Sackler family Concepts

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

by Patrick Radden Keefe · 12 Apr 2021 · 712pp · 212,334 words

biography. “This was the era of McCarthyite witch-hunts so every one in the pharmaceutical business was terrified of ruination,” the account published by a Sackler family foundation recalled. “Sackler offered to take the brunt of the scrutiny for the entire industry.” He hired Clark Clifford, a legendary Washington power lawyer

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changed her name, in London, to Jillian Sackler, though she and Arthur were not actually married, and Arthur was still married to Marietta. * * * The Sackler family now seemed to have split into two discrete factions, with Arthur in one corner and Raymond and Mortimer in the other. Jillian never grew close

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Arthur Sackler had watched the introduction of Thorazine. It was a “major” tranquilizer that worked wonders on patients who were psychotic. But the way the Sackler family made its first great fortune was with Arthur’s involvement in marketing the “minor” tranquilizers Librium and Valium. Thorazine was perceived as a heavy-duty

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. And he blew the whistle.” “Correct.” “And you had that data. What did you do?” * * * There was probably a moment, early on, when the Sackler family could have chosen to respond differently to the unfolding crisis surrounding OxyContin. The family could have paused the aggressive marketing of the drug, halting the

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from a hunting trip when the truck flipped, killing him instantly. He was fifty-two. * * * As the investigators in Virginia launched their case, the Sackler family was planning a big celebration, in Connecticut, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Sackler ownership of Purdue. The year 2002 marked half a century since

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what had been a national, decade-long prescription drug epidemic morphed, right around 2010, into a heroin epidemic. In later years, certain members of the Sackler family would call attention to precisely this transition, casting the shift to heroin (and, eventually, to another, even more lethal substitute, fentanyl) as an exculpatory

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if journalists were going to refer to the opioid epidemic and potentially mention OxyContin and Purdue, they at least not mention the connection to the Sackler family. The company hired numerous public relations specialists to help with this delicate campaign to keep the family name in any positive stories about philanthropy

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it says,” Richard said, with a shrug, “then that’s what it says.” “I’ve seen upwards of sixty-nine different corporations, perhaps, that the Sackler family owns,” Thompson continued. “Is that correct?” “If you’ve counted them,” Richard said. “I don’t know.” Thompson had entertained no illusions about this

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state judge ruled in STAT’s favor. But Purdue immediately appealed. That deposition represented the most extensive remarks ever made by a member of the Sackler family about the controversy surrounding OxyContin. The family would go to great lengths to prevent it from becoming public. * * * Inside the reflective-glass ziggurat of

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supportive or indicated that they would return donations or refuse to accept gifts from the family in the future. Some were openly protective. “The Sackler family continue to be an important and valuable donor,” a spokeswoman for the Victoria and Albert Museum told the paper, adding that museum officials were “

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grateful for their ongoing support.” Oxford University was similarly steadfast, announcing that there was “no intention to reconsider the Sackler family and trusts.” * * * On a chilly Saturday afternoon in March 2018, Nan Goldin walked into the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She was dressed in black

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respond to the dramatic increase in opioid abuse.” Of course, it wasn’t just Purdue applying pressure. This would become a central plank in the Sackler family’s defense. In 2016, Johnson & Johnson sold the Tasmanian Alkaloids facility. Physicians were becoming more cautious about prescribing opioids. And by that point, many

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surrounded by formidable security. The company appeared to be intent on maintaining a low profile; for several years, the website was “under construction.” The Sackler family’s history with Rhodes, which would eventually be uncovered by the Financial Times, dated back to the period following Purdue’s guilty plea in the

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acknowledged as much. OxyContin “created” a market, they said. * * * In the view of Mike Moore, an attorney, it seemed that Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family were “the main culprit.” They “duped the FDA, saying OxyContin lasted twelve hours,” Moore said. “They lied about the addictive properties. And they did all

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unveiled a legal complaint that did something no other prosecutor had done in twenty years of litigation against Purdue: it named eight members of the Sackler family—Richard, Beverly, Jonathan, David, Theresa, Kathe, Mortimer, and Ilene—as defendants. Chapter 27 NAMED DEFENDANTS richard sackler’s daughter-in-law, Joss Sackler, was

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Ohio. Tennessee’s attorney general, Herbert Slatery, agreed, pointing out that the plan “would secure billions” to address the epidemic and “result in the Sackler family divesting themselves of their business interests in the pharmaceutical industry forever.” Curiously, a partisan divide emerged among the state prosecutors. Red state AGs were more

