Joe Nocera, Columnist

Wrecking Purdue Pharma Won’t Help Opioid Victims

The company’s proposed bankruptcy settlement provides billions to fight addiction. Revenge on the Sackler family just feels good.

Help victims first.

Photographer: Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images
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There are few quotations that have stuck with me over the years like the one delivered by the anti-tobacco scientist Stanton Glanz back in 2006, when I was writing an article about Altria Group Inc. Asked what his ultimate goal was, he didn’t say it was to get people to stop smoking. He said it was “to destroy the tobacco companies.”

I thought of that line on Monday, the day after Purdue Pharma LP filed for bankruptcy, and the day ahead of the first court hearing before the respected U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Robert Drain, in White Plains, N.Y.