But we’ll settle for the people who run them.
Up in the Commonwealth—God save it!—we have this attorney general named Maura Healey. She isn’t the biggest person, but she’s a former Boston College point guard who can still play. And she is not someone whose attention you want to draw, especially if you happen to be someone working scams that end up killing people and starting nationwide epidemics.
The Sackler family, which got rich developing and marketing Oxycontin, has drawn Healey’s attention. From WBUR:
“I promise you that we will hold opioid makers accountable for the role they played in creating this crisis…we will do whatever it takes to hold this company accountable and get the justice our families so deserve,” she said Wednesday during her inauguration — and she’s making good on that promise.
In a complaint filed against the company that makes the opioid painkiller OxyContin, Healey alleges Purdue and its owners deceived Massachusetts doctors and patients in an effort to get more people to use its drugs — even though they knew the drugs are addictive and deadly. The complaint is the first to name individuals of the Sackler family, and alleges that they and Purdue executives directed misleading sales and marketing practices that influenced doctors to prescribe more opioids to vulnerable patients.
