Sackler family made billions off of the opioid crisis

The Sackler brothers represented America’s wildest dream: three Brooklyn-born sons of Jewish immigrants who became physicians and went on to found a pharmaceutical dynasty that is today worth more than $13 billion.

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. The Sackler name, however, is conspicuously missing from anything associated with their main source of income, Purdue Pharmaceuticals and its related companies, or its billion dollar product: OxyContin. You won’t find them on the company’s logo, on their bottle labels, or even on their website.

For years, the Sacklers' company billed OxyContin as a safer alternative to morphine. This led to rampant over-prescription of the drug, which has created a snowball effect of addiction to opioid-based painkillers, according to critics, essentially kick-starting the modern epidemic President Trump has labelled as a public health emergency.

More than 200 US states, cities and counties have filed lawsuits against Purdue Pharma for criminal misbranding of the drug. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has declared war against Purdue and other pharmaceutical companies for their roles in creating a generation of addicts – and is seeking $500 million in damages he says the city needs to climb out of the hole Oxycontin has created.

Meanwhile, overdose is now the leading cause of death for Americans under 50 – greater than gun violence and car accidents combined – and has devastated families across the country.

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