:25,880 --> 00:47:28,799
Speaker 1: there should not be generic versions of oxycotton out there.

981
00:47:29,480 --> 00:47:31,560
Speaker 1: Uh so less it's better no matter how if you

982
00:47:31,600 --> 00:47:33,400
Speaker 1: don't want to just give more weapons to people just

983
00:47:33,400 --> 00:47:36,600
Speaker 1: because one person has it. Do you think, And it's

984
00:47:36,640 --> 00:47:39,560
Speaker 1: probably impossible to say that lives were saved by not

985
00:47:39,680 --> 00:47:43,480
Speaker 1: giving that patent generic like options. I doubt it. I

986
00:47:43,880 --> 00:47:47,560
Speaker 1: seriously doubt it. I like, I don't think it did

987
00:47:47,600 --> 00:47:50,400
Speaker 1: anything but allow Perdue to keep profiting from it. Like

988
00:47:50,440 --> 00:47:54,040
Speaker 1: if there was any reducing loss of life from that,

989
00:47:54,160 --> 00:47:57,120
Speaker 1: it was canceled out from the fact that they were

990
00:47:57,160 --> 00:47:59,400
Speaker 1: marketing this and pushing it so heavily to doctors and

991
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:01,560
Speaker 1: continuing to do so and continuing to try to get

992
00:48:01,560 --> 00:48:04,480
Speaker 1: it on the market because like it was. I wouldn't

993
00:48:04,480 --> 00:48:06,600
Speaker 1: give them any credit for that. I can't give them

994
00:48:06,600 --> 00:48:08,440
Speaker 1: credit because it's just out of greed. But I just

995
00:48:08,480 --> 00:48:10,799
Speaker 1: wonder what would have happened if it was opened up

996
00:48:10,800 --> 00:48:13,680
Speaker 1: to generic markets. You don't have been even more abused.

997
00:48:13,800 --> 00:48:16,760
Speaker 1: You could argue that it might have made the situation

998
00:48:16,840 --> 00:48:19,400
Speaker 1: better because yeah, it's cheaper, but also that means that

999
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:23,400
Speaker 1: addicts aren't gonna bankrupt themselves doing it. They're not going

1000
00:48:23,440 --> 00:48:25,319
Speaker 1: to have to steal ship in order to afford it.

1001
00:48:25,360 --> 00:48:29,240
Speaker 1: And like, you know, you do find that when there's

1002
00:48:29,280 --> 00:48:31,080
Speaker 1: places I think Denmarks one of them, more they'll give

1003
00:48:31,080 --> 00:48:33,920
Speaker 1: heroin addicts free heroin, like the government will, and you, like,

1004
00:48:33,960 --> 00:48:36,279
Speaker 1: you go to a government clinic and they'll they'll give

1005
00:48:36,320 --> 00:48:39,240
Speaker 1: you the heroine to inject and stuff, and they find

1006
00:48:39,239 --> 00:48:41,400
Speaker 1: out that number one, it doesn't create more addicts. In

1007
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:43,719
Speaker 1: number two, the government saves money because they're not out

1008
00:48:43,719 --> 00:48:46,160
Speaker 1: committing crimes. They're not breaking into houses and stealing ship

1009
00:48:46,200 --> 00:48:48,759
Speaker 1: in order to like, So you could argue that it

1010
00:48:48,840 --> 00:48:51,279
Speaker 1: again made things worse on the addicts by they're not

1011
00:48:51,320 --> 00:48:53,600
Speaker 1: being a generic available even though it's not great for

1012
00:48:53,600 --> 00:48:55,560
Speaker 1: people to be addicted oxy it's one of those hard

1013
00:48:55,640 --> 00:48:57,879
Speaker 1: questions that is above my brain scale. And you also

1014
00:48:57,960 --> 00:49:00,560
Speaker 1: might argue that it killed more people because the content

1015
00:49:00,680 --> 00:49:03,840
Speaker 1: is safer than heroin, and if you can't afford OxyContin,

1016
00:49:04,280 --> 00:49:07,960
Speaker 1: you're just gonna go to heroin or fentonylum so that's true. Yeah,

1017
00:49:07,960 --> 00:49:10,040
Speaker 1: you could argue, if there was a cheap oxy maybe

1018
00:49:10,080 --> 00:49:12,320
Speaker 1: we'd have a few more addicts, but we'd have less overdoses.