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.’ ” * * * Arthur’s widow, Jillian, had started telling people that she was reluctant to use her own last name. She resented the “blanket designation ‘the Sackler family’ ” and continued her rearguard effort to “disentangle” Arthur’s name from that of his brothers, engaging press flacks to fire off shrill letters to news

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that is already in bankruptcy.” In Healey’s office, Gillian Feiner and Sandy Alexander had gotten approval from Judge Drain to depose members of the Sackler family. Feiner questioned David Sackler in August, but the rest of the interviews—of Kathe, Mortimer, and Richard—were scheduled to stretch into November, past

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view, however, of many doctors, public officials, prosecutors, and scholars that Purdue played a special role, as a pioneer. All three branches of the Sackler family were unenthusiastic about the prospect of this book. Arthur’s widow and children declined repeated requests to speak with me, as did the Mortimer wing

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of Defenses, In re Purdue Pharma LP et al., filed with the bankruptcy court (and then withdrawn) by Joseph Hage Aaronson LLC, Counsel to Raymond Sackler Family, Dec. 20, 2019 (hereafter cited as B Side Defenses). were now vice presidents: Massachusetts Complaint. “They are so spry”: “Thrust Under Microscope,” Hartford Courant,

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family are involved”: “The New Dot.com Society,” Vogue, April 2000; “Wild at Heart.” estate in Amagansett: “Wild at Heart.” upsized their Manhattan home: “Sackler Family Member Sells Upper East Side Townhouse for $38 Million,” New York Times, Jan. 31, 2020. Turks and Caicos retreat: Unless otherwise noted the description of

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the Guilty Plea of the Purdue Frederick Company and Its Executives for Illegally Misbranding OxyContin, May 10, 2007. the company boasted: Representatives of the Sackler family and Purdue have stressed to me repeatedly since 2017 that this period was characterized by tremendous compliance. revived the old manner: The Massachusetts Complaint lays

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”: “Drug Is Harder to Abuse, but Users Persevere.” In the book Dreamland: Quinones, Dreamland, 65. call attention to precisely this transition: Statement from the Sackler family (both the Raymond and the Mortimer wings), sent by Davidson Goldin, a representative for the Raymond wing, who coordinated with representatives from the Mortimer wing

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can do much better”: “Democrats Reap $91,000 from Charter Schools Advocate and His Family,” Hartford Courant, June 21, 2014. fund a charter network: “Sackler Family Opioid Fortune Backed CT Charter Schools,” New Haven (Conn.) Register, March 9, 2019; 2017 Form 990 Tax Returns for the Bouncer Foundation. she loved photography

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sent Madeleine an email: Jeffrey Wright to Madeleine Sackler, October 26, 2017. Madeleine never responded: Interview with Jeffrey Wright. interned at Purdue: The Raymond Sackler Family’s Opposition to the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors’ Exceptions Motion, In re Purdue Pharma LP et al., Debtors, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District

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Presentation on Abuse Deterrent Strategy, March 21, 2013, cited in Massachusetts Complaint. felt it should show “deference”: Report and Recommendations Concerning the Relationship of the Sackler Family and Purdue Pharma with Tufts University, Prepared by Yurko, Salvesen & Remz, PC, for Tufts University, Dec. 5, 2019 (hereafter cited as Tufts Report). “I

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in Amended Complaint, State of Connecticut v. Purdue Pharma LP et al., No. X07 HHD-CV-19-6105325-S, Connecticut Superior Court, May 6, 2019. “Sackler family members hold no”: Robert Josephson, email, Nov. 3, 2016, cited in Massachusetts Complaint. staff amended it: Robert Josephson, email, Nov. 28, 2016, cited in

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to Major Oxycodone Manufacturer and Marketing—State Is Suing Parent Company,” GoLocal Prov, Sept. 11, 2018. uncovered by the Financial Times: New York Complaint; “Billionaire Sackler Family Owns Second Opioid Drugmaker,” Financial Times, Sept. 9, 2018. set up as a “landing pad”: “How Purdue’s ‘One-Two’ Punch Fuelled the Market

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U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, Chapter 11, Case No. 19-23649 (RDD), Oct. 8, 2019. “inaccurate and misleading”: “NYC Society Shuns Sackler Family over OxyContin Fortune,” New York Post, May 11, 2019. Sacklers put together their own filing: Respondents Richard Sackler, MD’s and Kathe Sackler, MD’s

