As of 10/08/2021
John Oliver has a knack of presenting important issues with strong and stinging arguments in the form of jokes. In his popular show Last Week Tonight John Oliver talks about a wide range of issues. And for a few weeks, the center of his shows has been the Opioid crisis.
America has been suffering from the overuse of the drug. So much, that it has been termed as an endemic. Several cases have been filed against the pharmaceutical companies responsible for it. One of such companies is Purdue Pharma. In October 2020,the company even pleaded guilty to charges, filed for bankruptcy and agreed to pay $8 billion.
The company was owned by the Sackler family and they would have to pay $4.5 billion. This might seem a fair punishment. But, not according to John Oliver. According to the comedian, the fine was only a fraction of their total wealth. Purdue Pharma was declared bankrupt, and not the Sackler family. In fact the $4.5 billion would provide them protection against any future financial liability.
Adding on to the top of this the Sackler family started a website on domain name JudgeForYourselves.info, which is basically a PR effort. The website tries to do an image makeover by giving various reasons as to why the Sackler family are not so bad.
John on the other hand was taken aback by this effort as well as the choice of the extension. He even joked that the family could have gone for a .com domain name considering their wealth. In fact, the comedian actually bought the domain name JudgeForYourselves.com!
John’s website shows links of his videos related to the Opioid crisis.
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