1019
00:49:12,880 --> 00:49:15,040
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think they might have killed more people

1020
00:49:15,040 --> 00:49:18,439
Speaker 1: that way. Now. Richard Sackler's personal attitude towards the harm

1021
00:49:18,480 --> 00:49:20,400
Speaker 1: his drug was doing is illustrated by the case of

1022
00:49:20,440 --> 00:49:24,400
Speaker 1: Purdue Germany. According to pro Publica quote, Sackler pushed company

1023
00:49:24,400 --> 00:49:26,840
Speaker 1: officials to find out if German officials could be persuaded

1024
00:49:26,880 --> 00:49:30,000
Speaker 1: to loosen restrictions on the selling of OxyContin. In most countries,

1025
00:49:30,120 --> 00:49:33,360
Speaker 1: narcotic pain relievers are regulated as controlled substances because of

1026
00:49:33,360 --> 00:49:36,600
Speaker 1: the potential for abuse. Sackler and other Purdue executives discussed

1027
00:49:36,600 --> 00:49:39,640
Speaker 1: the possibility of persuading German officials to classify oxycontent as

1028
00:49:39,680 --> 00:49:42,960
Speaker 1: an uncontrolled drug, which would likely allow doctors to prescribe

1029
00:49:42,960 --> 00:49:45,600
Speaker 1: the drug more readily, for instance, without seeing a patient.

1030
00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:48,560
Speaker 1: Fewer rules were expected to translate into more sales, according

1031
00:49:48,560 --> 00:49:52,120
Speaker 1: to company documents disclosed at the deposition. In other words,

1032
00:49:52,360 --> 00:49:55,239
Speaker 1: in Germany and all across the EU, Richard Sackler's goal

1033
00:49:55,280 --> 00:49:57,319
Speaker 1: was to be able to sell oxycontent not as a

1034
00:49:57,360 --> 00:50:00,640
Speaker 1: prescription medication, but as an uncontrolled pain killer, and that's

1035
00:50:00,680 --> 00:50:02,719
Speaker 1: not the same as over the counter. I think it's

1036
00:50:02,719 --> 00:50:05,480
Speaker 1: a little different to have somebody tell you to get it,

1037
00:50:05,520 --> 00:50:08,160
Speaker 1: but you don't necessarily have to go through a doctor visit. Yeah, yeah,

1038
00:50:08,200 --> 00:50:09,640
Speaker 1: I think that's what that means. Like you don't have

1039
00:50:09,680 --> 00:50:11,719
Speaker 1: to go to a like like a dot like. Yeah,

1040
00:50:11,920 --> 00:50:13,799
Speaker 1: you can't like just pick it up, like you can't

1041
00:50:13,800 --> 00:50:16,400
Speaker 1: and go out of mall for example. Um, but you

1042
00:50:16,440 --> 00:50:18,480
Speaker 1: can you can get it without there being any of

1043
00:50:18,520 --> 00:50:21,280
Speaker 1: the controls that we put on. Like was their argument

1044
00:50:21,360 --> 00:50:23,480
Speaker 1: later that they were just simply into saying no Germany,

1045
00:50:23,520 --> 00:50:25,920
Speaker 1: we were saying it was out of control. At least

1046
00:50:26,120 --> 00:50:28,600
Speaker 1: out of control. They were the ones who made it.

1047
00:50:28,719 --> 00:50:32,480
Speaker 1: I'm kind of surprised they didn't take that. Yeah. Robert Keiko,

1048
00:50:32,640 --> 00:50:35,000
Speaker 1: one of the men who had actually developed oxycontent, warned

1049
00:50:35,080 --> 00:50:37,400
Speaker 1: Richard Sackler when he learned this plan, quote, if oxy

1050
00:50:37,400 --> 00:50:39,840
Speaker 1: content is uncontrolled in Germany, it is highly likely that

1051
00:50:39,880 --> 00:50:42,960
Speaker 1: it will eventually be abused there and then controlled. Richard's

1052
00:50:42,960 --> 00:50:45,560
Speaker 1: response to Keiko showed zero concern about the impact of

1053
00:50:45,600 --> 00:50:49,040
Speaker 1: releasing an addictive drug uncontrolled onto an entire continent. How

1054
00:50:49,080 --> 00:50:53,279
Speaker 1: substantially would it improve your sales? A lot, Yeah, a lot.