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”: Ibid. pay Oklahoma $270 million: “Purdue Pharma Begins Resolution of Opioid Cases with $270 Million Deal,” Wall Street Journal, March 26, 2019. “global resolution”: “Sackler Family Want to Settle Opioids Lawsuits, Lawyer Says,” Guardian, April 25, 2019. scheduled to face another trial: “Exclusive: OxyContin Maker Prepares ‘Free-Fall’ Bankruptcy as Settlement

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Settle More Than 2,000 Opioid Lawsuits.” declare bankruptcy: “Exclusive: OxyContin Maker Prepares ‘Free-Fall’ Bankruptcy as Settlement Talks Stall.” Mary Jo White warned: “Sackler Family Want to Settle Opioids Lawsuits, Lawyer Says.” Purdue’s lawyers told them: “Exclusive: OxyContin Maker Prepares ‘Free-Fall’ Bankruptcy as Settlement Talks Stall.” press reports

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Grows over Opioid Settlement Plan.” “put this deal together”: Interview with Moore. major sticking point: “Purdue Pharma’s Bankruptcy Plan Includes Special Protection for the Sackler Family,” Washington Post, Sept. 18, 2019. “When your illegal marketing campaign”: The Non-consenting States’ Voluntary Commitment and Limited Opposition in Response to Purdue’s

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“New York Subpoenas Banks and Financial Advisers for Sackler Records,” New York Times, Aug. 15, 2019. fought the subpoenas: “New York Uncovers $1 Billion in Sackler Family Wire Transfers,” New York Times, Sept. 13, 2019. “extracted nearly all the money”: Josh Stein, North Carolina Attorney General’s Office, press release, Oct.

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Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, Chapter 11, Case No. 19-23649 (RDD), Oct. 8, 2019. In a court hearing: “Judge Grants Purdue Pharma, Sackler Family Pause in Civil Lawsuits,” Washington Post, Oct. 11, 2019. acknowledged from the bench: Transcript in Purdue Pharma LP, Debtor, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District

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Tufts Report. “the Alexandrian library”: “A Historical Opening for Tufts’ New Sackler Center,” Tufts Criterion (Winter 1986). $15 million altogether: “ ‘We Owe Much to the Sackler Family’: How Gifts to a Top Medical School Advanced the Interests of Purdue Pharma,” STAT, April 9, 2019. in a private ceremony: “The Secretive Family Making

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Billions from the Opioid Crisis,” Esquire, Oct. 16, 2017. included a biography: “ ‘We Owe Much to the Sackler Family.’ ” scuttle the book: Tufts Report. only in 2017: Ibid. One first-year med student: Interview with Verdini; Obituary of Katelyn Marie Hart, Conway Cahill-Brodeur

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Funeral Home. on an advisory board: “ ‘We Owe Much to the Sackler Family.’ ” “Our continued collaboration”: Tufts Report. appeared in a Purdue advertisement: “Inside the Purdue Pharma–Tufts Relationship,” Tufts Daily, May 19, 2019. David Haddox: Tufts

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“Tufts Removes Sackler Name over Opioids.” “What our faculty and our deans”: Ibid. “being blamed for actions”: Ibid. “intellectually dishonest”: Ibid. letter accusing the university: “Sackler Family Members Fight Removal of Name at Tufts, Calling It a ‘Breach,’ ” New York Times, Dec. 19, 2019. workmen removed the Sackler name: Interview with Verdini

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Former Chairman of the Board of Insys Therapeutics Sentenced to 66 Months in Prison,” press release, Jan. 23, 2020. pressure from the political leadership: “The Sackler Family’s Plan to Keep Its Billions,” New Yorker, Oct. 4, 2020. a press conference: Department of Justice, press conference, Oct. 21, 2020; Plea Agreement

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; Department of Justice, “Justice Department Announces Global Resolution of Criminal and Civil Investigations with Opioid Manufacturer Purdue Pharma and Civil Settlement with Members of the Sackler Family,” press release, Oct. 21, 2020. obligingly repeated that number: “OxyContin Maker Purdue Pharma to Plead to 3 Criminal Charges in $8 Billion Settlement,” AP,

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assert, unconvincingly, that the family had no serious expectation of widespread litigation before 2017. But other internal documents that were subsequently unsealed suggest otherwise. See “Sackler Family Debated Lawsuit Risk While Taking Billions From Purdue,” Wall Street Journal, Dec. 22, 2020. “Here we are, so many years”: Healey interviewed on The

