Jonathan Sackler, joint owner of opioid maker Purdue Pharma, dies aged 65
Jonathan Sackler, one of the owners of Purdue Pharma, the maker of the controversial opioid prescription painkiller OxyContin has died, the company confirmed on Monday.
Sackler died on 30 June, according to a court filing. He was 65 and the cause of death was cancer.
Although he kept a low profile, he was known in conservative education circles for his vigorous support of and donations to the cause of charter schools.
Jonathan was the son of Raymond Sackler, one of three New York brothers who bought the small drug company Purdue Frederick in 1952 and built it into a hugely profitable pharmaceutical firm, now called Purdue Pharma, that developed the powerful, sustained-release opioid painkiller OxyContin.
The pill was launched in the mid-1990s and vigorously promoted but the Connecticut-based private company and its billionaire family owners have been sued by local government bodies and several state attorneys general across the US, accused of fueling the opioids crisis.
Jonathan Sackler was named as a defendant in some key lawsuits, alongside seven other members of the Sackler
family, accused of marketing OxyContin in ways that misled the public and doctors about how addictive it could be and how easily abused, and with encouraging overprescription of the painkillers.
Those family members were faced with allegations in lawsuits that “eight people in a single family made the choices that caused much of the US opioid epidemic” via a “deadly, deceptive … illegal scheme”, although they are currently shielded from litigation by a bankruptcy court in New York state.
Purdue is seeking bankruptcy protection as part of an effort to settle nearly 3,000 lawsuits that blame the company for sparking the opioid crisis that has killed more than 450,000 Americans in the last 20 years, and also settle a Department of Justice criminal investigation as part of the bankruptcy process.
Hundreds of the lawsuits also named Jonathan and some other family members, including his late mother Beverly, who died last year at 95, the widow of Raymond.
The family and the company deny wrongdoing.
Jonathan Sackler served as an executive and board member for Purdue Pharma. Like other members of the Sackler family, he had stepped off the board of the company in recent years, though he retained ownership.
The company’s settlement plan calls for the family, which has been listed among America’s wealthiest, to pay at least $3bn and give up ownership of Purdue.
Sackler, like his fellow company owners, avoided media interviews and scrutiny and the finances of the family and Purdue are not transparent, although the billionaire owners at last published estimate were said to be collectively worth about $13bn.
Jonathan was a vice-president of Purdue in the past though had less involvement than his older brother Richard, who has been chief executive.
The two brothers funded a professorship of internal medicine at Yale University.
The family’s academic and arts philanthropy has come under high-profile attack from some quarters in recent years because their fortune was made from the high-margin OxyContin drug, and some institutions named after the Sacklers took the name down.
Jonathan Sackler’s daughter Madeleine is a well-known documentary film-maker.