McKinsey and Company to pay $650M for role in opioid crisis
323 comments
·December 13, 2024jmcgough
JPKab
My mom got hooked in 99 after she slipped on ice at her house in Bluefield, WV.
Became a full blown addict after getting prescribed for the subsequent back injury.
She lost everything, disappeared, became a homeless addict drifting from DC to Baltimore to NYC and back, until she died of an overdose of heroin in a parking lot of a 7-11 in DC in December 2015. Her story and the impact on me and my 4 siblings is a drop in an ocean of suffering these smug assholes inflicted on this country.
This slap on the wrist is an insult to all of us, especially us Appalachians, who saw this starting in the 90s and got ignored because “hillbillies are genetically prone to addiction” as Purdue told the FDA.
bdangubic
I am sorry to hear this. I would have gone full Luigi on someone if this happened to me
shuckles
Since when were casual references to murdering people acceptable on here?
naijaboiler
Luigi is a verb now. I love it!
pkkkzip
[flagged]
haltingproblem
I am so sorry to hear what happened to your Mom. This is a slap on the wrist to those who suffered and to those who loved them.
How do companies like McKinsey get away with this?
davidw
> How do companies like McKinsey get away with this?
Money. Any other questions?
maeil
> How do companies like McKinsey get away with this?
Because of judiciary, regulatory and congressional capture, of course. This means you it's gotten away with unless someone like Luigi martyrs themselves.
wil421
The opioid epidemic has taken a lot of kids I went to High School with. Sorry to hear about your mom.
tdullien
Thank you for sharing this, and I am not sure if sending a hug is appropriate. Reading your post makes me angry and sad.
NetOpWibby
JFC damn! My condolences.
isoprophlex
[flagged]
refulgentis
That's probably not a direct quote, so I wouldn't go on the record with that direct response. Uncouth
ekianjo
Also I fail to understand why doctors who prescribed opoids are getting away with it. It's well documented by now that many of them were getting bribes, and could clearly see that their patients were becoming addicted which went against the claims that the said opoids were not addictive. Responsibility is not just on the manufacturer and consultants' side...
RicoElectrico
Exactly, if anyone is shocked at what happened to that insurance CEO, there is a reason.
Elites never face personal consequences beyond fines, maybe expect when they defraud investors.
ryandrake
And in this case, as is almost always the case, the "elites" are not even paying the fine. The Company is. No human being inside the company who made any of the relevant decisions and did any of the wrongdoing will suffer in any way, or have to pay anything.
If you want to kill people and get away with it, just form a corporation and have your CxO and SVP staff make decisions that kill people.
gruez
>If you want to kill people and get away with it, just form a corporation and have your CxO and SVP staff make decisions that kill people.
Note this only works for indirect deaths. If you form a corporation and then order a hit on someone, that's still illegal and you'll still go to jail. If you form a corporation, build a coal power plant that follows all regulations, and the particulate pollution sends a few hundred people to their early deaths that's fine.
FloNeu
Also - they already plan for the Fine and put that peanuts on the side… just a nice tax deduction… it would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad
mschuster91
On the other hand a lot of drug abuse among the homeless is self-medication because of the stress associated with living on the streets or due to untreated mental health issues.
As long as housing and mental health remains an open issue, personally I'd rather have them consume stuff made by an actual pharmaceutical company at pharmaceutical grade instead of completely unregulated dark market stuff that can have absolutely wild (and deadly!) swings in dosage, even from the same batch.
gonzobonzo
> A slap on the wrist. After a half million Americans have died from a crisis they helped kickstart, they should be facing criminal charges and jail time.
I keep reading people who say, over and over again, that the war on drugs is a failure and that it's a mistake to try criminally prosecute suppliers and send them to prison. People will always find a way to get the drugs if they want them, we're told.
But then I see the same people turn around that McKinsey is responsible for millions of deaths from the opioid crisis, and the execs involved should be held criminally responsible.
