Meet the Sacklers: The Family That Built an Empire of Pain
The Sacklers are one of the wealthiest families in the US, but you’ve likely never heard of them.
They might not have the name recognition of some of America’s wealthiest families, such as the Waltons or the Rockefellers, but those who haven’t heard the Sackler name have almost certainly heard of the source of their wealth: OxyContin, the controversial prescription painkiller.
Upon its release, in 1995, OxyContin was hailed as a medical breakthrough, a long-lasting narcotic that could help patients suffering from moderate to severe pain. The drug became a blockbuster, and has reportedly generated some thirty-five billion dollars in revenue for Purdue.
But OxyContin is a controversial drug. Its sole active ingredient is oxycodone, a chemical cousin of heroin which is up to twice as powerful as morphine. In the past, doctors had been reluctant to prescribe strong opioids — as synthetic drugs derived from opium are known — except for acute cancer pain and end-of-life palliative care, because of a long-standing, and well-founded, fear about the addictive properties of these drugs.
Purdue launched OxyContin with a marketing campaign that attempted to counter this attitude and change the prescribing habits of doctors. The company funded research and paid doctors to make the case that concerns about opioid addiction were overblown, and that OxyContin could safely treat an ever-wider range of maladies. Sales representatives marketed OxyContin as a product “to start with and to stay with.” Millions of patients found the drug to be a vital salve for excruciating pain. But many others grew so hooked on it that, between doses, they experienced debilitating withdrawal.
Since 1999, two hundred thousand Americans have died from overdoses related to OxyContin and other prescription opioids. Many addicts, finding prescription painkillers too expensive or too difficult to obtain, have turned to heroin. According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, four out of five people who try heroin today started with prescription painkillers. The most recent figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that a hundred and forty-five Americans now die every day from opioid overdoses.
The drug dealer America should be concerned about isn’t a drug lord from Mexico. It is an American company that worked overtime to mislead the public about the dangers of their product and make a fortune at the cost of American lives: Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family who own the company.
Jacqueline Sackler, second from the right, at the American Museum of Natural History in 2007 next to Ivanka Trump (far right).
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