At least half of the suit’s defendants are members of the multibillionaire Sackler family, which privately owns the OxyContin manufacturer.
OxyContin, which was released in 1996, eventually helped the Sackler family achieve a $13 billion net worth, earning them the 19th slot on Forbes’ annual list of the wealthiest families in the country. Despite their massive wealth, the family has spent nothing publicly on addiction rehab or treatment.
9/9/18 MA, NY, MN, WA, NJ, TX, SC, NH, AL, VA, AL, + MORE
Sue OxyContin Maker Purdue Pharma over OXY.
GET THE SACKLER FAMILY MONEY!
The Sackler family made billions of dollars from the sale of OxyContin, and Purdue Pharmaceuticals is valued at at least $13 billion as of 2016. In 2007, an affiliated company was ordered to pay $600 million in one of the largest pharmaceutical settlements in history for ‘felony misbranding’. The youngest Sackler, Raymond, is pictured with his wife Beverly. Raymond was in control of Purdue Pharma after Arthur died, and in 1999, passed the reigns to his son Richard. The father-son duo were working at Purdue when the company began manufacturing OxyContin and using questionable advertising practices to promote it.
Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond – are all dead, but many of their children were serving on the board of Cambridge sister company Napp Pharmaceuticals in 2016. The children and grandchildren of the three Sackler brothers, who started a pharmaceutical empire, continue to enjoy luxurious lifestyles and properties, such as the multi-million-dollar Central Park apartment in this building which is owned by Mortimer’s oldest daughter, Ilene Sackler Lefcourt – who was listed as a director of Purdue’s sister company, UK-based Napp Pharamaceutical Holdings, as of December 2016.
Richard Sackler, son of founding brother Raymond, headed Purdue from 1999 to 2003 and oversaw much of the increasing sales of OxyContin as it was being falsely advertised; as of December 2016, he was still listed as a director of sister company Napp Pharmaceuticals and now lives on this sprawling estate outside of Austin, Texas that features six bedrooms, six bathrooms, a pool and stunning views of Lake Austin
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5413857/Sackler-family-billions-opioid-crisis.html
The family used their fortune to invest in the arts and philanthropy, with Sackler wings at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Louvre in Paris – to name just a few.
More than 200 US states, cities and counties have filed lawsuits against Purdue Pharma
BURDEN OF COSTS TO THE TAXPAYER
Costs to the tax payer associated with the opioid epidemic: including emergency response, health care, criminal justice, rehabilitation and lost productivity. It’s no wonder the total estimated burden from the epidemic is enormous.
Health care research firm Altarum put the figure at $1 trillion since 2001. The White House Council of Economic Advisers estimates that, including lost productivity because of opioid deaths, the total economic cost from the opioid crisis reached $504 billion in 2015 alone.
https://www.npr.org/2018/04/18/602826966/anguished-families-shoulder-the-biggest-burdens-of-opioid-addiction
10/30/17 The Family That Built an Empire of Pain The Sackler dynasty’s ruthless marketing of painkillers has generated billions of dollars—and millions of addicts.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-an-empire-of-pain
We consume 99 percent of the world’s hydrocodone and 81 percent of its oxycodone. We use an estimated 30 times more opioids than is medically necessary for a population our size.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/americas-opioid-epidemic.html
In 1952, brothers Arthur, Raymond, and Mortimer Sackler purchased Purdue Pharma, then called Purdue Frederick Co. All three men were psychiatrists by trade.
The eldest brother, Arthur, was a brilliant polymath, contributing not only to psychiatric research but also thriving in the fledgling field of pharmaceutical advertising. It was here that he would leave his greatest mark. As a member of William Douglas McAdams, a small New York-based advertising firm, Sackler expanded the possibilities of medical advertising by promoting products in medical journals and experimenting with television and radio marketing. Perhaps his greatest achievement, detailed in his biography in the Medical Advertising Hall of Fame, was finding enough different uses for Valium to turn it into the first drug to hit $100 million in revenue.
How the American opiate epidemic was started by one pharmaceutical company
https://theweek.com/articles/541564/how-american-opiate-epidemic-started-by-pharmaceutical-company
the evasive legal tactics of Purdue Pharma, 2015 may be the year that Kentucky and its attorney general, Jack Conway, are able to move forward with a civil lawsuit alleging that the drugmaker misled doctors and patients about their blockbuster pain pill OxyContin, leading to a vicious addiction epidemic across large swaths of the state.
Sackler was among the first medical advertisers to foster relationships with doctors in the hopes of earning extra points for his company’s drugs, according to a 2011 exposé in Fortune.
http://fortune.com/2011/11/09/oxycontin-purdue-pharmas-painful-medicine/
Activists Shame Smithsonian Over Opioid-Tied Donations From The Owners Of Purdue Pharma | The Daily Caller
Activists gathered outside the Smithsonian Institution’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Thursday in Washington, D.C., to protest their acceptance of millions of dollars in philanthropy from the family blamed for igniting the opioid crisis.
The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is named for Arthur Sackler, who, along with brother Raymond and Mortimer, bought Purdue in the early 1950s. Arthur is known for pioneering the aggressive marketing campaigns now commonly employed by pharmaceutical companies to maximize their drug sales.
This strategy helped Arthur make Valium the first $100 million drug in the U.S., according to the Medical Advertising Hall of Fame.
Arthur died years before the company rebranded as Purdue Pharma and released OxyContin. However, Mortimer and Raymond lived to see the painkiller become a massive success. The Sacklers’ Purdue, through a major association that accredits health organizations, funded and distributed educational material beginning in the late 1990s that downplayed the risks of opioids.
“The Sackler brothers built an empire of pain on hundreds of thousands of people,” Goldin said, according to Art News. “For them, addiction equals profits.”
Goldin’s group previously protested at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in March to excoriate the institution for accepting massive contributions from the Sacklers. Demonstrators entered the Sackler Wing of the museum, which houses the famous Temple of Dendur, and littered the exhibit with prescription pill bottles in protest of the Sackler donations.
