Trump Admin Boasts About Drug Bust, But The REAL Opioid Criminals Are Still Free

The Trump admin is patting itself on the back right now for their massive fentanyl bust, but the real criminals in the opioid story are walking around without a care in the world. The Sackler family – the company that owns Oxycontin maker Purdue – has known about the crisis for longer than anyone, and when they were confronted with this information, they actually tried to profit off of the addicts they were creating. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

Transcript:

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

So earlier this week it was announced
that the United States had basically made the largest fentanyl drug bust in the
history of this country. Two hundred and 54 pounds of fentanyl discovered in
the back of a cucumber truck at a legal port of entry, uh, in the American
southwest, a Donald Trump and the administration said, say, this proves why we
need a wall. We’ve got these drugs coming in, but we made this bust. We’re
awesome. Biggest one in history. And you know what? To be honest, it is a great
thing. This is good that this happened, that this person was stopped in, that
these drugs were confiscated. But while the administration is patting
themselves on the back for this, I think it’s important to take a step back and
realize that the biggest criminals in this entire opioid story, this opioid
crisis in the United States, the biggest criminals are still walking around our
streets today.

The biggest criminals have billions
upon billions of dollars sitting in their personal bank accounts. The biggest
criminals aren’t driving cucumber. Trucks are selling drugs on the street
corner. They’re wearing nice suits. They’re sitting in boardrooms, they’re
acting as ceos and shareholders of the opioid companies here in the United
States. Those are the real criminals, and according to a recent report in
propublica that builds upon an earlier report this week from the New York
Times, the Sackler family, which is the family that owns Perdue,
Pharmaceuticals who manufacturers and created oxycontin. They knew not only that,
their drug was killing people in getting people addicted, but according to
these new documents that propublica has gone through, they then decided after
they created all these addicts here in the United States, uh, that they wanted
to start marketing and selling the cure for opioid overdose. They’ve basically
viewed it as just an extension of their current market. We get them hooked on
this drug so they keep buying that, and then when they overdose, we’ll just go
and sell them this other drug that can reverse opioid overdoses.

That’s contained in the documents. It
wasn’t, hey, we’re killing people out here. We’re getting people addicted.
Maybe we need to do something about it. It was how can we profit more off of
the death and destruction that we’re causing here in the United States? The
Sackler family is nothing short of a criminal drug cartel. That is what they
are. That is what they’re doing. Same thing with all of the opioid distributors
who ship millions of pills to a town of a few hundred people. These are
criminals. These are professional drug runners, but none of them get thrown in
prison. None of them have to go to jail even though they are the ones providing
the supply to get people hooked and to cause overdoses and their own internal
documents are telling that story right now in Massachusetts and if you’re not
paying attention to what’s happening up there with that attorney general
cracking down on these criminals releasing these documents so that we can see
that they knew this was bad, that they knew it was happening, and now not only
did they try to cover it up, but they actually tried to profit off of it.

There is nothing that major
pharmaceutical companies will not do to turn more profit, even if it means
selling an overprice drug to reverse the overdose that was caused by the other
drug that you sold that same consumer. These are the real criminals. These are
the people we need to be seeing in headlines. You know, arrested showing their
pictures of their warehouses filled with drugs instead of the back of a
cucumber truck. Again, I don’t want to take away the significance of that drug
bust earlier this week, but that is nothing compared to the damage that Perdue,
the Sackler family, and all of these other opiate distributors have done in the
United States.