How the Sacklers rigged the game

Kickstarting the opioid epidemic and escaping with a fortune bigger than the Rockefellers’.

Two quotes to ponder as you read “Purdue’s Poison Pill,” Adam Levitin’s forthcoming Texas Law Review paper:

“Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen.” (W. Guthrie)

“Behind every great fortune there is a great crime.” (H. Balzac) (paraphrase)

Some background. Purdue was/is the pharmaceutical company that deliberately kickstarted the opioid crisis by deceptive, aggressive marketing of its drug Oxycontin, amassing a fortune so vast that it made its owners, the Sackler family, richer than the Rockefellers.

Many companies are implicated in the opioid crisis, but Purdue played a larger and more singular role in an epidemic that has killed more Americans than the Vietnam war: Purdue, alone among the pharma companies, is almost exclusively devoted to selling opioids.

And Purdue is also uniquely associated with a single family, the Sacklers, whose family dynasty betrays a multigenerational genius for innovating in crime and sleaze.

The founder of the family fortune, Arthur Sackler, invented modern drug marketing with his campaigns for benzos like Valium, kickstarting an…