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Office of the President, Harvard University, Oct. 26, 2020. “The Role of Purdue Pharma”: Memorandum re. Hearing on “The Role of Purdue Pharma and the Sackler Family in the Opioid Epidemic,” Committee on Oversight and Reform, U.S. House of Representatives, Dec. 14, 2020. “deep sadness about the opioid crisis”: “The Role

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of Purdue Pharma and the Sackler Family in the Opioid Epidemic,” Hearing before the House Oversight And Reform Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, Dec. 17, 2020. intensified the opioid

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. AFTERWORD emphatically denied: Fact checking responses from Purdue Pharma, Dec. 14, 2020. made no similar denial: Fact checking responses from the Raymond and Mortimer Sackler families, Dec. 18, 2020. I had asked if any members of either family had knowledge of the investigators sent to monitor Nan Goldin, Megan Kapler, or

Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis

by Beth Macy · 15 Aug 2022 · 389pp · 111,372 words

27 percent of her high-school class to overdose. As Tim waited for Sam, the United States Congress debated how to hold to account the Sackler family, sole owners of Purdue Pharma, whose OxyContin painkiller was the taproot of the opioid crisis. The Sacklers are just one node in a vast network

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American history. Under pressure from litigation against Purdue Pharma by 2,600 cities, counties, and Native American tribes, and to forestall further lawsuits against the Sackler family, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2019. The move was both cunning and literal, as it was preceded by a change of

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favoring settlement deals that make economic sense and for trusting big law firms to get the details right. Judge shopping, the practice is called. The Sackler family was nowhere near bankrupt—and had no meaningful connection to White Plains; it was simply piggybacking on Purdue’s bankruptcy, offering to swap out the

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and look it in the eye.” As Tim worked nights visiting drug users, Judge Drain spent his days focused on buttoning up the bankruptcy. The Sackler family was on the verge of locking away most of its wealth even as overdose deaths kept breaking records. In a country that spends five times

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billion made by the Sacklers to taxpayers harmed by OxyContin? “El Chapo got a life sentence, and he’s going to forfeit $12 billion. The Sackler family through Purdue has three felony convictions, but no one’s in jail, and it has its billion still,” Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) argued during

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activism surrounding the Purdue bankruptcy pushed them together. Bisch and other parents of the dead didn’t even know back then that it was the Sackler family, as the sole owners of Purdue, who’d been the ones steering the drug’s marketing blitz. By design, most people didn’t. Years ahead

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of Purdue’s executives or owners for criminal wrongdoing and called for turning the company into a public benefit company (or PBC) while fining the Sackler family a paltry $225 million. “We can’t get rid of human greed, but you can minimize it, and one way to minimize it is by

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other crimes. Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-Virginia), a committee member, told me that his takeaway from the hearing had been how “unrepentant and unremorseful” the Sackler family representatives were. It reminded him of the philosopher Hannah Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil. “In history we look back at people and

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really worked. “It was proof that there was this total culture of fear and secrecy in the company,” he said, referring to Udell as the Sackler family consigliere and “the Tom Hagen of modern pharmaceutical lawyering.” But as they did with other OxyContin-addicted people who sued Purdue, the company’s lawyers

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never deposed a person whose ability to exhibit empathy is zero,” Hanly told me. “Compared to Sackler, Donald Trump looks like Jesus Christ.” When the Sackler family finalized its first offering to Mike Moore and his co-counsel in the fall of 2019, it pledged $3 billion to 4.5 billion of

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. The law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and another firm working for Purdue hadn’t divulged the preexisting deal they had with the Sackler family’s lawyers to share confidential information and legal defense strategies. Failing to disclose the deal was a no-no in bankruptcy court. “It’s the

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pages for a time. The company had now pleaded guilty to federal felonies and fraud—twice. And yet things were still looking good for the Sackler family, whose hand-picked judge, Robert Drain, bristled whenever anyone questioned his handling of the case. Drain seemed poised to allow the Sacklers and thousands of

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themselves, their children, and their wealth from any future civil lawsuits. But the decision to file for bankruptcy was seemingly made after members of the Sackler family resigned from the company’s board. Lipson wanted the examiner to investigate whether they’d continued to pull strings after the initial 2019 settlement proposal

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, it seemed. At a funeral for a friend’s father in Florida in early 2022, Quinn found himself chatting with Purdue’s longtime lawyer and Sackler-family protector and secret-keeper, Stuart Baker. Quinn considered confronting Baker, but it was a funeral. Besides, he reasoned, Baker didn’t deserve to put a

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meeting between his Ad Hoc Committee and the newly sworn-in New Jersey US attorney to press for holding individuals at Purdue and in the Sackler family accountable for criminal activity. Though some of Quinn’s jabs misfired, who else but a fourth-generation lawyer would even entertain the idea of locating