It's hard to reconcile the calls for criminal prosecution against McKinsey execs with the argument that drugs should be legalized and that we shouldn't go after other suppliers of drugs.
krispyfi
The shady business practices of McKinsey and Purdue are responsible for getting a lot of people dependent on opioids, but the overdose deaths skyrocketed once doctors were forced to cut patients off of their prescriptions and into the fentanyl-ridden black market due to pressure from DEA. Drug War propaganda has convinced us that addiction is as bad as death, but personally, I would rather live a long, happy and productive life dependent on cheap, legal opioids, like William Stewart Halsted, than die as a casualty of the War on Drugs.
oefrha
> rather live a long, happy and productive life dependent on cheap, legal opioids
That’s BS. OxyContin addicts tend to experience withdrawal symptoms before the recommended 12 hours is up, they also develop tolerance, so they end up requiring larger and larger dosage with increasing frequency. You’re not going to sustainably live a long, happy and productive life even if you have a cheap, steady, relatively clean supply of it.
remarkEon
>dependent on cheap, legal opioids
Life long customer.
prisenco
Legalization was popular for weed because weed is relatively benign but decriminalization is what's needed for harder drugs.
People get these mixed up and use them interchangeably but they're very different. There will (and should) never be heroin shops that look like Apple stores like there are for weed.
Decrim can be for production, distribution and possession but people generally use it to mean possession. That means that possession of amounts for personal use are not a criminal matter, which makes sense if we see it as an addiction that needs to be treated. In that scenario, production and distribution can be (and often are) illegal.
There are other nuances in how to handle decriminalization in terms of social services offered and how to disrupt demand.
kjkjadksj
Hard drugs are already effectively decriminalized in CA. When I see cops literally turn the other way to not have to see someone smoke a rock and have to write them a ticket thats how you know. I can’t say that this policy has lead to anyone getting help. If anything it enables people to slip further into the abyss once they come here from places that would otherwise prosecute that behavior when its done in public in the open like that.
genocidicbunny
I'm not sure most people are against going after the suppliers, even if they support decriminalization. Decriminalization should mean that users are not prosecuted for simply using drugs, but those participating in the manufacture and distribution are still held responsible.
gonzobonzo
> I'm not sure most people are against going after the suppliers
I see the claim made often, it even commonly pops up on HN. The claim is that the War on Drugs is a failure, because any prohibition efforts are doomed. Laws against a substance merely push it into the criminal sector and don't actually disrupt the supply. So the only outcome is that we get more crime and suffering, but the amount of people using the drug doesn't change.
We saw a similarly argument often used when marijuana legalization was being discussed - legalization wouldn't actually impact the number of people who used the drugs, because prohibition laws don't stop people from acquiring a substance. Naturally, the validity of marijuana legalization goes well beyond it's impact on the number of users, but there were many claims that it wouldn't impact the number of users.
Of course, one can make the argument that the War on Drugs is a good thing but that it's implementation has often been wrong (for instance, that there should be more effort made on going after suppliers rather than users). But it's very common to see people claim that any attempts at prohibition are doomed to failure and cause more harm with little to no benefit.
Edit: To give an example, here's a HN discussion where most of the people are in favor of fully legalizing all drugs:
kjkjadksj
Decriminalization still means you get prosecuted for using in public. You can’t smoke weed in public or even a cigarette in most public places nor are you allowed to drink in public. Shooting dope in a park will still be illegal.
dns_snek
People involved in the opioid crisis pushed unnecessary and extremely addictive drugs onto unsuspecting people who trusted them with their care, and it was all done through very intentional deception, lies about how these drugs weren't addictive when they absolutely knew that they were, and through corruption by offering doctors kickbacks for getting people hooked on them.
Ignoring everything else, do you really fail to see how bribing doctor to lie to people about the nature of highly addictive drugs is different from a consensual transaction between two adults?
toyg
The difference is consent, particularly at the very beginning.
Patients typically have to trust a doctor; the definition of consent in those circumstances is very strict, side effects have to be declared etc etc. Any abuse of that consent, like in this case, must be treated like a crime.
