A weak opioid message
Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty last week to criminal charges in the opioid epidemic. No one’s going to jail, though. No one will have a criminal record for the rest of their life.
Apparently when you own or run a company that admits to playing a key role in an opioid epidemic that’s claimed 470,000 American lives, you don’t get locked up. You have your board chairman plead guilty on your company’s behalf in court.
Purdue admitted to behavior to intentionally get people to use their highly addictive painkiller, Oxycontin — lying to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and enticing doctors with things like “speaking fees” to induce them to write more prescriptions for opioids.
Under a criminal and civil settlement with the Justice Department, those culpable who avoid jail time include members of Purdue’s board, executives and the billionaire Sackler family. The company will pay $8.3 billion and the Sacklers $225 million.
The message? If you’re rich enough, you can share blame in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and
To comment: tuletters@timesunion.com
walk away just a little less rich.
The settlement, though, doesn’t preclude future prosecution of the Sacklers or other figures in the company. At the very least, they should have to do more than write a check. They should have to answer for this personally in a court of law.
Sign up future voters
If the last election showed us anything, it’s that when you remove obstacles to voting, more people vote. So it was when New York and many other states made it easier to vote by mail. And so it would be if New York would automatically register people to vote when they interact with a government agency like the Department of Motor Vehicles, or seek services like Medicaid, unemployment, or public housing. It would avoid the need for them to find time to register or to be fortunate enough to randomly stumble onto a voter registration drive.
This year the Legislature passed a bill to make automatic voter registration the law, but Gov. Andrew Cuomo has yet to sign it. The sooner he does, the sooner more of the estimated 40 percent of eligible New Yorkers who aren’t registered to vote can get on the rolls — and one step closer to fuller participation in our democracy.
Good idea for needy Thruway drivers
State Sen. Jim Tedisco, R- Glenville, has a good idea: to make sure that low-income people don’t pay penalties for not having an Ez-pass transponder when they drive the Thruway. With the state moving to cashless tolls, those without an Ez-pass will pay 30 percent more, and be hit with a $2 surcharge for having bills mailed to them after Thruway cameras catch their license plate when they pass through a toll.
The state says there are all sorts of ways, even for people without bank accounts or credit cards, to obtain an Ez-pass, but for those who can’t or won’t and are among the estimated 2.7 million New Yorkers under the federal poverty line, Mr. Tedsico says he’ll draft a bill to absolve them of higher costs or surcharges.
One suggestion for his well-intentioned bill: It should apply to all poor drivers, including those who hold licenses under the “Green Light Law,” a measure to allow undocumented immigrants to obtain drivers licenses, which Mr. Tedisco strongly opposed.