On Full Frontal, Sam Bee profiles the worst family in America—no, the other one
Just who is the worst family in America these days? Wait, wait, hear Samantha Bee out here before you ring in. For while one clan is currently destroying America for no other reason than to line their silken, sweatshop-made pockets, the other is the Trumps. No, but seriously folks, Bee took the time on Thursday’s episode of Full Frontal to profile the Sackler family, unthinkably wealthy art patrons whose ownership of Purdue Pharma has, according to Bee, single-handedly (or single family-edly) caused the nation’s devastating and deadly opioid epidemic.
See, Purdue Pharma created Oxycontin and its insidiously addictive relatives. Fair enough—pain medication is necessary for some people. Cancer patients, for example, who are those the drug was almost exclusively given to prior to the intense, reckless, and murderously fraudulent marketing of the drug by the company, which saw prescriptions for Oxycontin rise 850 percent under the Sackler’s stewardship. Ushering her audience into the Sackler Museum Of Stupid Shit The Sacklers Bought With Their Blood Money, Bee paid tribute to that family’s love of having museum wings named after them—if only so that they can hold lavish Sphinx-cake birthday parties for themselves therein—by pointing out the real human costs of Sackler luxury.
Noting that Purdue Pharma bullied the FDA into allowing them to market Oxycontin as “possibly less addictive” than other painkillers (it’s way, way more), Bee showed off the Toyota Yaris the family could buy with the $20,000 per opioid overdose death they’ve got. (Not that a Sackler would ever drive a Yaris. C’mon.) Highlighting the puff piece about the Sackler estate where one Sackler child practices growing medicinal herbs, Bee suggested a similar hobby for the some 40,000 kids currently in foster care because of their parents’ addiction to the drug whose life-crushing addictive properties Purdue Pharma eventually pled guilty to lying about. Not that that kept then-president Richard Sackler from penning a leaked memo ordering the company to fight back against “the emotional messages from mothers with teenagers that overdosed” by aggressively blaming the “reckless criminals” who died just because they were over-prescribed the dangerously addictive drug his company lied to doctors and patients about for the dough. (And don’t get Bee started on those “fugly” neon hoodies one socialite member of the Sacklers tried to introduce.) So watch out, family demolishing all American governmental and financial principles and putting babies in cages! The pill-pushing Sacklers are aiming for your golden throne.