Whereas when it comes to individuals deciding on their own to experience something, it's all about personal responsibility.
gonzobonzo
> Patients typically have to trust a doctor; the definition of consent in those circumstances is very strict, side effects have to be declared etc etc. Any abuse of that consent, like in this case, must be treated like a crime.
> Whereas when it comes to individuals deciding on their own to experience something, it's all about personal responsibility.
The problem with this framing (and some of the other comments have used this framing as well) is acting as if other drugs would not have the same issues as opioids. But if anything, the opioid epidemic has shown the opposite to be the case - people irresponsibly push drugs onto people even when access is limited to a group like doctors who are supposed to be well educated and discerning.
rqtwteye
It’s consistent. Go after the big guys, suppliers and other enablers. Not after the individual addict.
pxmpxm
It's consistent in the sense that people love any angle that removes agency and shifts all responsibility to ephemeral constructs like "big pharma" or "war on drugs". Public flaggelation is not without consequence, however - don't be shocked when you can't find a pharmacy willing to fill a Percocet rx after your next surgery.
jgtrosh
To add to other comments, this can also be partly justified by the fact that blue collar crime is the only kind of crime for which prevalence is even partly inversely correlated with the increase in severity in punishment.
throwaway2037
> blue collar crime
spenczar5
I still don’t think it’s enough, but let’s be clear. They are facing criminal charges and jail time. See the DOJ press release: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-...
> Today’s resolution marks the first time a management consulting firm has been held criminally responsible for advice resulting in the commission of a crime by a client and reflects the Justice Department’s ongoing efforts to hold actors accountable for their roles in the opioid crisis. The resolution is also the largest civil recovery for such conduct.
> Additionally, a former McKinsey senior partner who worked on Purdue matters has been charged with obstruction of justice in federal court in Abingdon, Virginia. Martin E. Elling, 60, a U.S. citizen currently residing in Bangkok, Thailand, has been charged with one count of knowingly destroying records, documents and tangible objects with the intent to impede, obstruct and influence the investigation and proper administration of a matter within the jurisdiction of the Justice Department. Elling has agreed to plead guilty and is expected to appear in federal court in Abingdon to enter his plea and for sentencing at later dates.
…
> Elling faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine up to $250,000 for the obstruction of justice charge
genocidicbunny
If you or I killed a half a million people, we wouldn't be facing 20 years in prison. We'd be lucky to not be facing a firing squad or a noose.
All I ask is that the leadership of McKinsey be treated to that same standard. Let their golden parachutes be literal.
duped
The only way to kill 500,000 people practically is to do it by the letter of the law. Murder (especially for money) doesn't scale without being a state or quasi state actor, or something on that tier.
maeil
Not sure mate, Covid did 6+ million.
tivert
> If you or I killed a half a million people, we wouldn't be facing 20 years in prison. We'd be lucky to not be facing a firing squad or a noose.
Yeah, Martin Elling made 2 million in political donations over the years: https://www.businessinsider.com/mckinsey-company-oxycontin-d...
> During the past two decades, Elling has spread nearly $2 million among dozens of federal-level political committees, almost all Democratic. The political committees of President Joe Biden and dozens of US Senate and House candidates have benefited from Elling's contributions.
ternnoburn
They aren't facing prison for this, they are facing prison for trying to cover this up. That's a subtle but important difference.
wesselbindt
The prosecution of Elling has the same vibe as that of Calley [1] after the vietnam war, and that of the small group of soldiers involved in the Mahmudiyah rape [2] during the second gulf war.
Viewed in isolation, the atrocities committed by these men deserve punishment. But in the bigger picture, the function these trials serve is for the institution in charge to be able to say "see? We do hold ourselves accountable" even though the vast majority of war crimes went uninvestigated and unpunished.
More heads, and more important heads, should roll. Not just that of one fall guy. Tens of thousands of deaths every year, and even more lives ruined. But we all know what side the US government is on, so I'm not holding my breath.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Calley
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmudiyah_rape_and_killings
newswasboring
Lets talk when one of them actually goes to jail. These sham trials are dime a dozen.
dogboat
[flagged]
refurb
[flagged]
BSDobelix
You are not wrong here, capitalism is the rule to make as much money as possible (be it by selling legal drugs, weapons, food, gambling, insurance).
