For $35 billion dollars in profit, more than half a million Americans have died.
These half a million deaths, per the Centers for Disease Control, are the result of opioid overdose. That includes prescription painkillers like OxyContin, a highly addictive drug made from oxycodone, a relative of heroin.
An elixir for treating all kinds of pain, from mild to severe, it’s now one of the leading causes of the current opioid epidemic. Its creator, drug manufacturer Purdue Pharma, and the drugmaker’s infamous owners, the Sackler family, have reaped billions as they knowingly hooked Americans on this medication.
Now, after thousands of lawsuits and years of hearings, government investigations and media exposés on the Sackler family’s empire of lies, the results are in: a mere slap on the wrist. A recent court ruling granted the billionaire owners complete protection from all civil lawsuits, releasing them from liability over their role in runaway opioid prescriptions, despite claims against the company in the tens of trillions.
So how did Purdue Pharma convince physicians to prescribe this so-called “non-addictive” opioid? Through an aggressive scheme of marketing manipulation.
In a $6 billion settlement, the Sacklers agreed to give up control of their company Purdue Pharma, which will become a nonprofit manufacturer of overdose reversal drugs and will give all profits to help treat addiction. Most of the funds will go to local and state governments, where they will likely fund rehab and addiction treatment programs. About $750 million will be distributed to victims of OxyContin addiction and families who’ve lost their loved ones from overdoses.
This settlement is a band-aid on a broken pipe. It doesn’t even begin to account for the terminal damage the Sacklers have caused in igniting the opioid epidemic, nor for the countless lives their drug destroyed.
Misleading the medical industry
Physicians have long been hesitant to prescribe strong opioids due to the understanding that they are highly addictive. Medical research has shown for decades that the body over time builds tolerance to the drug. This means that a patient’s body adapts to a given dosage leading to ineffective pain treatment, thus requiring a higher dose to overcome the pain. This leads to dangerously higher doses — which can spiral into addiction and fatal overdoses.
So how did Purdue Pharma convince physicians to prescribe this so-called “non-addictive” opioid? Through an aggressive scheme of marketing manipulation.
When Purdue Pharma introduced its prescription opioid painkiller in 1995, the drugmaker made bold claims that OxyContin was non-addictive and safe, with little to no data to back those assertions. They trained sales representatives to tell physicians that less than 1% of patients on OxyContin were addicted, even though this was false. In fact, the data they would present to doctors was created by clinicians who were paid by the company.
What’s more, the manufacturer strategically targeted communities that had problems with drug abuse and told sales representatives to bribe doctors by buying them tickets to sporting events and taking them out for lavish dinners. The company itself paid doctors to attend their conferences and present about the benefits of OxyContin. These were all factors that swayed physicians to prescribe this drug: “Physicians who attended the dinner programs or the weekend meetings wrote more than double the number of new Rxs for OxyContin compared to the control group,” Richard Sackler, former chairman and president of Purdue Pharma, noted in an internal email, according to unsealed documents.
Through deception, the Sackler dynasty created a mirage of a miraculous wonder drug that could resolve any kind of pain without devastating addictive side effects. In reality, this pill has caused more pain than relief; ravaging communities across the nation, leaving countless broken families in its wake.
Purdue Pharma also emotionally manipulated physicians. Take the term “pseudo-addiction,” which refers to unrelieved pain that is misunderstood to be addiction. This concept, constructed by Dr. J. David Haddox in a 1989 paper, was tacitly utilized by the Sacklers to promote prescription of OxyContin and undermine concerns about its addiction. Purdue manipulated physicians by explaining to them that their patients were actually experiencing “pseudo-addiction” therefore needing an increase in opioid dose so that their pain could be effectively treated.
Pseudo-addiction is not used as a diagnosis in medicine, but instead as a phenomenon that blames physicians for not prescribing enough opioids. To make matters worse, the Sackler family diverted blame to addicts who died from their drugs. An email revealed in a 2020 U.S. Congressional hearing showed how Richard Sackler felt about addicts: “Abusers aren’t victims. They are the victimizers,” he wrote.
But how did OxyContin get government approval for being safe when there was no data on how addictive it is? Through the same technique: bribery. Purdue Pharma bribed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) examiners by offering them well-paid positions at Purdue. And just like with physicians, they provided false information to the federal agency to gain approval; lies upon lies.
Ensuring justice
Through deception, the Sackler dynasty created a mirage of a miraculous wonder drug that could resolve any kind of pain without devastating addictive side effects. In reality, this pill has caused more pain than relief; ravaging communities across the nation, leaving countless broken families in its wake.
Today, there have been thousands of lawsuits filed, from the majority of America’s 50 states as well as in Canada, against Purdue and the Sackler family for their roles in the opioid epidemic. While the company itself pleaded guilty and has admitted criminal wrongdoing, the Sackler family still denies wrongdoing, instead blaming the FDA, physicians and “rogue” employees.
However the evidence is clear: Members of the family were heavily involved in the operations of Purdue Pharma, and they were fully aware of how their money was being made based on deception. In fact, they knew there might come a time where Purdue would have to pay for their crimes, so they secretly took money out of the company and deposited it into their personal accounts to get as much as they could out before that time came for Purdue to pay up.
While the new appeals court ruling shields the family from civil lawsuits, they are still exposed to criminal lawsuits. Indeed, activists and victims have for years called for the Sackler family to face charges for criminal wrongdoing in their relentless pursuit of profit.
The case against Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers shines light on a broken system that gives too much power to a pharmaceutical industry driven by profits.
“You approved and monitored dangerous marketing plans,” chairwoman Carolyn Maloney said of the Sackler family in the 2020 Congressional hearing. “They directed their sales representatives to focus on the highest-volume prescribers and the strongest version of addictive OxyContin. You targeted vulnerable populations with misleading messages … acknowledge your wrongdoing. The families and communities whose lives have been ruined deserve at least that much.”
The case against Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers shines light on a broken system that gives too much power to a pharmaceutical industry driven by profits. We need policies that enforce regulation of drugs and place accountability on companies. The solution is to break the influential ties these companies have with public health agencies, hospitals, health professionals, academia and the government in order to reduce bias from corporations on public health matters. This must begin with the collaboration of leaders in office, heads of academia and public health officials who should raise their voices on the dangers of corporate partnerships and advocate for increased public funding in order to protect public health.
Some argue that without corporate funding, research and medical institutions will not have the resources to effectively address public health issues. But Jonathan H. Marks, director of the Bioethics Program at Pennsylvania State University, writes in a paper that “the opioid epidemic was fuelled by these very relationships, and it has cost us trillions of dollars. Given the human and financial toll, we simply cannot afford to carry on doing ‘business as usual’ in public health.” Institutions, he argues, need to develop a conflict of interest policy that can prevent influences from industry. With these kinds of mandates in place, companies can be held accountable as they’d have to disclose practices such as bribing doctors.
However, this is not the full solution because the root of the problem is to eliminate the influence of corporations in public health decisions. The cord must be cut. There should be no industrial funding of public health research, especially at governmental institutions. The job of governmental and public health organizations is to serve and protect the public. They have a duty, at a minimum, to inform the public when a drug is potentially dangerous. If the opioid epidemic has taught us anything, it is that corporations will prioritize profits. That’s why we need more government funding for scientific research — and less corporate influence
