Even on a day when the world was offering plenty of diversions - Tony Blair's resignation, brush fires and bad air, the Marlins winning in the bottom of the ninth inning - this story was particularly stunning.

The maker of OxyContin, the painkiller that Purdue Pharma first marketed in small American towns to "get the ball rolling," and three executives will pay $634 million after admitting they misled regulators, doctors and patients about the narcotic's risks.

These bigwigs are not going to prison, mind you. They're just writing checks - really big checks - which is the part that's particularly stunning.

You do not need to look far to see the chaotic leftovers of OxyContin addictions. In last year's report from our local medical examiner's office - the annual report that details, among other things, deaths by drug overdose - Palm Beach and Broward counties led the state in OxyContin deaths.

Another proud moment for us all.

Could this let doctors off the hook?

We've watched mothers wage bedside vigils, fathers testify about their daughter's swift addiction. And at least three Florida doctors have been convicted for some sort of impropriety involving the prescribing of OxyContin: Dr. Thomas G. Merrill from the Panhandle, Dr. Asuncion Luyao from Port St. Lucie and Dr. Denis Deonarine from Jupiter.

Many, many others have taken sentences to avoid court.

Assistant State Attorney Barbara Burns, prosecutor of the Deonarine case, said Friday she watched the Purdue Pharma decision with a curious mind and a bit of an appellate premonition.

Attorneys are like that, I suppose.

"There's a concern now that we're going to have a backlash," she said. "The question now is, what kind of a stance will the defense attorneys take on the doctors who have been convicted?"

After all, if the drug company misled the doctors, then maybe the doctors didn't mislead us.

Along the way in the early to mid-1990s, as more people found OxyContin's strength a relief from their pain - and as more and more lives were ripped apart - there were people out there who knew what Purdue Pharma admitted to this week.

Or at least they thought they knew.

From very early on, these advocates called themselves Relatives Against Purdue Pharma and communicated online, exchanging stories, writing soulful memorials, even picketing at the drug company's headquarters in Connecticut.

Families knew the deal, paid the price

A posting on one Web site, started in the early 2000s by a grieving father, shows a younger Gov. Charlie Crist, then attorney general, meeting with families in Tallahassee.

The tributes on these Web sites go on for pages and pages. Stories about patients who took OxyContin for a torn shoulder ligament or back pain or the cancer that had invaded their bones.

But they knew, these families did, that the drug makers had manipulated the statistics, repressed the case studies, reassured doctors that the addiction rate was really quite low, all things considered.

From one posting:

My name is Kay and I lost my only child, my son Jason Lancing Kelley on June 6, 2003. He was involved in a motorcycle accident 21/2 years ago and given the drug OxyContin for non-terminal pain ... he became addicted not long after ... The last two years of his life were a horror story of addiction, withdrawal, pharmacy hopping, being over prescribed ... Then he finally lost his battle against this miserable drug when he breathed his last breath ... I lost my life, my love and my heart.

And for that, the bigwigs get to write a check?

No wonder I'm feeling so lousy. It's not the fires or the haze or the drought. It's the madness