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Remembering When Obama AG Eric Holder Defended The Sackler Family Opioids Cartel

Remembering When Obama AG Eric Holder Defended The Sackler Family Opioids Cartel

Eric Holder
The Sackler family’s company, Purdue Pharma, played a role in the opioid crisis. Before he was Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder helped Purdue get off with a slap on the wrist. Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr. speaks during the National Action Network Convention in New York, April 3, 2019 (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

The Sackler family are often blamed for their company’s misleading marketing and the role Purdue Pharma played in the opioid crisis. Before he was Barack Obama’s U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder helped the Sacklers cover up their deception and get off with a slap on the wrist.

The Sacklers built a $13 billion fortune off the OxyContin painkiller, making them one of the richest families in the U.S. They moved $10.7 billion from Purdue Pharma to holding companies and trusts between 2008 and 2017, a report commissioned by the drugmaker showed.

Then they filed for bankruptcy in September 2019 as part of a settlement involving thousands of lawsuits. Accusers say their misleading marketing of OxyContin helped fuel the U.S. opioid crisis.

In 2001, Democratic West Virginia Attorney General Darrell McGraw Jr. sued Purdue Pharma alleging that the private pharmaceutical company had engaged in “coercive and deceptive” marketing of OxyContin. He alleged that Purdue had offered doctors free trips to “pain management” seminars where Purdue pitched the drug as safe, not mentioning it was easily abused and was supposed to be used only for severe pain.

Purdue targeted doctors in rural areas with poor patients. By 2002, overdose deaths shot up. A quarter of them were in Kentucky. Purdue’s spending on a huge new sales force paid off with sales of $1.5 billion.

The pharmaceutical giant had a lot to lose financially and called in Holder, then an attorney working for Covington and Burling in Washington, D.C. Salem News reported.

A large portion of Covington & Burling’s corporate clients are mega-banks like JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Bank of America, Guardian reported. The law firm had a reputation for “getting clients accused of financial fraud off with slap-on-the-wrist fines.”

Holder made $2.5 million a year there and when he left, his seat and office were reportedly kept empty for him in his absence.

Holder helped negotiate a settlement in 2004 for Purdue Pharma. The company agreed to pay $10 million over four years into drug abuse and education programs in West Virginia. The drugmaker didn’t have to admit any wrongdoing.

There was no trial and no public testimony. Holder managed to keep Purdue’s activities quiet. Many people think that Holder having his “hands in the pockets of Purdue Pharma” allowed the OxyContin epidemic, addictions, overdoses and deaths to perpetuate throughout the country.

“Those responsible for our plague of addiction, deaths, crime, broken families and homeless students extended well beyond Purdue,” wrote Ron Formisano, an author and history professor at the University of Kentucky, in an opinion piece for Kentucky.com. “Add to the devil’s roll-call prominent lawyers who work for law firms that defend corporate criminals.”

Holder served as 82nd U.S. Attorney General from 2009 to 2015 before returning to work for his old law firm, “the white-collar defense heavyweight Covington & Burling, Rolling Stone, reported. He could have been a judge, but Holder told the National Law Journal, “I want to be a player.”

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In a July 8, 2015 Rolling Stone article, Matt Taibbi described Holder as a revolutionary — not in a good way. “He institutionalized a radical dualistic approach to criminal justice, essentially creating a system of indulgences wherein the world’s richest companies paid cash for their sins and escaped the sterner punishments the law dictated,” Taibbi wrote.

Drug overdose deaths in 2018 fell in the U.S. for first time since 1990, due almost entirely to fewer deaths from prescription opioid painkillers, New York Times reported in July 2019. Fatal overdoses involving fentanyl and methamphetamine continued to rise.

“This killing epidemic will continue because profiteering from drug abuse is woven into every fabric of government and society — from Congress to small towns in Kentucky,” Formisano wrote.