The Conspiracy That Allows Murder Without Accountability
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola Fact Checked
See also: Study Shows How
Masks Are Harming Children
Corruption Found
in COVID Origins Investigation
Link: https://youtu.be/zvyCUqRBuyw
STORY
AT-A-GLANCE
· In October 2020, Purdue
Pharma — owned and operated by members of the Sackler family — pleaded guilty
to federal criminal charges and reached a settlement totaling $8.3 billion.
August 11, 2021, a federal judge granted the Sackler family legal immunity against
future litigation
· In July 2021, Johnson &
Johnson and three drug distributors agreed to pay a combined settlement of $26
billion in a multistate settlement over their roles in the opioid epidemic.
They too got a sweetheart of a deal, as the settlement amounts to just 4% of
the four companies’ annual revenue
· In May 2021, the
Massachusetts attorney general filed a lawsuit against Publicis Health,
accusing it of helping Purdue create the deceptive marketing materials used to
mislead doctors into prescribing OxyContin
· The Publicis Groupe is a
partner of the World Economic Forum, which is leading the call for a Great
Reset in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Publicis also funded the startup of
NewsGuard, which is now censoring COVID-19 information
· NewsGuard’s health-related
service, HealthGuard, is partnered with the Center for Countering Digital Hate
— a progressive cancel-culture leader with extensive ties to government and
global think tanks that has labeled people questioning the COVID-19 vaccine as
“threats to national security”
At the end of
October 2020, Purdue Pharma, owned
and operated by members of the Sackler
family, pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges and reached a settlement
totaling $8.3 billion.1
The U.S.
Department of Justice probe found Purdue had intentionally fueled the deadly
opioid epidemic using unethical, untruthful and illegal marketing practices. At
the time, Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, commented:2
“For there to be accountability for the
corporate-fueled opioid addiction epidemic, which has cruelly taken hundreds of
thousands of lives, there must be prosecution of those members of the Sackler
family who, along with other executives and owners, were responsible for Purdue
Pharma’s deadly deception, as well as a stripping away of their ill-gotten
gains from an evil scheme to push addictive drugs for profit.”
Sackler Family Let Off
Scot-Free
Well, that
simply wasn’t to be. August 11, 2021, a federal judge granted the Sackler
family legal immunity against future litigation over their role in the opioid
epidemic.3 The obvious question
is why?
The Sacklers
knew their drug was highly addictive and responsible for nearly half a million
U.S. overdose deaths in the decade between 1999 and 2019,4 yet they chose to
hide that fact and encouraged doctors to overprescribe.
Purdue’s sales
representatives were extensively coached on how to downplay the drug’s
addictive potential, claiming addiction occurred in less than 1% of patients
being treated for pain. Meanwhile, research5 shows addiction
affects as many as 26% of those using opioids for chronic noncancer pain.
The results
were predictable. Patients became addicted at record rates, and when they
couldn’t obtain more OxyContin, they turned to street drugs like heroin and
fentanyl. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,6 841,000 Americans
died from drug overdoses between 1999 and 2019, and opioids were involved in
70.6% of the overdose deaths that occurred in 2019.
It’s quite
remarkable that our legal system is letting the Sacklers get off scot-free,
seeing how they were clearly in charge of the company’s deadly decisions.7,8,9 Adding insult to
injury, the Sacklers decided to cash in on the problem they created by
developing and selling addiction treatment.10,11 As reported by Nation
of Change:12
“Purdue will be bankrupt, but members of the
multi-billionaire Sackler family — who were responsible for the decisions that
led to these deaths and profited the most from Purdue’s opioid dealings — will
gain near-total immunity from future litigation. By the time the settlement is
paid out they most likely will be as wealthy as they ever were. So where does
personal responsibility come in?”
