The Late Show looks at the opioid crisis.

America does not lack evil billionaires, but the Sackler family has managed to build its fortune on the back of the suffering of others, so that Bezos and DeVoss seem to be absolute pikers. The details of the exact number of murders needed to kill – and the way the family bleached their reputation by letting a few drops of money flow into respectable institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art – have been described in detail in the newspaper. New Yorker last fall. But New York readers are a small part of the country compared, say, to The late show with Steven Colbert, so it seems worth noting that Colbert devoted part of his show this week to calling the Sacklers by name:

The immediate causes of the Colbert segment are two new revelations about the Sacklers. First, the family has said in the past that it is unfair to blame them for the opioid crisis, as their flagship drug, Purdue Pharma, OxyContin, accounted for a relatively small percentage of opioid prescriptions. . But although they did not report it, it turns out the family also owns another pharmaceutical company, Rhodes Pharma, which sells generic versions of opioids, which gives them a bigger share of the pie than they had not admitted. (Rhodes Pharma was founded in 2007, the year Purdue pleaded guilty to criminal charges for lying to doctors and regulators about OxyContin's addiction potential.) The second big news of Sacklers was only Richard Sackler A new drug to treat opioid addiction, so that the family can earn even more money with people whose lives have already been ruined. This – with the Sacklers' campaign to bring the marvels of opioid addiction to the rest of the world – was enough for Colbert to dedicate a network television segment to their depravity.

It's a refreshing respite from the usual approach of bad actors with obscene wealth, which is to criticize people like Sheldon Adelson or the Koch brothers for what they do with their money, but rarely for how They succeeded. The Colbert segment may not represent a dramatic change in the mood of the public, but a monument to the Sackler's nightmare, but it is at least comforting to know that their family's reputation is such that a new wing of museum repair. It matters what you do in this life. It matters where the money comes from.