The role of a state and it's laws is to control and limit these companies.
A lot of people think it's good to assassinate the CEO of an insurance company, but then I ask, where are the checks and balances, where is the state?
If you have to have insurance, the state has to make rules where it's almost impossible for the insurance company not to pay the necessary actions (like in Europe).
With McKinsey...what did the FDA do wrong here would be my first question.
Don't hate the companies, criticise the state (who is the responsible blob to keep a society healthy).
refurb
> If you have to have insurance, the state has to make rules where it's almost impossible for the insurance company not to pay the necessary actions (like in Europe).
Exactly.
Capitalism without rules ends up with situations that we would like to avoid as a society. Thus the government should step in create guard rails and enforce them.
The government, through the FDA and DEA, played a large role in the huge increase in the abuse of Oxycontin during the 90's.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2622774/
When OxyContin entered the market in 1996, the FDA approved its original label, which stated that iatrogenic addiction was “very rare” if opioids were legitimately used in the management of pain. In July 2001, to reflect the available scientific evidence, the label was modified to state that data were not available for establishing the true incidence of addiction in chronic-pain patients. The 2001 labeling also deleted the original statement that the delayed absorption of OxyContin was believed to reduce the abuse liability of the drug.19
remarkEon
A little unrelated to this whole thing, which does hit me a bit personally since my cousin back in Iowa died of opioid-related dependency issues, but I have interviewed a lot of consultants over the years for various roles and they are without question the most consistently bad interviews. It's funny, when I was in business school years ago (please forgive me) getting a job at McKinsey or BCG was more or less the crème de la crème of post-MBA gigs. Now, when I interview these people it's so transparent that yeah they're very smart, but they literally know nothing. They've spent years cycling in and out of "client engagements", so they can give you a 30k foot view of what's going on, on a dozen different things, but when you try to dig into the details there's not a lot there.
I'm probably casting a wide net since my sample size is large, and I'm sure there are great consultants at these places who have spent more than a few months on something, and could do good work in tech or hardware. But so far for me it's something like 1/70.
Maybe I'm just that asshole interviewer.
mdorazio
I've also interviewed many consultants over the years. It strongly depends on what you are interviewing them for. If you want people with deep industry expertise and a strong fit for a fairly narrow role, then yes of course the consulting kids are going to suck. If you want people who can learn quickly and look more broadly than a specific department to do things like strategic or financial planning then consultants can be a good fit.
xyzzy123
These kinds of consultants have the same issue as LLMs: they say the maximally plausible thing without knowing (or necessarily caring) if what they are saying is actually true.
I don't think strategy advice is worth much unless it's coming from people who stuck around and lived with the consequences (i.e, tested their ideas against reality).
remarkEon
>and look more broadly than a specific department to do things like strategic or financial planning then consultants can be a good fit.
I disagree with this, but I definitely understand your argument. I just don't see how someone who oscillates back and forth from various clients, even if they're all in the same industry, can get enough deep background to be able to coherently make recommendations about business strategy.
dcreater
I'm so proud of my decision making when I was younger to avoid this path though it was considered an elite path
dmd
I am grateful for McKinsey and BCG because when I dropped out of my postdoc in 2009 and was looking for a job, I went to probably 20 or 30 of their lunch events at Wharton where I absolutely stuffed myself and my pockets, despite having no intention whatsoever of joining them.
beepboopboop
> and my pockets
Do they give money out at these lunches??
rr808
> It's funny, when I was in business school years ago (please forgive me) getting a job at McKinsey or BCG was more or less the crème de la crème of post-MBA gigs.
Still is though right? Just now you have enough experience to be wise enough to know what is important.
rightbyte
McKinsey is sweatshop but with good pay. The work conditions are atrocious and they grind through naive young people like Verdun.
