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Oxford University's Sackler Library is named after multi-millionaire donor Dr Mortimer Sackler, who co-owned Purdue Pharma. The company that created the drug OxyContin.
This examination of the Sackler family, purveyors of OxyContin, lays bear its responsibility for the US’s opioid epidemic
* OxyContin is one of the most notorious medicines in US history. Despite only entering the market in 1996, the highly addictive painkiller has become the focus of a prescription drug epidemic. According to the CDC [Centres for Disease Control and Prevention] nearly 500,000 Americans have died from overdoses related to it and other opioids. While public anger against OxyContin’s manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, built quickly, for a long time the identity of the owners of the privately held company, the Sackler family, was not well known. Even as they raked in billions – their wealth is estim...
The war on drugs in the United States has been a failure that has ruined lives, filled prisons and cost a fortune. It started during the Nixon administration with the idea that, because drugs are bad for people, they should be difficult to obtain. As a result, it became a war on supply. As first lady during the crack epidemic, Nancy Reagan tried to change this approach in the 1980s. But her “Just Say No” campaign to reduce demand received limited support. Over the objections of the supply-focused bureaucracy, she told a United Nations audience on Oct. 25, 1988: “If we cannot stem the ...
Patrick Radden Keefe traces the history of the Sacklers and their Purdue Pharma.