1055
00:50:53,520 --> 00:50:56,080
Speaker 1: When the German government ruled that OxyContin would be treated

1056
00:50:56,080 --> 00:50:58,200
Speaker 1: like any other addictive narcotic, Richard asked if it was

1057
00:50:58,239 --> 00:51:01,000
Speaker 1: possible to appeal. A German produce executive told him that

1058
00:51:01,040 --> 00:51:04,359
Speaker 1: this was not possible, and Sackler wrote back tersely, when

1059
00:51:04,360 --> 00:51:06,080
Speaker 1: we are next together, we should talk about how this

1060
00:51:06,120 --> 00:51:08,440
Speaker 1: idea was raised and why it failed to be realized.

1061
00:51:08,560 --> 00:51:10,399
Speaker 1: I thought it was a good idea if it could

1062
00:51:10,400 --> 00:51:15,040
Speaker 1: be done. How I'm sorry, what what year was this?

1063
00:51:15,320 --> 00:51:17,920
Speaker 1: Just generally, is this more recent that this is like

1064
00:51:17,960 --> 00:51:21,279
Speaker 1: in the late tooth that this is pretty recently? Yeah. So,

1065
00:51:22,040 --> 00:51:24,000
Speaker 1: And I don't know a lot about Germany. You've never

1066
00:51:24,080 --> 00:51:26,680
Speaker 1: been there, but I've worked in video games, and I

1067
00:51:26,719 --> 00:51:28,839
Speaker 1: know that Germany has some strict rules on video games,

1068
00:51:28,840 --> 00:51:31,560
Speaker 1: and people are bringing video games from outside so they

1069
00:51:31,560 --> 00:51:33,839
Speaker 1: can get past, you know, certain readings. Now, I would

1070
00:51:33,880 --> 00:51:37,080
Speaker 1: imagine that that means if these are uncontrolled substances, doesn't

1071
00:51:37,120 --> 00:51:39,319
Speaker 1: that affect all the countries that are around Germany that

1072
00:51:39,360 --> 00:51:44,080
Speaker 1: they would be flooded with oxycott? Sure it could have borders. Yeah,

1073
00:51:44,520 --> 00:51:47,319
Speaker 1: Thankfully the Germans were like, took one look at the

1074
00:51:47,400 --> 00:51:51,239
Speaker 1: U S and We're like, I don't think we want

1075
00:51:51,280 --> 00:51:54,680
Speaker 1: that here. Yeah, yeah, we already we already had enough

1076
00:51:54,719 --> 00:51:57,520
Speaker 1: of a problem with with with opiates in our past.

1077
00:51:58,040 --> 00:52:01,239
Speaker 1: We're good, We're good. So that's what we got today.

1078
00:52:01,280 --> 00:52:03,760
Speaker 1: When we come back on Thursday, we're gonna talk about,

1079
00:52:03,880 --> 00:52:06,920
Speaker 1: among other things, the court case in two thousand and

1080
00:52:06,960 --> 00:52:10,440
Speaker 1: seven against Produce Pharmaceutical, uh, the ongoing legal stuff now,

1081
00:52:10,440 --> 00:52:12,560
Speaker 1: and of course we're gonna get a lot into the

1082
00:52:12,600 --> 00:52:15,160
Speaker 1: marketing of oxy content, which we haven't really talked about

1083
00:52:15,200 --> 00:52:17,239
Speaker 1: that much this episode, but there is quite a lot

1084
00:52:17,320 --> 00:52:21,799
Speaker 1: to say. But that's all next Thursday. Do you want

1085
00:52:21,800 --> 00:52:24,120
Speaker 1: to plug your plugables before? I mean, if you're still

1086
00:52:24,440 --> 00:52:25,960
Speaker 1: if you didn't hear at the beginning because you were

1087
00:52:26,000 --> 00:52:28,760
Speaker 1: fast forward and here it is Alchemy. This releases every

1088
00:52:28,760 --> 00:52:32,000
Speaker 1: Tuesday and Thursday. It is funny. We get suggestions from

1089
00:52:32,000 --> 00:52:34,520
Speaker 1: the audience and we make an improv show up. It's

1090
00:52:34,560 --> 00:52:37,920
Speaker 1: with Kevin Pollock. Yes, that Kevin Pollock, and we have

1091
00:52:37,960 --> 00:52:40,959
Speaker 1: a live show May seventh at the Dynasty Typewriter Theater

1092
00:52:41,239 --> 00:52:43,920
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. Please come so check it out Dynasty

1093
00:52:43,960 --> 00:52:47,439
Speaker 1: Typewriter Theater, May seventh. James Heeney, you want to plug

1094
00:52:47,480 --> 00:52:49,600
Speaker 1: any of your your social media Oh yeah, you can

1095
00:52:49,600 --> 00:52:53,120
Speaker 1: find me at the heen t H H E A M.

