Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

I thought that I knew a fair amount about the Sackler's and their relentless quest to sell as many opoiods as possible. Afterall, I have been a health care provider for over three decades and substance addiction, abuse, and treatment has always been in my wheelhouse, so I have seen the downstream problems that result and I have been on the receiving end of pharmaceutical reps whose main goal is to sell their drug and who are far less schooled in the ins and outs of pscyhopharmacology. None of that prepared me for the breadth and depth that the family went to sell their product, regardless of who it harmed, and then when it looked like the pipe might need to be paid, skimmed off all their profits--like billions of dollars--and left a hollowed out company to declare bankruptcy. This is deeply insulting to pretty much everyone, but the thing that struck me is what I have observed about other oligarchs. The Sacklers believed themselves to be better than not just most people but pretty much all people, that by virtue of being fabulously rich they were now entitled to be immoral and to come away unscathed. They were used to buying immunity and influence, and thought there would be no bounds to their ability to manipulate people for profit. They were shocked that their family name would not just be revealed but dragged through the scandal that they had created. They complained that their children could not get into elite private schools, that their charitable donations should be shunned. The other thing that shouldn't have surprised me but did is that they knew all of this going back to the beginning, and much like the tobacco industry, they buried it, deep, and since then thousands have died. So, yes, they have blood on their hands.