Hold the Sacklers
Accountable in the Public Sphere
In 2018, Paul
Hanly, a leading attorney in the case against Purdue, referred to the Sacklers
as “a crime family … drug dealers in nice suits and dresses.”13 Indeed, yet the
Sacklers had carefully built a public image of themselves as a family of
“philanthropists,” donating a fraction of their ill-gotten wealth to
prestigious medical schools and fancy museums through the years.
As noted by
Nation of Change, “In return for the donation, honorees are imbued with moral
approval.” Well, it’s time to retract that moral approval, and the only ones
who can do that is us. We need to demand that those who took Sacklers’
donations recognize the harm the family has done, and strip the Sacklers of
their honors.
“Richard Sackler and other family members involved
in this tragedy deserve to be shamed,” Nation of Change
writes.14 “Institutions
that took their blood money should remove the Sackler name from their centers,
professorships, buildings, and pediments. If they won’t be held accountable in
a court of law, they must be held accountable at least in the public sphere.”
In the video
below, Patrick Bet-David interviews Dr. Chris Johnson, an emergency medicine
physician, about the opioid epidemic and the role of unethical drug companies.
As noted by Johnson, drug companies appear to view fines for illegal activities
as a routine business expense. It’s a great business model. They can easily
afford the fines if caught so shareholders are protected, and no one goes to
jail. The only people who get hurt are the patients.
Other Opioid Makers Get
Sweetheart Deals
Purdue isn’t
the only opioid maker whose executives have been spared accountability for
their deadly decisions. In July 2021, Johnson
& Johnson and three drug distributors — AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson — agreed to pay a
combined settlement of $26 billion in a multistate settlement over their
roles in the opioid epidemic.15
They too got a
sweetheart of a deal, as the $26 billion settlement amounts to just 4% of the
four companies annual revenue. In an article for CounterPunch, Richard Eskow
writes:16
“Apparently, that’s what attorneys general for a
number of states thought was adequate compensation for all the lost lives, for
the mothers living on the street and the children born addicted, for the
grieving families, desolate neighborhoods, and dying communities.
‘Distributors can easily bear this burden,’
analysts at a stock market firm wrote. ‘We haven’t popped the champagne yet,
but the bottle is definitely chilling.’ Having lost a close family member to an
opioid overdose, I was unable to get over my fury for days after reading this
sentence.”
Great Reset Promoter Sued
for Deceptive Marketing
While Purdue’s
owners, the Sackler family, got off without so much as a slap on the wrist,
states struggling with the exorbitant cost of opioid addiction aren’t ready to
bury the hatchet just yet. Instead, some are going after the PR firm that
created and ran Purdue’s deceptive marketing campaigns.
As it turns
out, that PR firm is none other than
the Publicis Groupe, a partner of the World Economic Forum,
which is leading the call for a Great
Reset in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While Publicis is part of
an enormous network that includes international drug companies, fact checkers,
Big Tech companies, the banking industry, the U.S. government, the World Health
Organization and the World Economic Forum, just to name a few, Publicis appears
to be a key player when it comes to coordinating the global effort to censor
COVID-related information.
Publicis Health
admitted its involvement in this censorship agenda as recently as April 27,
2021. In a tweet,17 the agency announced its partnership with NewsGuard, “to fight the ‘infodemic’ of
misinformation about COVID-19 and its vaccines.” In short, Publicis Health is dedicated to suppressing any information
that hurts its Big Pharma clients.
Publicis is
more than a partner with NewsGuard, however. NewsGuard actually received a
large chunk of its startup capital from Publicis. NewsGuard, a self-proclaimed
arbiter of truth, rates websites on criteria of “credibility” and
“transparency,” ostensibly to guide viewers to the most reliable sources of
news and information.
In reality,
however, NewsGuard ends up acting as a gate keeper with a mission to barricade
unpopular truth and differences of opinion behind closed gates. Its clearly
biased ranking system easily dissuades people from perusing information from
low-rated sites.
