The first few paragraphs of a previous post describe the difference between a malum in se, an inherently harmful, evil act that should clearly be illegal, such as the random murder of kindergarten students, and a malum prohibitum, an act neither good or bad in itself, but prohibited by law, as alcohol was for a decade a hundred years or so ago here, during Prohibition.   You can read the post here. 

It is, in some ways, a distinction without a difference, as they like to say in first year Law School classes.   You can often do a longer prison sentence convicted of a malum prohibitum, even though there is nothing inherently evil about the act that the law has prohibited.

I have been having trouble staying asleep the last few days, the wheels in the mind begin to turn and soon it becomes useless to stay in bed feeling frustrated about how tired you are.  I was listening to the beginning of an excellent discussion of the president’s predictably moronic response to the Opioid Crisis (FAIR’s great podcast) and realized I had one more piece of jello to nail down in this discussion of mala in se vs. mala prohibitum.   

A fabulously wealthy family of doctors and advertising geniuses, the Sackler family by name, eventually had their own pharmaceutical company.  That company manufactures Oxycontin, a time-released opioid that they marketed to doctors and patients as having a greatly reduced addictive danger, compared to previous iterations of pharmaceutical opioids.  The only problem with this claim, allowed by the FDA as part of the Sacklers’ wonderfully effective marketing campaign, is that it was, and is, complete bullshit.  It was a bold claim backed by no evidence or research whatsoever.  Mere, uh, puffery, yo, arguably nothing illegal about puffery, which is bragging, intended to cow or otherwise influence, that does not have to be backed up.  We are all now intimately and sickeningly familiar with puffery, getting daily overdoses of it from our Puffer-in-Chief. 

Oxycontin proved to be highly addictive to people desperate to escape their psychic pain.  It also proved immensely profitable, netting the Sacklers a shit ton of money, billions.  With that money they settled several big law suits in various states, the terms of the settlements sealing records and gagging everybody involved.  You can read the whole sickening fake news investigative report about this family of immensely rich and successful pieces of shit here.   Who are you going to believe, an Oxycontin package insert or some smart-ass writing for the failing New Yorker?  You decide.

Here’s the obvious point I didn’t make in the previous post.  A guy in a trench coat with a bottle of Oxycontin for sale to addicts, at ten or fifteen dollars a pop, is a criminal, an illegal drug dealer, he gets sent away for years of nonconsensual sex.  The law says so.   

The cultured multi-millionaire who manufactures and falsely markets the drug single-most responsible for a national emergency of drug overdose deaths by opioid addicts?   “Keep the terms of our fucking settlement secret, you piece of shit, or I’ll drag your ass back to court and you’ll be fucked.  Enjoy the millions, you fucking litigious prick….”

The toxic orange turd has vowed to spend big bucks on a new “Just Say No” ad campaign, to simply tell addicts they should have more will power.  That should do it, don’t you think?

In fairness to our president, and nobody likes being referred to as a piece of shit, particularly a toxic one, of course, he has made the previous worst president in American history look articulate by comparison.   Check this out, very well done example of Mr. Trump’s remarkable power of analysis and his unique speaking ability.  It is very funny, even as it will also hammer home the horror.  Oh, the fucking horror. 

Now, maybe I can get a few more winks….