Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks

The author of Rogues uses a fairly exhaustive definition of the the word to lump together a dozen vignettes of (in)famous characters. There is the story of the Mexican druglord "El Chapo" as well as celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain. A section covering the Boston Marathon bomber focusses more on his defense attorney. She has worked tirelessly to get life sentence instead of the death penalty. 

The book leads off with a story of wine fraud. The fight to uncover the fraud is more interesting than the fraud itself. Many collectors accumulate wine without intention of drinking it. They may never realize they have been duped. Transactions often take place in private limiting the detailed oversight. There is also the matter of taste. People may prefer the cheap wine to the expensive stuff. Identifying fraud requires digging into the history of engraving, nuclear particles and more.

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

Reading Empire of Pain, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the Sacklers. They played by "the rules", but now our attacked because their company brought opioids into the mainstream. Meanwhile, we still respect dynasties like the Kennedys that built a fortune out of bootlegging during prohibition. It seems there is a double standard. If a family is very public and outgoing, it doesn't matter where the money originally came from. If the family is private, then any negative connection taints the entire family.

The book traces the Sackler family from their life as poor Jewish immigrants to their modern fortune. The family is very private, thus most of the sources are second hand. They include records of friends and acquaintances as well as public records that were available. Due to the nature of sources, the parts that have the greatest details are not necessarily the parts that were most important.

Sacklers had started some businesses in New York after immigrating. There was a strong desire for education, with most descendants studying medicine. From this, there was a pivot to medical marketing. There was an acknowledgement that doctors were similar to other people. They could be persuaded by marketing. The marketing business did well. They were also willing to hire anyone capable, while other companies tended to be more restrictive in their biases.

Eventually, Purdue was acquired. This company primarily made over the counter medicines. Eventually, they created the contin drug release system. MS Contin pain relief medicine was created. This was followed by oxycontin. This medicine provided long term pain relief. It was thought to be much less capable of addiction. The company spend effort to help promote "pain relief" and encourage doctors to help customers relieve pain.

They did a little bit too good of a job promoting the pain relief. It worked and people liked to use it. Then the bad actors came in to play. Some doctors started prescribing too much. A black market arose. Users also discovered that they could crush the pills to get an immediate hit. There were records showing that Purdue knew about some of these issues, however, they did little about it. (Alas, in a big company, there is almost always somebody that knew something.) The private nature of the Sacklers and the company made things appear worse. It seemed like they were covering things up, whether they were or not.

Americans seem to always pick a scapegoat.  People are dying of opioid addiction. Lawyers are hunting for the deep pockets that have any association. Why are we not going after other epidemics? There is the epidemic of car crashes. How about going after all auto manufacturers, highway departments and oil companies? And what about all the alcohol related deaths? It seems somewhat arbitrary who is attacked. The Sacklers happened to be in the right place to be the scapegoat.