PR Has Replaced the Free
Press
To understand
the power that PR companies such as Publicis wield, you also need to realize
that PR has, by and large, replaced the free press. In decades’ past,
pro-industry advertising stood in stark contrast to the free press, which would
frequently expose problems with products and industries, thereby serving as a
counterbalance to industry propaganda.
When a free press with
honest reporting based on verifiable facts actually does its job, ineffective or toxic
products are driven off the market. All
of this changed in the late 20th century, when media outlets started relying on
advertisers for the bulk of their revenues.
Journalists came under the
control of advertisers, who now had the power to kill stories they didn’t
like. Today, news organizations simply won’t run reports that might harm the
bottom line of its advertisers and, not surprisingly, the drug industry is
among the top-paying advertisers.
By further
partnering with the “big guns” of media — such as the Paley Center for Media, which is composed of every major media
in the world18 — Publicis and its industry
clients have been able to influence and control the press to virtually
eliminate the public’s ability to get the truth on many important issues,
including COVID-19.
Seeing how
Publicis represents most of the major pharmaceutical companies in the world and
funded the creation of NewsGuard, it’s not far-fetched to assume Publicis might
influence NewsGuard’s ratings of drug industry competitors, such as alternative
health sites. Being a Google partner,19,20 Publicis also has the
ability to bury undesirable views that might hurt its clientele.
NewsGuard’s health-related
service, HealthGuard,21 is also partnered with the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH)
— a progressive cancel-culture leader22 with extensive ties to
government and global think tanks that
has labeled people questioning the COVID-19 vaccine as “threats to national
security.”
Publicis Knowingly Promoted
Over-Prescription
Getting back to
the issue of opioids, at the beginning of May 2021, the Massachusetts attorney
general filed a lawsuit23 against Publicis Health, accusing the
Publicis subsidiary of helping Purdue create the deceptive marketing materials
used to mislead doctors into prescribing OxyContin.24,25,26,27 As reported by Yahoo!
News:28
“The lawsuit alleges that Publicis ‘engaged in
myriad unfair and deceptive strategies that influenced OxyContin prescribing
across the nation,’ a statement by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura
Healey's office said. Those strategies were carried out through dozens of
contracts between 2010 and 2019, worth more than $50 million …
Tactics included combatting doctors' ‘hesitancy’ to
prescribe the medication, and persuading them to prescribe OxyContin over
lower-dose, short-acting opioids, thus increasing the risk of addiction.
Massachusetts is asking that Publicis Health pay ‘compensatory damages’ of an
unspecified amount for having ‘created a public nuisance.’"
The complaint
further notes that:29
“By design, Publicis’ schemes worked to counter
public health measures intended to reduce unnecessary opioid use, because more
opioid use generated more profits for Publicis’ opioid clients.”
Publicis Health’s Damaging
PR Is Just ‘Business as Usual’
Publicis Health
argues that its work for Purdue was lawful and limited to “implementing
Purdue’s advertising plan and buying media space.” But according to the lawsuit, Publicis’ work
included:
·
Placing illegal
advertisements for OxyContin in the electronic medical records of patients
·
Creating training materials for Purdue sales reps on
how to combat doctor’s objections to the drugs
·
Developing strategies to
counter opioid guidelines issued by the CDC
·
Creating “patient stories”
to “humanize” the OxyContin brand and counter negative press about addiction risks.30,31 One such patient
vignette featured a 40-year-old man who had his dose increased from 10
milligrams (mg) a day to 20 mg in just three weeks
·
Creating and sending
thousands of deceptive emails to doctors, encouraging them to not
only increase patients’ dosages but also to prescribe the drug to patients who
were already on less dangerous pain meds32
The lawsuit also alleges that Publicis
instructed Purdue to target doctors who were already writing out dangerously
high numbers of prescriptions, even in the midst of a raging opioid epidemic,33 all while agency
executives gleefully discussed the record fees they’d collect from the Purdue
account. A March 2016 email exchange reveals the Publicis subsidiary was
expecting to make up to $12.28 million from Purdue that year alone.
