First an opioid overdose robbed Ed Bisch of his son. Then the legal system robbed him of his faith in justice.
For 20 years, Bisch has been fighting to make sure Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family who own the company face severe consequences for their role in the opioid crisis.
The company has reached a multi-billion dollar settlement in bankruptcy court.
But crimes should not equal just fines, Bisch tells Jesse Mulligan, and he won’t rest until there is a criminal conviction against the Sackler family.
Ed Bisch Photo: supplied
His son died in 2001, it was the first time he had heard of Oxycontin.
“OxyContin was a brand-new pill, the first time I ever heard of it. My son was lying dead in his bed from it.”
Since then, he has been tireless in his pursuit of justice.
“If there's one person responsible for the opioid epidemic, I would say it's Richard Sackler,” Bisch says.
A recent US drama, Dope Sick, captures the Purdue Pharma story accurately, he says.
“It’s 100 percent realistic. A lot a lot of things said in there came from emails. I mean, word for word, especially when you see Richard Sackler say stuff like ‘hammer the abusers’, or a ‘blizzard of prescriptions’, ‘sell, sell, sell’, they are direct quotes.”
Everybody has the same reaction to the show, he says.
“How are they not in prison?”
A week after his son Eddie’s death, he created a message board to connect with other parents who had lost a child.
“I would get like five to 10 emails a day, telling me, I lost my son or I’m addicted or so and so was prescribed this and got addicted and what caught my eye almost immediately was about half the emails I was getting was from somebody who was prescribed OxyContin, who was a patient and got addicted, or their husband or wife was a patient and they passed away.
“And that was almost 50 percent of the emails I was getting, which was totally going against the spin Purdue Pharma was saying was it was only the abusers.”
The circumstances that led to Purdue Pharma being in the bankruptcy court, not the criminal court are complicated, Bisch says.
“In 2007, they had them bang to rights. They had the top three officials at Purdue, Rick Mountcastle investigated them for five years, he wrote a 120-page prosecution memo that had to go through DoJ (Department of Justice), unfortunately Mary Jo White used to run the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), very powerful, and they were able to get the very top brass of the DoJ to bury this memo.”
Nineteen victims were allowed to give a one minute statement at the hearing, he says.
“We begged the judge to give them jail. The judge literally was apologetic to us and said that even though he would like to, you know the sentencing guidelines, he's not going to give them jail.
“Well we didn’t know about this 120-page memo, but guess what? The judge didn't know about the 120-page memo. He never saw it.
“So, in 2007 they were given immunity for anything they've done up to 2007. They really dodged a bullet, but it was no accident, they pretty much bought their way out of it.”
Following that, it was business as usual for Purdue, he says.
“You would think they would back off, do the right thing. Nah they doubled down, they increased the sales force, increased the sales, all the while knowing the more you sell, the more people die, the more to get addicted.”
And in 2020 Purdue pleaded guilty to the same crimes, Bisch says.
“They were given another sweetheart deal but that has not been formally sentenced.”
There are two villains in this story, he says.
“Purdue Pharma is villain number one. Villain number two in this opioid epidemic is the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), especially Dr Curtis Wright, who approved OxyContin.”
Purdue from day one has been seeking to buy immunity, he says.
“The only question was the price. So, we found out the price, $US6 billion to buy a get out of jail free card, and it's just not right.”
Meanwhile, the opioid crisis rages on.
“The numbers are off the chart, last year over 100,000 people died in America in one year - 100,000 - you know, that's a lot of people.
“You take your biggest stadium or America's biggest football stadium, you fill it up. That's how many people died just in one year, and the numbers are going up.”
