Author and activist Ryan Hampton on the inside story of the Purdue Pharma settlement and looking beyond the Sackler family

Episode notes

In the early 2000s, Ryan Hampton was homeless and struggling with an opioid addiction, wondering how he had gone from working as a White House staffer to begging for change on a California street corner. A decade later in recovery, Ryan found himself at the epicenter of Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy settlement, fighting for justice in a case that gripped a nation in the midst of an overdose crisis. In this episode of Heart of the Matter, Elizabeth Vargas sits down with Ryan to discuss his role in Purdue’s bankruptcy proceedings, how it felt to witness the now-infamous depositions of the Sackler family firsthand and why he believes the justice system, as it stands today, could never deliver accountability for Purdue’s victims. Ryan Hampton’s new book Unsettled: How the Purdue Pharma Bankruptcy Failed the Victims of the American Overdose Crisis details the shocking injustice at the heart of the Purdue Pharma settlement.

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