Saturday, September 18, 2021
The Sacklers as a Window into American Corruption & Dysfunction
According to the CDC:
Nearly 500,000 people died from overdoses involving any opioid, including prescription and illicit opioids, from 1999-2019 ... The first wave began with increased prescribing of opioids in the 1990s, with overdose deaths involving prescription opioids (natural and semi-synthetic opioids and methadone) increasing since at least 1999.
Most states of the United States have some form of the "felony murder rule". This means a perpetrator can be held be criminally liable for murder if s/he caused the death of another person in the course of committing a felony. The perpetrator need not have intended the death of the victim and, in some states, need not have been the proximate cause of the death.
For example, if you merely drove the get away car for an armed robbery where one of your accomplices murdered a bank teller then you may held responsible for the murder. (If narrowly written and applied I think the felony murder rule is perfectly fair and just.)
I bring this up to point out that in America if you kill one person—even if you didn't pull the trigger—you can be punished for the murder. On the other hand, if you are a member of the Sackler family who had a key role in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans by opioid abuse then (so far) you won't be personally charged with any crime.
The Sackler family members who ran Purdue Pharma belong in prison. However, there are plenty of other culprits not directly connected to the Sacklers or Purdue Pharma who also belong in prison for their part in the opioid crisis and, as far as I know, none of them has been criminally charged, either.
To be clear, while the Sacklers et al. helped create the opioid crisis, the crisis itself is a form of collective suicide founded on America's nihilistic consumerism and culture of death. It's worth noting, too, that the death toll is mainly comprised of White Americans who are supposedly so privileged. This is undoubtedly fueled by unconcealed hostility to White people, generally, and White working-class people, in particular.
If you doubt this then try carrying a sign saying "It's Okay to be White" in public in any town or city in America and see what happens. Also, consider the remarks of Duquesne University Psychology professor Derek Hook who opined that “White people should commit suicide as an ethical act.” Hook says that he was speaking about suicide as the destruction of "Whiteness" but try publicly advocating that for any other racial, ethnic, or religious group.
Labels: crime, culture, government, health, medicine, race, White folks
