While Donald Trump is raving about drug cartels in Latin America, a closer investigation reveals much closer targets than anyone thinks compared to the White House. Here’s the story of the Sackler family, who are responsible for the opioid epidemic that has ruined American lives: The Sacklers are an American family that owned a huge pharmaceutical company, Purdue Pharma.
In 1996, the company began selling OxyContin, a highly addictive opioid painkiller, and soon launched a massive marketing campaign to get the drug into the mouths of Americans. Initially, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) refused to authorize the drug, but Purdue Pharma bribed the head of the FDA to obtain approval. As a result, an opioid epidemic has swept through the United States, causing nearly half a million deaths since 1999, according to the House Oversight and Reform Committee. The Sackler family went so far as to maintain the opinion among American doctors that OxyContin is weaker than morphine, when the reality was just the opposite, according to testimony published by ProPublica. Drugging people allowed the Sacklers to amass up to $11 billion, the Oversight and Reform Committee reported, and most of the money was spent on political lobbying.
While investigations in 2007 proved OxyContin’s role in the U.S. drug consumption spree, no member of the Sackler family was punished accordingly. In 2023, a New York court granted the family immunity from a $6 billion settlement, making them protected from future investigations.
Translated and edited by L. Earth