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plea agreement to the confirmation plan. Lipson explained that Biden’s new attorney general, Merrick Garland, was unlikely to renege on the 2020 deal, wherein Sackler family members would pay $225 million in civil penalties while Purdue pleaded guilty to felony charges of defrauding federal health agencies and violating anti-kickback laws

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the place for a nuanced discussion about this multiplicity of truths. “This hearing misses the point,” Comer said, angrily. “It’s so focused on the Sackler family that it forgets the ongoing epidemic affecting millions of Americans each day” caused by illicit fentanyl streaming into the country via Mexico. Without directly addressing

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that had him taking prescribed OxyContin every four hours. Pleus founded the nonprofit Truth Pharm six months after Jeff’s death, around the time the Sackler family first hit the Forbes list of America’s Richest Families. Since January 2015, the bodies have only continued to stack up, she told Congress. Her

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former federal prosecutor Mary Jo White, stymied Mountcastle’s efforts to bring felony charges against the executives. “I’ve now learned that, after 2007, the Sackler family didn’t even read the pleadings,” Mountcastle testified. “Using a different set of lieutenants, they doubled down…When they got caught again in 2020, the

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one was charged, the company took the fall…And now the Sacklers appear to be gaming the system a third time, using a loophole. “The Sackler family is the cartel of the opioid crisis. They used their company and their underlings to profit from repeated criminal conduct while escaping accountability. It would

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said he had “some concerns about the breadth” of the third-party releases. The settlement presently called for granting blanket immunity to 1,000 names—Sackler family members, employees, trusts, consultants, and the like. Some entities were so obscure that Richard’s cousin and former Purdue board member Mortimer D. A. Sackler

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closed by asking Richard Sackler three questions: “Mr. Sackler, do you have any responsibility for the opioid crisis in the United States?” No. “Does the Sackler family have any responsibility for the opioid crisis in the United States?” No. “Does Purdue Pharma have any responsibility for the opioid crisis in the United

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year or two to live, and only want for my children to have some satisfaction in knowing the Sackler family will suffer a morsel of what we have,” she wrote. “And I believe the Sackler family should know what their greed has caused. They should know the name, Troy Lubinski, and the many, many

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21, 2020. 3 million Americans: Mohammadereza Azadford et al., “Opioid Addiction,” August 26, 2021, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK448203. $10 billion: Madeline Holcombe, “The Sackler family withdrew more than $10 billion from Purdue Pharma during the country’s opioid crisis,” CNN, October 21, 2020. It sounded good: Scott Higham and Lenny

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12, 2018. “El Chapo got”: Transcript of December 17, 2020 hearing; see: https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/the-role-of-purdue-pharma-and-the-sackler-family-in-the-opioid-epidemic-full-hearing-transcript. A theory began circulating: Vox reporter German Lopez, author interview, October 11, 2019; and bioethicist and author Travis

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”: Stacy Stanford, author interview, February 10, 2020. Chapter Two late on a Saturday: Masha Gessen, “Nan Goldin Leads a Protest at the Guggenheim Against the Sackler Family,” New Yorker, February 10, 2019. a seasoned activist had coached her: Megan Kapler, author interviews, August 3 and 5, 2020. a civil disobedience strategy: See

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%20Affidavit%20of%20Robert%20Cordy%20Exhibits%20001-015%20filed%2007-16-2019.pdf. unsealed by a Massachusetts: Martha Bebinger and Christine Willmsen, “Lawsuit Details How the Sacklers, Family Behind OxyContin, Made More than $4 Billion,” WBUR, January 31, 2019. weren’t in on the stunt: Video of the Guggenheim die-in can be

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by Ryan Hampton, co-chair of the bankruptcy’s Unsecured Creditors Committee. virtual gathering: The hearing was called “The Role of Purdue Pharma and the Sackler Family in the Opioid Epidemic,” December 17, 2020. “a setup since day one”: Ryan Hampton, text messages to author, December 17, 2020. “The world is hearing

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interview, March 8, 2021. “put it inside something boring”: John Oliver, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, June 2, 2014. approve the release: Rick Archer, “Sackler Family Can’t Keep Names of Its Businesses Secret,” Law360, February 18, 2021. “game of chicken”: Jef Feeley and Jeremy Hill, “Purdue Talks Stall on Demand

