Summary and Analysis

An eviscerating look at the Purdue Pharma’s push to sell Oxycontin, including astonishing footage apparently from a Purdue meeting to energize sales representatives.

But, more importantly, it describes the current settlement in detail and the over-the-top liability shield the Sackler family — and hundreds of their associates and friends — will receive if the agreement is approved.

The piece suggests that the apparent “good news” of the global settlement may, in fact, be a way for the Sackler family to retain their wealth while protecting them from future litigation.

Oliver’s show also purchased the domain for and built a website at JudgeForYourselves.com which provides links to his shows on the opioid crisis and will, if the settlement is confirmed, include a link to the 30 million documents which are to be made public as part of the settlement. This site counters the Sackler-funded PR site JudgeForYourselves.info.

The outcome of the cases and/or settlement could be important to communities and individuals who were affected

Excerpted from Last Week Tonight

…we thought it would be worth doing a third installment anyway for a couple of reasons. First, it’s an epidemic that’s still very much raging exacerbated by both the pandemic and illicit Fentanyl to the point that last year nearly 70,000 people died from opioid overdoses. That is the highest annual death toll ever.

And second, you may have seen a bunch of headlines recently about trials and settlements happening around the country. There have been so many of them that it can be genuinely hard to keep track. But we want to focus on just one company tonight, Purdue Pharma, whose rollout of Oxycontin arguably fueled the opioid crisis.

We’re talked about their relentless push to sell Oxycontin before, but more material has come out in the last couple of years….