The Secretive Family Making Billions From the Opioid Crisis

Tin can 1 family singlehandedly create a national opioid epidemic? Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family unit came close.

If yous're a nifty observer at the Guggenheim Museum or the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery in London or numerous other museums, yous've noticed the Sackler name. The Sackler name has funded various prestigious institutes, wings, centers and the like at museums around the world, simply at present the proper name is becoming more synonymous with OxyContin and their part in creating the opioid epidemic.

Temple of Dendur, The Sackler Wing, The Metropolitan Museum of Fine art (Photo via Juliana Su)

Who Are the Sacklers?

The Sackler family unit owns Purdue Pharma, and Purdue owns and articles OxyContin, one of the well-nigh abused prescription opioids on the market.

OxyContin likewise made members of the Sackler family unit very wealthy, only to reap the profits of OxyContin, Purdue and Sackler family members themselves pursued an aggressive and illegal sales approach.

Now, a new lawsuit the Commonwealth of Massachusetts filed in January is seeking to hold the Sackler family unit members accountable for their role in the aggressive sales tactics that Purdue adopted to increase OxyContin revenue, sales tactics that federal prosecutors plant deceptive and fraudulent in 2007.

The patriarchs of the Sackler family are 3 brothers, Arthur, Raymond and Mortimer. Raymond and Mortimer bought Purdue in 1952, Arthur was an owner for a while, but his ownership was sold in 1987 months after he died and years before the company developed OxyContin. Diverse descendants of Raymond and Mortimer remained involved with Purdue and according to allegations in the Massachusetts lawsuit took an active office in the promotion and deception of OxyContin.

Purdue Pharma Pleads Guilty in 2007

In 2007 Purdue pleaded guilty to misleading doctors and the public about OxyContin's gamble of addiction. The company also agreed on a settlement of $600 million, one of the largest pharmaceutical settlements in history.

Purdue president Michael Friedman, visitor lawyer Howard R. Udell and one-time chief medical officer Paul D. Goldenheim all pleaded guilty to charges of misbranding and agreed to pay a total of $34.5 million in fines.

Nevertheless, the January lawsuit is the start to target Sackler family members themselves and the starting time to reveal damning information that shows just how far the Sacklers went to push OxyContin and misinform the public.

New Lawsuit Targets Sackler Family

An unredacted copy of the Massachusetts lawsuit was released in full when a estimate on Jan. 28 ruled the land chaser general'southward role could practise so. The lawsuit was released previously simply redacted at the request of Purdue and the Sackler family.

The unredacted version reveals the Sackler family was straight involved in developing ambitious and deceptive sales tactics meant to heave OxyContin profits, all while the family unit paid themselves billions of dollars.

A report from Ars Technica pulled out the biggest revelations from the unredacted lawsuit, listed below. (Ars Technica too provides the full unredacted version hither.)

• The spoils of OxyContin allowed the Sacklers, as board members, to vote to pay themselves more than than $4 billion between 2007 and 2018. Figures for individual payments during those years are sprinkled throughout the lawsuit.
• Members of the family unit personally ordered Purdue to increase the sales forcefulness on a number of occasions.
• The family unit was directly involved in pushing for higher—and more dangerous—doses of OxyContin.
• For years the McKinsey & Visitor consulting business firm had worked with Purdue to come with sales tactics. According to a redacted section, the consultants "had reported to Purdue on opportunities to increase prescriptions by convincing doctors that opioids provide 'liberty' and 'peace of mind' and give patients 'the all-time possible chance to live a full and active life.'"
• Board meetings for the The states-based company were held in exotic and luxurious places, such as Bermuda and a castle in Ireland.
• Members of the Sackler family worked on a hugger-mugger plan lawmaking-named "Tango," which would have expanded Purdue's business into addiction-handling drugs.
• Purdue employees actively tried to avoid the Sacklers because of their relentless and aggressive demands.
• Richard Sackler allegedly sought revenge on an insurance company for dropping coverage of OxyContin amid the epidemic of corruption.
• The Sacklers allegedly knew well-nigh but did non written report suspected cases of diversion and abuse by doctors.

The Massachusetts lawsuit makes three master allegations: that Purdue deceived Massachusetts doctors to get more than people on OxyContin, pushed for doctors to prescribe college doses and for patients to stay on OxyContin for longer and more harmful periods of time.

All the while Purdue "peddled falsehoods" to keep patients away from safer alternatives.

The specific Sackler family members named as defendants in the lawsuit include Richard Sackler, Theresa Sackler, Kathe Sackler, Jonathan Sackler, Mortimer D.A. Sackler, Beverly Sackler, David Sackler and Ilene Sackler Lefcourt.

It'due south this group of individuals that Massachusetts claims controlled Purdue as each defendant took a seat on the board of directors, and together, they held the decision-making majority of the lath.

The lawsuit states the defendants "directed deceptive sales and marketing practices deep within Purdue, sending hundreds of orders to executives and line employees. From the money that Purdue nerveless selling opioids, they paid themselves and their family unit billions of dollars."