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-pharma-judge-throttles-misinformed-numbskull-new-york-times-opinion-writers/. “Easter Island”: Mike Quinn, author interview, February 17, 2021. against creditors’ claims: Alexandra Clough, “EXCLUSIVE: Sackler family company pays $7 million for mansion near Boca Raton,” Palm Beach Post, October 25, 2019, https://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/20191025/exclusive

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-sackler-family-company-pays-7-million-for-mansion-near-boca-raton. counted more rehabs: Colton Wooten, “My Years in the Florida Shuffle of Drug Addiction,” New Yorker,

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October 14, 2019. “I wish they’d hide elsewhere”: Hannah Morse, “Palm Beach County recovery advocates to Sackler family: You belong in jail,” Palm Beach Post, October 21, 2020, https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/local/2020/10/21/palm-beach-county-recovery-advocates

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-purdue-pharma-sackler-family-you-belong-jail/3716406001/. No. 1 tool: Nicole Kravitz-Wirtz et al., “Association of Medicaid Expansion with Opioid Overdose Mortality in the United States,” JAMA

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16, 2021. “held in contempt”: Charlotte Bismuth, author interview, May 6, 2021. not been recorded: Libby Lewis, “The Swashbuckling Lawyer Who’s Taking On the Sackler Family,” New Republic, June 28, 2021. Warren was reportedly considering it: Patrick Radden Keefe, author interview, April 12, 2021. According to billing records: Matthew Cunningham-Cook

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Pleus, author interview, August 3, 2021. crippling fear of the ringer: Alexis Pleus, testimony, “The SACKLER Act and Other Policies to Promote Accountability for the Sackler Family’s Role in the Opioid Epidemic,” US House Committee on Oversight and Reform, June 8, 2021. Forbes list: Alex Morrell, “The OxyContin Clan: The $14

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” mentions. “I can’t recall”: Bankruptcy confirmation hearing, August 18, 2021. The assistant AG was Brian Edmunds. bottom of the site: Copyright 2021, “The Raymond Sackler Family. All Rights Reserved,” judgeforyourelves.info (Richard mistakenly said it ended in “dot net”). “Iron curtain”: The piece was created by Fernando Alvarez: www.the-curtains

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.com; the protest was on August 9, 2021. “medical naïveté”: Patricia Mehrmann, author interview, August 6, 2021. “How substantially”: Natalie Rahhal, “The Sackler family wanted to sell OxyContin as an UNCONTROLLED substance—but the drug’s inventor told them that would be dangerous,” Daily Mail, January 19, 2019. trial

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Pharma to pay $6 billion in new opioid settlement”: Hartford Courant, March 3, 2022. hearing felt primitive: Meryl Kornfield, “Opioid victims confront Purdue Pharma’s Sackler family: ‘It will never end for me,’” Washington Post, March 10, 2022. Mary Jo was: Mary Jo Silver, author interview via Facebook, September 24, 2021. All

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, said Zach, but he added that he was finally ready to seek treatment. Photographer Nan Goldin used high-profile protests to heap shame upon the Sackler family and worked cannily to get hers and other victims’ voices heard in the Purdue bankruptcy case. Ed Bisch, an IT worker in New Jersey, works

Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origins of America’s Opioid Epidemic

by Barry Meier · 29 Oct 2020

forty-five (45) years.” When the Sacklers acquired the company in 1952, it had annual revenues of only $22,000. Purdue’s first products under Sackler-family management did not suggest it would one day produce powerful painkillers like OxyContin. In 1955, Purdue started selling a brand of laxatives under the name

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complaints elsewhere. “I don’t have anything to do with that,” Haddox told him. “This is a marketing-department issue.” The marketing genius of the Sackler family, Arthur Sackler, was long dead when OxyContin appeared. But the strategies that Purdue used to position and promote the drug were as ambitious as any

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with the most modern pharmaceutical marketing tools available. Like other drugmakers, the company worked with IMS Health, the prescription-data-collection company—in which the Sackler family once held a hidden interest. IMS data told Purdue reps not only how much OxyContin a particular doctor was prescribing but also how many prescriptions

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were less likely to connect it with the pharmaceutical industry than with the art museums, galleries, and medical schools underwritten by the family. Photographs of Sackler family members appeared occasionally in the society pages, but the family generally avoided any scrutiny. Unlike most pharmaceutical companies in the United States, Purdue was privately

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, who serve on the boards of publicly traded companies, could influence it. Even as the drugmaker faced an unprecedented crisis, the three members of the Sackler family most closely associated with Purdue—Mortimer, Raymond, and Raymond’s son Richard—made no public comments about OxyContin’s abuse. Instead, the Sacklers relied on

