It’s been a couple of decades since many thousands of Americans reportedly started developing strong and often death-inducing addictions to painkillers, resulting in a serious health crisis which has now extended beyond the US.
Despite the seriousness of the issue, the family that owns the biggest opioid-producing empire in the world isn’t as well known as their company Purdue Pharma’s dangerous product. They are the Sacklers, the billionaires who have repeatedly hidden their connection to the opioid business, while conversely linking themselves to several philanthropic causes around the US and in other countries.
Though the Sacklers’ connections have become better known following the revelation of hundreds of recent lawsuits against them, there’s still much about them to be known. Keep watching to learn the Untold Truth About The Sackler Family, including their beginnings, how they made their billionaire fortune, and the controversythat’s been splitting the family from the inside!
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Their Billion Empire Is Recent
Ever since the Sacklers faced thousands of lawsuits from counties, cities, and even Native American tribes, the clan has grown to be known as ‘the most evil family’ in the US. This nickname wasn’t born from thin air, as the family’s direct participation in Purdue Pharma, a large opioid-based pain killers manufacturer, has gained anger and contempt from thousands of Americans, who resolubilize them for the addiction and ill-fate of their loved ones.
According to the New York Times, the accusations towards the Sacklers are based on their company’s misleading marketing techniques, when it came to their billion-dollar earning product OxyContin, which was introduced as a low-addiction-risk pain-killer, while allegedly deliberately hiding its highly addictive nature. The family had an estimated net worth of $11 billion by 2020, earned while staying away from executive roles in their company since 2003.
Nonetheless, most people don’t know that Purdue Pharma’s billionaire status is relatively new. The company – formerly known as Purdue Frederick – has existed since the late 1880s, and remained small until the Sacklers purchased it in 1952, growing it into a millionaire company thanks to the oldest brother Arthur’s marketing genius. Following his death in the 1980s, his two brothers Mortimer and Raymond bought his shares, and eventually developed OxyContin in 1996. From then on, it took them only five years before selling more than $1 billion in sales of said opioid alone.
Their Marketing Strategies
The strategies used by Purdue Pharma to market OxyContin are of the most contempt-generating factors of this case. Everything goes back to the 1960s, when Arthur Sackler, who was a psychiatrist, marketer, and the oldest Sackler brother, began working for Roche to help them promote the then-new Valium, which was so successful that it turned him into a millionaire.
Back then, Arthur already owned the still small-sized Purdue Frederick, with which he pushed new ways to promote medicines to health professionals through specialized journals and prints. According to Esquire, up until then pharmaceutical marketing had consisted of ‘(selling) drugs to doctors door-to-door’, making Arthur’s strategy innovative.
Following the introduction of OxyContin after Arthur’s death, the marketing strategies of Purdue changed forever. As reported by CBS News, OxyContin contains oxycodone, which is stronger than morphine, yet was promoted as weaker in comparison by Purdue, taking advantage of a common misconception among health professionals about both drugs.
Documents from the time also had Purdue executives and members of the Sackler family affirming that there was no intent by the company to clear up the misunderstandings about OxyContin to health professionals. They also marketed the drug as a ‘game changer’ sedative, which would alleviate all chronic pains, and wasn’t limited to cancer patients, also according to Esquire.
They Are Art Collectors
The Sacklers’ interest in collecting art and donating millions to diverse artistic and educational institutions comes from the time Arthur Sackler was deemed as the family’s patriarch. Right after his marketing strategies turned him into a millionaire in the 1960s, Arthur began pursuing a lifelong passion for art collecting.
According to his second wife Marietta Lutze’s memoir, Arthur was especially interested in antique Chinese artifacts, and would eventually own a collection so massive that it was difficult to know exactly what items he owned. He later went on to donate parts of his collection to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET), where he and his brothers Mortimer and Raymond would fund the relocation of the Temple of Dendur in 1974.
Despite his contributions to the MET, Arthur didn’t find a seat on its board, and eventually fell out with the organization, donating the rest of his collection to the Washington-based Smithsonian Institution.
The Sacklers’ enthusiasm for the art market didn’t stop after Arthur died in 1987 though, as they would go on to donate to several prestigious art-centered institutions such as France’s Louvre Museum, UK-based Tate Modern and the Victoria and Albert Museum, among many others around the world. Nonetheless, the increased backlash towards the family prompted by the 2019 lawsuits against them led many art institutions to refuse to accept further donations from the family.
The Family Is Split
Following the death of Arthur Sackler, his shares in Purdue were purchased by his brothers Mortimer and Raymond for over $22 million, meaning that Arthur’s heirs no longer had shares or connections to the company. After that, the brothers changed Purdue Frederick’s name to Purdue Pharma, and built a dominant role in the opioid market, which had been experiencing huge changes since the 1980s, when the adoption of strong painkillers became popular outside of the treatment of cancer patients.
With that being said, the business separation of Arthur’s family branch from Mortimer and Raymond’s also meant the split of the family. While the Sacklers still benefit from Purdue Pharma’s operations by keeping a low profile, Arthur’s daughter Elizabeth has been quite vocal about condemning her uncles’ roles in building an opioid empire.
In 2018, Elizabeth described the situation as ‘abhorrent’, and supported the project of Nan Goldin, an artist and former OxyContin addict, who that year exhibited a collection focused on her near-death experience with opioids.
While that’s said, neither Elizabeth nor her siblings are mentioned in any of the civil lawsuits filed against the Sacklers. On the other hand, the heirs of Mortimer and Raymond have generated international contempt for not accepting the responsibility of their company over the opioid crisis. Nonetheless, only time will tell what other Secklers’ family secrets will be revealed, as they continue facing in court the ire of thousands of people.