In the lawsuit the plaintiffs outline the mortiferous cost of the opioid epidemic that killed more than 2100 people in Massachusetts in 2016 alone, co-ordinate to statistics cited in the lawsuit. However, the bulk of the lawsuit provides specific examples of the aggressive and deceptive sales tactics Purdue pushed its sales team to employ.

Opioid Savings Cards

One of the most successful tactics revealed was the implementation of an opioid savings card. Purdue discovered that opioid savings cards kept patients on opioids for a longer time, an internal plan highlighted that with the cards "more patients remain on OxyContin subsequently xc days."

Purdue incentivized patients to employ the cards by giving them discounts on their first prescriptions, only what Purdue likewise found was that "opioid savings cards worked like the teaser rate on a long-term and very high-stakes mortgage.

"Co-ordinate to Purdue's internal assay, the savings cards had the highest 'return on investment in the entire "OxyContin Marketing Mix." The return on investment for Purdue was iv.28, so that every $1,000,000 Purdue gave away in savings came back to Purdue as $4,280,000 in revenue because patients stayed on dangerous opioids longer,'" the lawsuit stated.

When Purdue encouraged doctors to give their patients opioid savings cards, the lawsuit alleges that Purdue did not disembalm to the doctors that the cards were designed to continue patients on the drugs longer, which would cause more patients to get addicted and dice.

Opioid savings cards were actually illegal in Massachusetts until 2012, just that did not deter Purdue from pushing opioid savings cards in the state. Purdue simply told doctors to tell their patients to get to New Hampshire to fill up prescriptions.

And the lawsuit claims Purdue's approach was proven successful and cites a report published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, which found that two-thirds of patients who took opioids for more than than 90 days were yet on opioids five years subsequently.

Falsehoods and Propaganda

To discourage alternatives to OxyContin, Purdue also allegedly spread falsehoods near culling pain medicine.

"Purdue not simply lit the fire that killed so many patients; it likewise tried to block the exits that patients could have used to escape," claims the lawsuit.

One of the falsehoods Purdue spread was that OxyContin was safer because information technology had no "ceiling dose" unlike NSAIDs and acetaminophen. Purdue as well spread propaganda that NSAIDs and acetaminophen had life-threatening side furnishings while opioids were the "gold standard" in pain management.

Another example highlights the perils of the practise of accepting cash for "sponsored content" to be published in a media outlet.

"For example, in 2014 Purdue placed 3 articles in The Atlantic equally sponsored content, including one titled 'Accept My Pain Away…A Physician's Perspective of Prescription Opioids and Pain Direction' by Dr. Gerald Aronoff. That article calls the tamper-resistant formulations 'safer alternatives' and encourages physicians to 'embrace these additional choices, rather than decide to leave opioid prescribing,'" the lawsuit stated.

Incentivizing and Rewarding "High Prescribers"

Individual doctors who were high prescribers of opioids are also named in the lawsuit to portray how Purdue encouraged and rewarded such high-prescribing practices.

In 5 years Massachusetts' highest-prescribing doctor prescribed more than 347,000 pills of Purdue opioids alone. Purdue rewarded him with $lxxx,000 to give speeches to doctors on the benefits of opioid prescriptions, a reward that was given to other high-prescribing doctors equally well.

Purdue also visited doctors hundreds of times to keep encouraging doctors to prescribe opioids and at more frequent doses and higher levels. Co-ordinate to the lawsuit, the Sackler family pushed a policy requiring sales reps to visit vii prescribers a 24-hour interval, and Purdue tracked results every quarter for at least iv years.

Purdue'due south own internal documents illustrated to sales reps how much more profit could be made from peddling higher doses of opioids.

"Each Individual Knew"

The listing of deceptive practices outlined in the lawsuit goes on and fills out the majority of the well-nigh 300-hundred-page lawsuit. And behind the scenes controlling, orchestrating and pushing the sales team and their deceptions were the Sackler family unit members.

Every bit the lawsuit says, "Each individual defendant knew and intended that staff reporting to them would reinforce these misleading acts through thousands of additional acts in Massachusetts.

"Each individual accused knew and intended that staff reporting to them would pay acme prescribers tens of thousands of dollars to encourage other doctors to write unsafe prescriptions in Massachusetts.

"Each individual defendant knew and intended that prescribers, pharmacists and patients in Massachusetts would rely on Purdue'south deceptive sales campaign to prescribe, dispense and have Purdue opioids."

When Purdue began to be confronted past the public and its ain sales representatives with the dangerous and lethal consequences of opioids, Richard Sackler himself directed a coverup.

According to the lawsuit, "Richard Sackler wrote downwards his solution to the overwhelming bear witness of overdose and death: Blame and stigmatize people who get addicted to opioids. Sackler wrote in a confidential electronic mail: '[W]east accept to hammer on the abusers in every style possible. They are the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminal.'"

The full scope of coordination, manipulation and deception Purdue allegedly employed, the Sacklers and their co-defendants can't exist adequately summarized in 1 article. To actually understand how one family unit and one pharmaceutical company almost singlehandedly engineered the opioid crisis read the total unredacted court documents here.

A gallery of selected documents from the lawsuit is beneath:

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Source: https://citizentruth.org/the-secretive-family-that-made-billions-from-pushing-oxycontin/

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