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and portly and, with a sagging double chin, looked older than his sixty years. He had spent much of his legal career working for the Sackler family, first through a New York City firm and later at Purdue itself. Udell could seem gracious and grandfatherly. But he was shrewd and aggressive, and

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emerge, replete with dozens of emails exchanged between Purdue officials as the OxyContin crisis unfolded, including ones sent by company executives to members of the Sackler family. It is impossible to know exactly what would have happened if the Justice Department had put the company and its executives on trial. But one

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,” said Dr. Scott Gottlieb, appointed by President Trump to head the FDA. Journalists also sought to give the opioid crisis a face, that of the Sackler family. In 2017, both Esquire magazine and The New Yorker magazine published lengthy accounts that depicted Raymond and Mortimer Sackler as corporate titans who made billions

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following his death in 1987, a decade before OxyContin was launched. By 2017, sales of OxyContin had exceeded $31 billion, but her wing of the Sackler family had never made a dime from the drug. “The opioid epidemic is a national crisis and Purdue Pharma’s role in it is morally abhorrent

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year, company records showed, a Purdue scientist assigned to research MS Contin abuse emailed his findings to Sackler, Udell, Michael Friedman, Paul Goldenheim, and other Sackler family members, including Raymond and Mortimer. “I found MS Contin mentioned a couple of times on the internet underground drug culture scene,” that researcher wrote in

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-release drug, OxyContin. In March of that year, Howard Udell wrote a legal memo entitled “MS Contin Abuse,” which he sent to members of the Sackler family involved in Purdue’s operations. In the memo, the Purdue lawyer described several articles in Canadian newspapers that had appeared at around the same time

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company That Addicted America

by Beth Macy · 4 Mar 2019 · 441pp · 124,798 words

take them to trial.” The Sacklers, anyway, were convinced. Midway through the negotiations, following a Washington meeting of both sides, word filtered down from the Sackler family: “We can’t buy our way out of this one. Make this case go away,” the government negotiator recalled. If that meant throwing three executives

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World

by Anand Giridharadas · 27 Aug 2018 · 296pp · 98,018 words

largest fines ever paid in such a case, but only an inconvenience when compared to how lucrative OxyContin was becoming. In 2015 Forbes declared the Sackler family the “richest newcomer” to its annual list of wealthy families, with a net worth of $14 billion. Noting that the family had edged out “storied

Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

by Anne Case and Angus Deaton · 17 Mar 2020 · 421pp · 110,272 words

almost all the opioids produced in the US. Early reports of a settlement with the worst offender, Purdue, the maker of OxyContin, suggest that the Sackler family, who own the company, may lose it, as well as several billion dollars of their past profit. Yet the aggressive marketing of pharmaceuticals to doctors

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of money from legal opioids. According to various reports, including investigative work by the Los Angeles Times, Purdue Pharmaceutical, which is privately owned by the Sackler family, has sold somewhere between $30 and $50 billion worth of OxyContin. Recently released court documents show that the family itself received $12 billion or $13

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who got rich were neither ostracized nor condemned but rather recognized and lauded as successful businesspeople and philanthropists. Purdue Pharmaceutical is the leading example. The Sackler family name appears on museums, universities, and institutions, not only in the US but also in Britain and in France. Arthur M. Sackler, who died before

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Russia, 106–7; suicides and, 108 Ryan, Harriet, 291n34 Ryan, Paul, 146 Sackler, Arthur M., 128 Sackler, Mortimer, 128 Sackler, Raymond, 128 Sackler, Richard, 128 Sackler family, 10, 114 Saez, Emmanuel, 269n5, 277n10, 289n4 Safford, Monika M., 268n8 Samsung, 231 Sandel, Michael, 54–55, 265n4, 269n11, 290n33 Sandoe, Emma, 275n31 SARS, 29

Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering

by Malcolm Gladwell · 1 Oct 2024 · 283pp · 85,644 words

Contin was used primarily by late-stage cancer patients, in hospices and back at home. It was a good business, but a small one. The Sackler family, which ran Purdue, had grander ambitions. They switched their focus to oxycodone. Typically, oxycodone had been combined with acetaminophen or aspirin. That’s what Percocet

Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

by Ingrid Robeyns · 16 Jan 2024 · 327pp · 110,234 words

fortunes while damaging the lives of fellow citizens. Another form of dirty money is gained by business practices that deliberately cause customers harm. Take the Sackler family. The Sacklers own Purdue Pharma, a company that sells OxyContin, an opioid painkiller. In the late 1990s, the company started an aggressive and misleading marketing