1096
00:52:53,120 --> 00:52:55,600
Speaker 1: That's on Twitter. Uh. And a great way to find

1097
00:52:55,600 --> 00:52:57,680
Speaker 1: me is Brief newsbrief dot com and has all the

1098
00:52:57,719 --> 00:53:00,319
Speaker 1: different ways to get ahold of me awesome. Well, check

1099
00:53:00,360 --> 00:53:02,400
Speaker 1: out James Heeney on the internet and check out this

1100
00:53:02,440 --> 00:53:05,799
Speaker 1: podcast on the web and Behind the Bastards dot com. Um,

1101
00:53:05,880 --> 00:53:10,120
Speaker 1: check us out on Twitter and the Graham at Bastards

1102
00:53:10,160 --> 00:53:15,440
Speaker 1: pod and buy a shirt. You could buy a cup holder. Uh,

1103
00:53:15,520 --> 00:53:19,359
Speaker 1: you could buy an SPG nine recoilist rifle branded with

1104
00:53:19,560 --> 00:53:22,480
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastard's logo and uh, and equipment in case

1105
00:53:22,480 --> 00:53:24,239
Speaker 1: you've got to take out of T seventy two. You know,

1106
00:53:24,280 --> 00:53:26,200
Speaker 1: like like we all find ourselves needing to do at

1107
00:53:26,200 --> 00:53:28,719
Speaker 1: some point. So what else? What else we doing? Is

1108
00:53:28,760 --> 00:53:31,719
Speaker 1: that all the plugs? Oh? I have another show called

1109
00:53:31,760 --> 00:53:34,799
Speaker 1: it Could Happen Here. It could happen in your been

1110
00:53:35,160 --> 00:53:37,480
Speaker 1: listening to the ads for It's not out yet, is it? Oh?

1111
00:53:37,480 --> 00:53:39,400
Speaker 1: It is? Oh my gosh, I'm super excited about the

1112
00:53:39,440 --> 00:53:43,040
Speaker 1: Civil War could happen here in the station and uh

1113
00:53:43,200 --> 00:53:47,600
Speaker 1: spoiler you don't want it to know, I'm not it

1114
00:53:47,600 --> 00:53:50,120
Speaker 1: wouldn't be good. I actually I'm really excited to listen

1115
00:53:50,120 --> 00:53:52,239
Speaker 1: to it. I'm still I'm embarrassed. I'm still finishing up

1116
00:53:52,320 --> 00:53:54,800
Speaker 1: End of the World. But once I'm done with that,

1117
00:53:54,800 --> 00:53:58,400
Speaker 1: that's my next one. Well, uh, make it your next one, listener,

1118
00:53:58,840 --> 00:54:01,480
Speaker 1: because it will make you sad and scared, and we

1119
00:54:01,520 --> 00:54:04,239
Speaker 1: all want to be sad and scared, don't we. All right, well,

1120
00:54:04,280 --> 00:54:07,239
Speaker 1: we'll be back Thursday. I'm very hungover right now. So

1121
00:54:07,520 --> 00:54:09,400
Speaker 1: this has been a little bit of a scattered scattered

1122
00:54:09,440 --> 00:54:14,319
Speaker 1: brain episode. Sophie's saying she's very aware of this fact. Yeah, yeah,

1123
00:54:14,800 --> 00:54:16,320
Speaker 1: all right, Well this is at the end of the episode.

1124
00:54:17,160 --> 00:54:19,080
Speaker 1: Daniel's looking at me like when, when then are you

1125
00:54:19,120 --> 00:54:22,600
Speaker 1: gonna stop? And uh, it's now right now, right this

1126
00:54:22,640 --> 00:54:26,920
Speaker 1: moment now, m