Sackler family went Pharma, and then some, in drugging US

THE Sackler family are the owners of Purdue Pharma, the developers of OxyContin, the drug that has underlain the opioid epidemic in America.

According to an Associated Press article on November 24, 2020, before a federal judge, “Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to three criminal charges, formally taking responsibility for its part in an opioid epidemic that has contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths, but also angering critics who want to see individuals held accountable in addition to the company”.

In Empire of Pain, author Patrick Radden Keefe has written the fascinating and shocking story of the Sadler family.

This immensely rich family’s philanthropy is acknowledged at some of the world’s major academic and cultural institution such as Oxford University, the British Museum, the Louvre, Harvard, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in

New York.

But that immense philanthropy is tainted by the human damage caused by Purdue Pharma.

Keefe writes: “There are many good books about the opioid crisis. My intention was to tell a different kind of story, a saga about three generations of a family dynasty and the ways in which it changed the world, a story about ambition, philanthropy, crime and impunity, the corruption of institutions, power and greed.”

One often reads of the term “big pharma”, not always in a good light.

The Purdue and Sackler “big pharma” story is an epic story of today and now, one that would defy the creative imagination of the most seasoned of fiction writers.

The Sackler story and Patrick Keefe’s considerable investigative and literary skills have combined to make Empire of Pain a gripping, fascinating, horrifying, and entertaining read.

After reading it you might ask, could all of this really have really happened? Well, it did.