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they had been limited to prescriptions issued by specialists. By 2015, the annual sales of OxyContin came close to $3 billion, while Forbes estimated the Sackler family’s wealth to be at $14 billion.18 The Sacklers became active in philanthropy, in particular giving to major art museums in the UK and

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, which involved several pharmaceutical companies and saw an estimated 500,000 deaths in the US, the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma increasingly came under fire. By 2020, all fifty states had filed lawsuits against Purdue and Sackler family members for their role in the opioid crisis, and Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy. In October

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2020, Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to criminal charges concerning the misleading marketing of OxyContin. By March 2022, the Sackler family members reached an agreement to pay as much as $6 billion in return for liability protection against all current and future civil claims in this

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of the victims and their relatives hope that the Justice Department will take that step in the near future.19 It is unclear what the Sackler family’s current wealth holding is. But whatever it is, it should not be more than the profits they would have made by selling OxyContin as

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/sites/alexmorrell/2015/07/01/the-oxycontin-clan-the-14-billion-newcomer-to-forbes-2015-list-of-richest-u-s-families/?sh=7ba5e2f875e0. 19. “Profile: Sackler Family,” Forbes, December 16, 2020, forbes.com/profile/sackler/?sh=405aaa825d63, and Jan Hoffman, “Sackler and Purdue Pharma Reach New Deal with States over Opioids,” New

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, 11, 139 Russia 9–10, 24, 27, 39–40, 50–52, 63, 76, 78–9, 96, 104, 211 Rutte, Mark 85 Sachs, Jeffrey 153–4 Sackler family 52–4 Saez, Emmanuel 66, 69 safety regulations 57 Salk, Jonas 137 Sanders, Bernie xx–xxi Satz, Debra 218–19 savings 4, 10, 11–12

When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm

by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe · 3 Oct 2022 · 689pp · 134,457 words

$600 million even as it denied any wrongdoing. Purdue filed for bankruptcy, after agreeing to pay $8 billion to settle government investigations. Its owners, the Sackler family, agreed to pay $4.5 billion in exchange for a legal shield against any further opioid litigation. A federal judge later ruled that the bankruptcy

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an email. On January 20, 2009, Gordian reported that McKinsey and Purdue “had a very good FDA rehearsal yesterday,” attended by several members of the Sackler family. “The team did an outstanding job on the study, preparing the client and executing the mock meeting. We are off to DC today for the

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died from unintended overdoses. To combat a decline in prescriptions, Purdue expanded its sales force, prompting one of Purdue’s owners, a member of the Sackler family, to ask why the company had predicted a decline in OxyContin sales, when he thought they should be rising. At moments like this, Purdue executives

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is just stress, will try to see him live tmw.” McKinsey still had to present its turbocharge plan to Purdue’s owners—members of the Sackler family. After the meeting, Ghatak reported that the board meeting “went very well—the room was filled with only family…. We went through exhibit by exhibit

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, 2020. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Healey was the first attorney general: Danny Hakim, Roni Caryn Rabin, and William K. Rashbaum, “Lawsuits Lay Bare Sackler Family’s Role in Opioid Crisis,” New York Times, April 1, 2019. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Healey called the governor’s decision: Matt Stout

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), 37 Russia, 18, 26, 108, 151, 163, 244, 257 rust-belt cities, 1–3, 147 Rutgers University, 196, 200 S S&P 500 index, 188 Sackler family, 132, 137, 141 Sagar, Vikas, 223–24, 227, 230–36, 238, 241 Salazar, Jesse, 93 Salomon firm, 184 Sandberg, Sheryl, 18 San Diego fire of

They Don't Represent Us: Reclaiming Our Democracy

by Lawrence Lessig · 5 Nov 2019 · 404pp · 115,108 words

Adviser Accuses Agency of Having ‘Direct’ Link to Crisis,” Guardian, January 24, 2019, available at link #54. 95.Or at least the part of the Sackler family associated with two of the three original Sackler brothers; Arthur Sackler was not involved in the company when it developed and pushed its opioid, OxyContin

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burdens, 12, 13–14, 17 Roper, Elmo, [68nn4–5], 69, 281n4, 282n5 Rosenfeld, Sam, 25–26 Russian effect on 2016 elections, 120–121, 217, 293n116 Sackler family’s OxyContin, 45–46 not Arthur Sackler, [45n95], 275n95 “safe-seat democracy,” 22, 24–25, 28, 29, 62–63, 152, 153 sampling for opinion poll