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SUDBURY, ON – MAY 9 – Outreach workers from Réseau ACCESS Network, a non-profit, community-based charitable organization, that promotes wellness, harm and risk reduction and education, walk among 243 crosses that cover the lot on the south west corner of Brady and Paris Streets as part of Crosses for Change that memorialize victims in the overdose and opioid crisis in Sudbury. May 9, 2022. The Crosses for Change was started after Denise Sanduls son Myles Keaney was found dead of an overdose outside the fire station a block away in October 2020. She placed a cross at the fire station but moved it to the corner near the Sudbury Theatre Centre as other crosses began to accumulate. Sanduls daughters and son-in-laws build, paint, and letter the crosses. Denise visits the site regularly to maintain it. (Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)
Sacklers shielded

The 100-Year Life

Thursday 1 June 2023

Sacklers shielded

Deputy Editor

Giles Whittell
SUDBURY, ON – MAY 9 – Outreach workers from Réseau ACCESS Network, a non-profit, community-based charitable organization, that promotes wellness, harm and risk reduction and education, walk among 243 crosses that cover the lot on the south west corner of Brady and Paris Streets as part of Crosses for Change that memorialize victims in the overdose and opioid crisis in Sudbury. May 9, 2022. The Crosses for Change was started after Denise Sanduls son Myles Keaney was found dead of an overdose outside the fire station a block away in October 2020. She placed a cross at the fire station but moved it to the corner near the Sudbury Theatre Centre as other crosses began to accumulate. Sanduls daughters and son-in-laws build, paint, and letter the crosses. Denise visits the site regularly to maintain it. (Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

But they could still face criminal charges

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died from opioid overdoses, many involving the prescription painkiller Oxycontin which was illegally promoted as non-addictive by its manufacturer, Purdue Pharma. Yesterday an appeals court upheld a bankruptcy deal to pay the release $6 billion in compensation for state and local governments including $750 million for individuals affected by the opioid epidemic. It will also shield members of the Sackler family, which owns Purdue, from further lawsuits. Cue outrage on the part of victims enraged that no Sacklers are in jail. Fair enough. But the deal doesn’t shield any of them from criminal prosecution. That fight is just beginning.

Photograph Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images

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