Some people have argued on HN that the consultants are cya and political support for things the management class allready know they want. That seem about right.
ProjectArcturis
"Painting bullseyes around bullet holes" is the unofficial consultant motto.
caminante
I needed a reminder of this turn of phrase. Thank you.
Flanges up well after "Ready. Fire. Aim!"
eichi
>> consultants are cya and political support for things the management class allready know they want. That seem about right.
That is the most valuable job in virtually every profitable industries including tech.
jncfhnb
It varies tremendously. Imo the people who have sweatshop experiences bring it upon themselves mostly.
jfengel
I've always been unclear on this. Various careers are famed for extremely long hours, but I don't know just what it is they do for all that time. Consultants, financeers, etc.
I know that I have only so much brain power to spend a day. I can work longer, but at best you're going to get more grind, not quality.
I keep wondering if these consultants could accomplish as much in fewer hours if they weren't so intent on being the one who puts in so many hours.
I know almost nothing about what they do so I'm just guessing. But I find it hard to square so much effort with results that don't seem to merit it.
rightbyte
Mm ye. I don't have first hand experience but two class mates and a friend that worked there gave the same picture.
They described it as up or out where you really have to grind long hours and the career is in sales and management not as a consultant really.
croes
McKinsey is also responsible for the delay, deny, defend tactic of health insurance companies.
https://www.trialguides.com/products/from-good-hands-to-boxi...
blackeyeblitzar
McKinsey is responsible for a lot of crimes, seemingly. Ultimately they just don't seem like a trustworthy company and I think they've avoided accountability by maintaining political connections (and donations). Another example of their untrustworthy practices - I recall accusations from a few years ago where they assured the US government that they were not doing work for the CCP, but then it turned out that they were (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/mckinsey-...). And then earlier this year at a US Senate hearing, it turned out McKinsey has once again been doing dirty work for the CCP by advising a large number of state owned corporations, who are involved in activities like building China's militarized artificial islands: https://youtu.be/tQ5kWfotE8Y
tdb7893
Even amongst management consulting firms McKinsey is known as the unethical one. I know someone who worked for Bain and when I gave him shit for it his answer was always "hey, at least I don't work at McKinsey"
milesskorpen
They all do basically the same thing.
DrBenCarson
MBB alum here--
Here's the thing: these firms are set up as partnerships meaning each of the partners (but really the senior partners) has their own little world enabled by their equity and voting power. They each have their own spin on the "values," risk tolerance, communication style, "followers," etc.
Trying to paint the entire firm with the same brush is naive. Like anything else, there are good and there are bad
Plenty of good smart people at each of these firms just trying to do good work and "make it." Then you have the sociopaths willing to trade lives for their own gain who have the benefit of hiding behind brand equity and human shields (aka the other partners)
portaouflop
I’ll happily pint anyone who works at McKinsey with the same brush.
I don’t care what your values are - if you work for McKinsey you are a piece of shit simple as
sc68cal
McKinsey makes something like 10 billion annually in revenue. This is a slap on the wrist. People need to be held accountable for these misdeeds.
passwordoops
Criminal charges for execs and board members
raincom
Prosecutors have to use RICO to charge execs and board members criminally. This is not going to happen, as long as the revolving door (or a sort of collusion between prosecutors and executives) exists.
jncfhnb
It’s a partnership. Ultimately the line of people involved in any particular job is extremely short.
Unlike in a tech company where the whole company is building a product, consulting companies are thousands of teams doing projects in a small isolated bubble.
bdangubic
higher chance of me marrying gisele than that ever happening :)
potamic
The world needs to adopt some sort of a punitive equivalence principle. Humanity overall has made a lot of progress towards enshrining human rights, but a lack of punitive equivalence is a gaping hole in the right to equality before law. How are two people treated equally if they face different punitive effects for the same act?
swasheck
yep. would rather it be a multiple of revenues from their role instead of a percentage.
DAGdug
Not to be pedantic, but percentages can exceed 100.
