Nevertheless, they probably offer little comfort to the countless people affected by the opioid epidemic, which kills more than^[5] one hundred Americans every single day and has claimed the lives of over 450,000 since 1999 according to^[6] the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). OxyContin, in particular, has played a decisive role in the crisis, having been introduced^[7] in the mid-1990s as a nonaddictive wonder drug. As the CDC explains^[8], the rising rate of prescriptions of opioids that followed was only the first stage in what became a spiraling cascade of addictions and overdose deaths, subsequent waves seeing the proliferation of other opioids like heroin and fentanyl. “I’m a huge believer,” Ohio man Jake Bradshaw, who struggled with addiction after his first encounter with opioids at seventeen, told^[9] the New York Times, “that if we had not seen OxyContin in this area, we would not have a heroin and fentanyl epidemic.”

Considering the scale of its crimes, the penalties meted out to Purdue Pharma look like a pale imitation of justice. Even as the walls closed in and legal proceedings threatened the company, its owners — members of the impossibly wealthy Sackler family — somehow^[10] managed to get even richer and will be paying a paltry fine relative to the scale of their fortune. As the settlement was concluded, local media reported^[11] that CEO Craig Landau will still receive a performance bonus of nearly $3 million. Though nothing prevents the federal government from pursuing additional investigations against the company (which is still dealing with other litigation^[12]), one can only speculate with minimal optimism about the future.