Time to Reevaluate
Marketing Ethics
While Publicis
is trying to downplay its role in what has been described as the crime of the
century, the lawsuit against it will hopefully result in a reevaluation of
marketing ethics. The agency, knowing full well there was an epidemic of opioid
abuse underway, took on the job of increasing Purdue’s profits by making that
lethal trend worse.
Publicis’ view
that public health is of no concern when creating drug PR also tells us
something about the COVID shot PR push we’re currently experiencing.
Publicis claims
they were just doing what advertising agencies do — they created promotional
materials that boost client revenue. However, this argument circumvents any
notion of ethics and concern about public health. They’re basically admitting
that it’s all about making money, regardless of the cost.
Even if their
actions were within legal limits (which the Massachusetts case will eventually
establish), their actions were immoral and clearly undermined public health.
Seeing how
Publicis represents most of the biggest drug companies in the world, this
raises the question of ethics in drug advertising in general. Publicis’ view
that public health is of no concern when creating drug PR also tells us
something about the COVID shot PR push we’re currently experiencing.
Censorship Works Against
Public Health as Well
Publicis wants
you to believe they are protecting public health by supporting COVID-19
censorship, but this is actually having the opposite effect. How can you possibly make an educated
decision about COVID “vaccination” if you’re not allowed to learn anything
about the risks?
What Publicis calls
“misinformation” is simply information that contradicts the propaganda dictated
by the hands that feed it, i.e., the drug industry. History tells us companies
driven by profit interest make poor truth tellers, as negative information will
clearly have a detrimental impact on their bottom line. So, they lie and
obfuscate. It’s that simple.
Public
relations firms like Publicis are mere arms of these notoriously untruthful
industries. They do their bidding because that’s what they’re paid to do. To
think that Big Pharma and paid propagandists are looking out for anyone but
themselves is naĆÆve in the extreme.
It is actually
ironic doublespeak that Publicis claims to defend against misinformation that
puts the public at risk, while having played a crucial role in a lethal health
care scheme that was built on lies and deceit.
Struggling With Opioid
Addiction? Seek Help!
In closing,
remember that opioids — regardless of the brand — are extremely addictive drugs
that are not meant for long-term use for nonfatal conditions. Chemically,
opioids are very similar to heroin, and if you wouldn’t consider shooting up
heroin for that toothache or backache, you really should reconsider taking an
opioid to relieve your pain.
If you’ve been
on an opioid for more than two months, if you find yourself taking higher
dosages or taking the drug more often, you may be addicted and are advised to
seek help from someone other than your prescribing doctor. Resources where you can find help include:
·
Your workplace Employee Assistance
Program
·
The Substance Abuse Mental Health
Service Administration34 can be contacted 24
hours a day at 1-800-622-HELP
- Sources
and References
·
1, 2 Nation of
Change August 22, 2020
·
3 Nation of
Change September 4, 2021
·
5 New England Journal of Medicine 2016; 374:1501-1504
·
7, 10 New York
Times April 1, 2019
·
9 New
Yorker October 30, 2017
·
11 STAT News
September 7, 2018
·
12, 14 Nation of
Change August 11, 2021
·
13 The
Guardian November 19, 2018
·
15 Axios
July 21, 2021
·
16 CounterPunch
September 7, 2021
·
17 Twitter Publicis Health Media April 27, 2021
·
18 The Paley Center for Media 2018 Agenda
·
19 Ad Week
September 22, 2008
·
20 Google Marketing Platform Partners, Publicis Sapient
·
22 Off-Guardian
August 11, 2020
·
23, 29 Commonwealth of Massachusetts Superior Court Complaint CA No. 21-1055
(PDF)
·
24, 31, 32, 33 Boston
Globe May 8, 2021
·
25, 30 Forbes
May 7, 2021
·
27 Courthouse
News May 6, 2021
·
34 Substance
Abuse Mental Health Service Administration