Jgrubb
Own your pedantry, comrade. Be neither bashful nor apologetic.
aoanevdus
The parent comment referred to McKinsey’s entire revenue, not to their revenue from their work relating to Opioids specifically.
niceice
That's more than I would have thought.
What generates that? How much of it is consulting?
rrr_oh_man
It's almost certainly almost all fees charged to clients for consulting projects.
Let's assume 2,000 working hours per year, 80% utilization at $150/hr, and 40,000 employees (worldwide) — that's $9.6B.
bmitc
What companies use consultants and how? In all my years, I have never seen a consultant or a need for one, so I have a tough time understanding how they make any money, much less a lot of it.
gruez
This line of thinking makes no sense. Why should we care about what their global revenue is? The only thing that matters is how much money they made from opioid consulting. If Amazon did a bad in a small part of their company (eg. they violated labor laws in the state of Washington), why should their punishment be compared to their global revenue?
kjkjadksj
Because otherwise someone clever could play a shell game where every org does something bad but its split up in such a way to diffuse responsibility across the organization and minimize fines, especially since not all bad things will be caught and fined simultaneously.
gruez
>Because otherwise someone clever could play a shell game where every org does something bad but its split up in such a way to diffuse responsibility across the organization and minimize fines,
"We can't figure out who to blame because responsibility is so diffuse, so let's make everyone 100% responsible" makes as much sense as "we can't figure out who the murderers are so let's lock up anyone who vaguely looks like a gangster"[1].
More to the point, it's unclear whether this actually applies in this case. At the very least, you can confine responsibility to the consulting engagements they did with opioid producers. The value McKinsey & Company provides in their management consulting engagements might be questionable, but it's a stretch to claim their engagements with some random fortune 500 (non-pharma) company contributed to the opioid crisis, or need to be punished.
noisy_boy
Until you have serious bonus clawbacks for every such case, it is just cost of doing business. Just increasing the fines won't do much, they will just fire more people citing costs and the market will applaud that with rising stock price.
hsbshs
Its complex cause you cant really find one person to blame. What no one really says is we are struggling with complexity overload. And what complicates it is all the people's wealth and status accumulation falsely signals control. When they really have less and less control the more complex the system gets.
When you look at pentagon leaders and afg/iraq or Wall St CEOs and 2008 gfc or the Pope and the peado army or linux kernel maintainers and serious security bugs found everyday the commonality is Complexity.
No one is fit the more complex things gets. So even though we get Tahrir Square once in a while, decade later we still have Generals in charge.
Scaling has become easy but scaling without unintended costs and consequences the past few decades have shown is complex.
throwaway562if1
It's trivial to find who to blame - just follow the money. Hit the investors with sentences proportional to their stake of ownership, and just like magic, executives who enable criminal behavior will become rather less popular and internal oversight much more so. Of course this will never happen, since the lack of culpability is the point.
theoreticalmal
I’d really rather not jail people who didn’t do anything illegal
callc
Sure, attempting to find one or a handful of bad actors to blame may not yield a sufficient result that could convince the public that justice was served appropriately. Yet, the complexity of how to blame should not absolve the crime.
How should society collectively administer punishment to a large complex network of individuals with varying degrees of power and involvement? Reparations and the Nuremberg Trials / Tokyo Trial come to mind for WWII Axis powers. 500k deaths from opiods (taken from top comment) is comparable to the casualties from WWII, within a soberingly low amount of significant digits. Japan was occupied and could not have a military for some time.
Curious if there are other ideas of how to tackle punishment of businesses (not Luigi'ing it).
hsbshs
Well there is the Chinese and Russian example. The power just gets misused and creates it own issues.
People want simple and quick solutions. And they dont like answers they dont want to hear. Specifically about what behavior is rewarded and incentivized. As Veblen pointed out a hundred years ago, the flaw with Marx is not that there are exploiters and the exploited, its that there is the Leisure class and everyone else who given a choice wants that lifestyle.
