Sackler Trust suspends donations in UK after US opioid crisis claims

A FAMILY accused of profiting from the deadly opioid crisis in the US has suspended its charitable donations in Britain, it announced yesterday.

The Sackler Trust said it had imposed a ‘pause’ on new donations after an outcry over its links to Purdue Pharma. The firm is accused of making billions from prescription painkiller OxyContin while downplaying the risk of addiction to the opioid.

The Sackler Trust has donated more than £60million in philanthropic grants in Britain since 2010. But members of the family behind the trust own Purdue Pharma, which is among those named in hundreds of lawsuits in the US. The Prince’s Trust became the latest organisation to distance itself from the Sackler family, saying it would not accept funding ‘for the foreseeable future’, which followed similar moves by the Tate and the National Portrait Gallery.

Several individual members of the family have been named in the lawsuits, but both Purdue and the Sackler family strongly deny any wrongdoing.

Opioid addiction has been linked to the deaths of more than 200,000 Americans and there have been warnings about a growing problem in Britain.