Johnson & Johnson’s Brand Falters Over Its Role in the Opioid Crisis

An Oklahoma court case highlights the health care giant’s role in the epidemic as a leading supplier of opioid ingredients.

In the 1980s, Johnson & Johnson needed a reliable supply of opium for a popular product, Tylenol with codeine.

So the health care conglomerate, better known for baby shampoo and Band-Aids, bought a business that grew and processed opium poppies in faraway Tasmania, off the coast of Australia. By 2015, at the height of the nation’s opioid epidemic, Johnson & Johnson was the leading supplier for the raw ingredients in painkillers in the United States.

It even developed a special strain of poppy, called Norman, that produced a core painkilling agent used in OxyContin, which would become Purdue Pharma’s blockbuster drug. read more »

Opioids Inc in the dock

Johnson & Johnson, Purdue and other opioid-peddlers face a reckoning

After a courtroom loss, companies accused of fuelling America’s opioid crisis rethink their legal strategy

In 2015 Richard Sackler, from the billionaire family that controls Purdue Pharma, was deposed in a case related to his company’s alleged use—which it stoutly denies—of deceptive marketing to understate the addictive potential of OxyContin, its powerful opioid painkiller. The transcript of that testimony was unearthed this February, fuelling outrage over Purdue’s role in America’s growing opioid epidemic. On August 27th the video of Dr Sackler defending his firm’s flogging of OxyContin and other opioids finally emerged. read more »

S Korea ex-leader Park and Samsung heir Lee face bribery retrials

South Korea's top court has set aside part of jailed former President Park Geun-hye's conviction and ordered a retrial.

The court said separate verdicts should have been reached on the bribery allegations against her and sent the case back to a lower court.

Park was convicted in 2018 of bribery and abuse of power and given 25 years.

The Supreme Court also ordered a retrial for Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong on bribery charges in the same scandal.

It said three horses worth $2.8m (£2.3m) given by Samsung to then-president Park's friend's daughter should also have been considered as bribes. read more »

Australian who says he invented bitcoin ordered to hand over up to $5bn

US court orders Craig Wright to share cryptocurrency haul with the estate of American programmer David Kleiman

The Australian man who claimed to have invented cryptocurrency bitcoin has been ordered to hand over half of his alleged bitcoin holdings, reported to be worth up to $5bn.

The IT security consultant Craig Wright, 49, was sued by the estate of David Kleiman, a programmer who died in 2013, for a share of Wright’s bitcoin haul over the pair’s involvement in the inception of the cryptocurrency from 2009 to 2013.

Kleiman’s estate alleges Wright and Kleiman were partners, and therefore his family is entitled to a share of the bitcoin that was mined by the pair in that time. Wright denies there was a partnership.

A US district court in Florida on Tuesday ruled that half of the bitcoin mined and half of the intellectual property held by Wright from that time belongs to Kleiman. read more »