The entire media and edu system promote consumption, wealth and status accumulation 24x7. When you are constantly hit with these signals punishing a few people here and there is just for show.
salawat
You say we can't find anyone responsible as if we haven't settled the question on culpability symbolically since we started leveraging hierarchies. You oversee it. You did it.
Start at the top. Move down. Heavy is the head, as they say.
noisy_boy
> Its complex cause you cant really find one person to blame.
When the big bucks go to the very top for a successful year, the penalty should also go to the very top when shit hits the fan. When the CEO/CIO/COO's bonuses are on the hook, I suspect you will suddenly see a great urgency/importance being assigned to doing things correctly and greater penalty being levied down the ranks for doing things wrongly.
These people had too much carrot, time to balance it out with some stick.
p4ul
With all the overdose deaths and the lives ruined by opioids, I guess I'm a little bit surprised this didn't result in criminal charges for someone at McKinsey. Surely there must be some emails or texts that are inculpating.
rqtwteye
As long as you hide behind a corporation, you can do pretty much whatever you want. Worst case, the company will pay a nominal fine as cost of doing business. And maybe somebody gets fired with a large severance.
genocidicbunny
Well, until a good looking 20-something year old man puts a couple bullets in your chest outside an investor meeting.
Sabinus
But then someone has to sacrifice their life to create some justice.
Much better for it to be a part of the system. Jail for criminal executives.
bamboozled
Not going to be "the norm" nor will there be an endless stream of vigilantes available to deter this level of sociopathy. Assassinations are obviously not the way we want society to work either, violence to settle grievances etc, no good.
The only way I think we could hope to stem the tide of this level of corruption is through education. I believe it's really in the ruling classes interest to keep as people as dumb as possible though, so I don't think it will happen.
Not sure what else the alternatives could be. Societal collapse?
caminante
Did you intentionally not read the article?
> According to Kavanaugh, former McKinsey senior partner Martin Elling "personally deleted various Purdue related electronic materials from his McKinsey laptop with the intent to obstruct future investigations." DOJ officials said Elling has agreed to plead guilty to a felony count of obstruction of justice for destroying those company records.
You might've been too busy trying to force "inculpating."
newswasboring
Those are not charges for the mass murder they have supported. They are charges for not following procedure. There is a huge difference.
caminante
We're calling felony obstruction/coverup charges "not following procedure" and not related to the principal/McKinsey's actions?
This is some mental gymnastics.
It was pay a fine or go to jail, but at best, the parent's comment was still wrong.
ALittleLight
If the company was not meaningfully involved in selling a dangerous addictive substance falsely marketed that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans then they should not face any penalty or fines. On the other hand, if they were, this is on a similar order of magnitude to American losses in World War 2, and their executives should be hung and company ended with shareholders zeroed out.
sitkack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life
They could figure out how to divvy up their 65 life sentences.
Why do they get to pay their way out of this?
> According to Kavanaugh, former McKinsey senior partner Martin Elling [2] "personally deleted various Purdue related electronic materials from his McKinsey laptop with the intent to obstruct future investigations."
Corporate laptops are backed up, with backups offsite. I find it hard to believe that the only copy was on his laptop.
From the tweet [2], which has a screenshot of an email presumably sent by Martin Elling, he looks to be directing everyone to start deleting criminal evidence.
> McKinsey's payment, which includes $2 million paid to the Virginia Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, settles federal civil and criminal charges against the firm and includes a "deferred prosecution" agreement. Under the civil settlement, McKinsey is not admitting liability. A copy of the deferred prosecution agreement was not publicly available at the time of publication.
Given the opioid deaths in 2022 alone, McKinsey should be dissolved and the responsible parties serving jail time.
Can someone explain how this [3] is presented as a win, when only money has changed hands. They paid a fee for aiding in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
Does this ruling now shield them from any criminal repercussions at the state level?
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/overdose-prevention/about/understanding-...
[2] https://x.com/CoruscaKhaya/status/1676330070472814593
Here is the original document referenced in the tweet,
https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/opioids/docs/#id=zhlp...
[3] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-...
