The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Don’t block Purdue Pharma settlement
I lost two of my three sons to the opioid epidemic. If anyone should want to hold members of the Sackler family directly responsible for the catastrophic damage done by their company, the OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, it would be me. I used to dream of bringing down the Sacklers.
But I cannot support the nine state attorneys general who last month persuaded a judge to block a $4.5 billion settlement with Purdue because it contained a provision that would protect Sackler family members from being sued directly. I voted for the settlement last year as a committee member involved in the negotiations.
On Jan. 3, the bankruptcy judge handling the case ordered the attorneys general into mediation with the Sacklers and Purdue to see whether they could agree on changes to the deal. The deadline for negotiations is Friday.
If the mediation fails, Purdue’s appeal of the deal’s rejection will continue. And with each week and month that passes, the opioid crisis will claim more victims: A staggering
100,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in the 12-month period that ended in April 2021. It was a 28.5 percent increase from the same period the year before.
As I look at the statistics on Wednesday, I see that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says nearly 841,000 Americans have died from opioid overdoses since 1999, the same number who have died from covid-19.
The urgency of the opioid crisis is why I voted for the settlement: About 90 percent of the $4.5 billion will go to states, local governments and tribes for prevention and treatment to try to end this human catastrophe. Sparing other American families the grief I’ve known is my top priority.
My son Corey Merrill died in 2011 from an opioid overdose. My son Sean Merrill suffered the same fate just last summer. After Corey died, I grieved alone for the first few years, but gradually I began to meet other mothers in my home state of Massachusetts who had lost a child to opioids.
I started a group on Facebook called Team Sharing. The first chapter was here in Massachusetts, but interest spread widely — the opioid epidemic knows no borders. Now Team Sharing is a nonprofit that supports grieving parents and siblings in 25 states and Canada, with more than 5,000 members.
Over and over, I heard parents tell stories of how their child had begun taking pain pills, then became fatally addicted. After Massachusetts state Attorney General Maura Healey announced her lawsuit against Purdue Pharma and its Sackler family ownership, I connected the dots and knew our organization had to join the fight to hold the Sacklers accountable.
We organized a march in front of Purdue Pharma in Connecticut in August 2018, and more than 400 grieving parents showed up, holding photos of their deceased children. We marched in Washington, wrote letters and filed civil lawsuits.
In 2019, I was one of nine people chosen to sit on the Committee of Unsecured Creditors in Purdue’s bankruptcy. I had a seat at the table to represent hundreds of thousands of victims and families. The idea that another family, the Sacklers, could hugely profit from the opioid disaster made bringing them down, not just their company, seem obligatory.
Nevertheless, when a settlement agreement was reached, I voted for it. Was it a perfect plan? No. Was it fair that the Sacklers (who have denied wrongdoing) would gain legal protections from civil cases? Far from it. Would it make families whole? Not even close — the compensation for each survivor would likely be in the tens of thousands of dollars or less, but no amount of money in this world was going to bring back our children.
I voted for the settlement agreement because the overwhelming majority of the money from Purdue and the Sacklers would be used to fight the opioid crisis. My obsession with wanting to hold the Sacklers directly responsible gave way to just wanting desperately to stop the dying.
I wish those nine state attorneys general who oppose the settlement could see the matter in that light. If they want to do more to hold the Sacklers accountable, they should consider criminal charges — the settlement doesn’t bar that — rather than blocking the deal. Right now, the goal should be to save lives.