The Sacklers, are the newest members of Forbes' 2015 List of
Richest US Families and are worth $14 billion, making them the 16th richest
family in the country.
The Sacklers own 100% of Purdue Pharma, the Stamford,
Connecticut-based company that makes Oxycontin, the opiate analgesic that
helped spark a new generation of pain pill and heroin addicts. Oxycontin is time-release
pain reliever, originally billed as addiction-proof, has generated the vast
majority of Purdue Pharma's $35 billion in sales since it was first introduced
in 1995. Purdue is currently generating about $3 billion a year in revenues,
again most of it from Oxycontin. Sales of oxycodone jumped from fewer than 10
million prescriptions a year in 1991 to more than 53 million prescriptions in
2012, largely impelled by the introduction of Oxycontin and Purdue Pharma's
aggressive marketing campaign for the drug. And while it's difficult to isolate
Oxycontin from other opiate analgesics, it has been a big driver in the
fourfold increase in prescription opiate sales between 1999 and 2010. Thanks to
Purdue's aggressive marketing campaign, and especially to the claim the
Oxycontin was not addictive, primary care physicians soon began prescribing it
for a wide array of painful symptoms. By 2002, Oxycontin was bringing in $1.5
billion a year.
Of course, people interested in getting high off opiates
quickly figured out that they could just crush the pill to overcome its
time-release mechanism, snort the powder, and get as high—or higher—than they
could with heroin. Purdue knew people would crush and snort the pills, but said
they didn't, while their own tests indicated as much and how much more
addictive snorting was. Then they kept that formulation on the market for
several more years until there was an epidemic of addiction, Then they changed
the formula. They didn't actually stop making the old formula pills, they just
made less of them, so those old pills were (and are) worth much more on the
black market. But that's the holy grail of prescription addiction, how hooked
can we get them without using a needle Overdoses, accidental deaths, and
addiction followed. Purdue has been punished for its misbehavior—it was forced
to pay $635 million in fines after pleading guilty to false marketing charges
brought by the Justice Department, and is facing a possible $1 billion payout
in a false marketing suit brought by the state of Kentucky, one of the hardest
hit by "hillbilly heroin." But even numbers like those are chump
change when you're sitting on a $14 billion fortune.
The Sacklers, whose product has killed thousands and
addicted tens or hundreds of thousands more, get to join the list of the
country's wealthiest families.
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