*edit, found this
https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/wp-content/uploads/20... which outlines at which times various McKinsey employees directed people to delete evidence.
mulmen
> Corporate laptops are backed up, with backups offsite. I find it hard to believe that the only copy was on his laptop.
Not defending anyone and maybe McKinsey is different but I have never had a corporate laptop with built-in backup. I am always left to figure that out on my own.
sitkack
From what I can tell, it looks like they used Box to store the most incriminating stuff.
https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/wp-content/uploads/20...
Specifically
https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/opioids/docs/#id=skbm...
In an email
from: Jeff Smith
to: Amir Golan
cc: Arnab Ghatak
sitkack
So Arnab "Arnie" is facing 20 years [1] for destruction of evidence
But Martin Elling (very much his senior) can only get a maximum of 1 year [2] as per the plea deal.
> A former senior partner at McKinsey, Martin Elling, has also agreed to plead guilty to obstruction of justice for destroying records related to McKinsey's work for Purdue, according to court papers. He is scheduled to enter his plea on Jan. 10.
[1] https://www.globalindiantimes.com/p/mckinsey-opioid-122024
[2] https://www.reuters.com/legal/consulting-firm-mckinsey-pay-6...
mulmen
Distribution of documents is not a system backup. I haven't used Box but if it is a distribution mechanism I suspect it is opt-in, as in you have to choose to distribute a document with it. You could still print or email the document, or use any other service. Box is just the mechanism by policy. The policy wouldn't even apply to documents that aren't distributed.
jncfhnb
We use Box to store and share virtually everything, not because it is incriminating, but because sending email attachments is not a secure way to send sensitive data.
malux85
They 100% should be put in jail, if fines are the only deterrant then they just become cost-of-business and dont deter anything at all.
bongodongobob
I've never worked anywhere that backed up laptops. Onedrive, fileshares, cloud storage, servers, sure. I would not want to try managing backups for devices that aren't guaranteed online 24/7. The odd failed server backup is enough work, now apply that to 2000 laptops. Fuck that, save your shit on our backed up infra.
freetanga
They did, or at least Some folders (way before iCloud)
During a project, the live documents were on the teams laptops (local encryption). Only key deliverables were uploaded to servers, mostly at the end of the project.
Lots of cruft (client emails, unedited data, etc) stayed behind in people’s laptops.
Your laptop was stolen? No worries, under 24 hrs you get a new one in your hotel with roughly whenever you left off…
PS McK was handing out 3G - 4G PCMIA cards forever (almost 20 y ago), you were only most of the time…
NetOpWibby
This is just disgusting. Money is the root of much evil.
kevinventullo
Just remember, it’s never okay for the people to take matters into their own hands. They just need to get out there and vote! Our elected representatives will ensure that justice is served. If they don’t, that just means you didn’t donate enough to the Good Guys.
null
yalogin
What percentage of the revenue was this? The stock price jump alone would many multiple times this fine.
NetOpWibby
Not nearly enough. Make it $650B and if they can't pay, break up the company.
tiborsaas
Payment should not be an option. If people can be executed for a single murder then assisting in starting an epidemic with 640000 casualties (and also serious side effects) should kill the company. Revoke business licenses, seize assets, use it for damage control.
"More than 645,000 people(opens new window) in the United States have died from overdoses involving opioids since the epidemic began"
https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/maps/connect2health/foc...
infrawhispers
McKinsey is a deeply unethical company that has skirted meaningful accountability over the last few decades. I highly recommend reading When McKinsey Comes To Town [1] - it really opened my eyes to how hypocritical and self-serving the culture is at the firm.
Maybe a small aside..but it’s very interesting how we as a society took very little learnings from the Crack epidemic during the early years of the Opioid Crisis. It is frustrating how people would rather bury their heads into the sand and reaffirm existing biases vs interrogating the contributing factors.
[1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/634029/when-mckinse...
A slap on the wrist. After a half million Americans have died from a crisis they helped kickstart, they should be facing criminal charges and jail time. The rich and powerful once again are allowed to buy their freedom.