The Sackler Family, Purdue Pharma, and the Lawsuits Threatening Opioid Manufacture

The Political Scene | The New Yorker | Apr 12, 2019

Purdue Pharma, the Connecticut-based pharmaceutical company owned by the Sackler family, brought OxyContin to market in 1995. The Sacklers dismissed warnings that the drug was addictive and unleashed a well-funded marketing campaign to sell it to doctors. Since then, Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers have been sued thousands of times for the role they played in the opioid epidemic, and now some fifteen hundred civil cases against the company and its founders have been bundled together into a multi-district litigation that could cost the Sacklers billions of dollars. Patrick Radden Keefe joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss how the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma participated in the proliferation of opioids and what the new round of lawsuits may mean for the company’s future.

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