도쿄전력 임원에 대한 일본 검찰의 전원 불기소 처분처럼, 미국과 캐나다를 악성마약 펜타닐 중독으로 빠뜨린 퍼듀마마의 창업주, 새클러 가문(Sackler family)은 미국 검찰에 의해 기소조차 되지 않았다; 미개한 대중들의 생각과 다르게 민주주의 따위란 존재하지 않는다

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sackler_family

Sackler family
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Sackler family is an American family who owned the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma and later founded Mundipharma.[1] Purdue Pharma, and some members of the family, have faced lawsuits regarding overprescription of addictive pharmaceutical drugs, including OxyContin. Purdue Pharma has been criticized for its role in the opioid epidemic in the United States.[2][3][4] They have been described as the "most evil family in America",[5][6][7][8] and "the worst drug dealers in history".[9][10]

The Sackler family has been profiled in various media, including the documentary Crime of the Century on HBO, the book Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, the 2021 Hulu miniseries Dopesick, the 2022 Oscar-nominated documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed and the 2023 Netflix mini-series Painkiller.

History
Arthur, Mortimer, and Raymond Sackler, the three children of Jewish immigrants from Galicia and Poland, grew up in Brooklyn in the 1930s. All three of the siblings went to medical school and worked together at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens. They were often cited as early pioneers in medication techniques which ended the common practice of lobotomies, and were also regarded as the first to fight for the racial integration of blood banks.[11] Arthur Sackler was widely regarded as the patriarch of the family. In 1952, the brothers bought a small pharmaceutical company, Purdue-Frederick.[4] Raymond and Mortimer ran Purdue, while Arthur, the oldest brother, became a pioneer in medical advertising. He devised campaigns appealing directly to doctors, and enlisted prominent physicians to endorse Purdue's products. As one of the foremost art collectors of his generation, he also donated the majority of his collections to museums around the world. After his death in 1987, his option on one third of Purdue-Frederick was sold by his estate to his two brothers who turned it into Purdue Pharma.

In 1996, Purdue Pharma introduced OxyContin, a reformulated version of oxycodone in a slow-release form. Oxycodone was first invented in 1916 and sold as Eukodal, but had been withdrawn from the market in 1990 due to addiction issues.[citation needed]

8-hour 2015 deposition of Richard Sackler about his family's role in the opioid crisis in the United States.[12]
Heavily promoted,[13][14] OxyContin is a key drug in the emergence of the opioid epidemic.[15][16] Elizabeth Sackler, daughter of Arthur Sackler, claimed that her branch of the family did not participate in or benefit from the sales of narcotics. While some[who?] have criticized Arthur Sackler for pioneering marketing techniques to promote non-opioids decades earlier, Professor Evan Gerstmann of Loyola Marymount University said in Forbes magazine, "It is an absurd inversion of logic to say that because Arthur Sackler pioneered direct marketing to physicians, he is responsible for the fraudulent misuse of that technique, which occurred many years after his death and from which he procured no financial gain."[17][18] In 2018, multiple members of the Raymond and Mortimer Sackler families, Richard Sackler, Theresa Sackler, Kathe Sackler, Jonathan Sackler, Mortimer Sackler, Beverly Sackler, David Sackler, and Ilene Sackler, were all named as defendants in suits filed by numerous states over their involvement in the opioid crisis.[19][20]

In 2012, a member of the Sackler family bought Stargroves, a manor house near Newbury in the UK, for more than its £15 million listing price; former owners at different times of the estate have been Mick Jagger and Rod Stewart.[21][22] The family was first listed in Forbes list of America's Richest Families in 2015.[23]

The Sackler family is also the owner of Mundipharma, a lower profile pharma company that has significant operations in China. Bloomberg News reported in 2020 that the family had hired an investment bank to identify a potential buyer of the business.[24] The company could fetch as much as $3 to $5 billion.[1]

Further information: List of things named after the Sackler family
The Sackler family has donated to cultural institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Guggenheim.[31][32][33]

The family has also donated to universities, including Harvard University, Yale University, Cornell University, and the University of Oxford, although the latter severed ties in 2023.[34][35][23][31] The Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University is named after Arthur, Mortimer, and Raymond Sackler for their donations but the name was removed in June 2023. Similarly, the Sackler Institute of Pulmonary Pharmacology at King's College London was named after Mortimer and Theresa Sackler.[36][37][38]

The Sackler family has previously donated to the China International Culture Exchange Center (CICEC), a front organization of China's Ministry of State Security.[39][40]

The Sackler family contributed about $116,000 to the Connecticut Democratic Party.[41]

Reputation laundering
Further information: Reputation laundering
The Sackler family name, as used in institutions which the family have donated to, saw increased scrutiny in the late 2010s over the family's association with OxyContin. David Crow, writing in the Financial Times, described the family name as "tainted" (cf. Tainted donors).[42][43] In March 2019, the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate galleries announced that they would not accept further donations from the family. This came after the American photographer Nan Goldin threatened to withdraw a planned retrospective of her work in the National Portrait Gallery if the gallery accepted a £1 million donation from a Sackler fund.[44][45] In June 2019, NYU Langone Medical Center announced they will no longer be accepting donations from the Sacklers, and have since changed the name of the Sackler Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences to the Vilcek Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences.[46] Later in 2019, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, each announced they will not accept future donations from any Sacklers that were involved in Purdue Pharma.[47]

On July 1, 2019, Nan Goldin, an American photographer and the founder of P.A.I.N.,[48] led a small groups of protesters who unfurled a banner "Take down the Sackler name" against the backdrop of the Louvre's glass pyramid.[48][49][50][51][52] According to The New York Times, the Louvre in Paris was the first major museum to "erase its public association" with the Sackler family name. On July 16, 2019, the museum had removed the plaque at the gallery entrance about Sacklers’ donations made to the museum. Throughout the gallery, grey tape covered signs such as Sackler Wing, including signage for the Louvre's Persian and Levantine artifacts collection, which was removed on July 8 or 9. Signage for the collection had identified it as the Sackler Wing of Oriental Antiquities since 1997.[53]

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced it would remove the Sackler name from galleries and other locations within the museum in December 2021.[54] This was followed by the Bodleian Library's "Sackler Library", which has since been renamed the Bodleian Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library.[55]

The family's philanthropy has been characterized as reputation laundering from profits acquired from the selling of opiates.[56][57] In 2022, the British Museum announced that it would rename the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Rooms and the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Wing, as part of "development of the new masterplan", and that it "made this decision together through collaborative discussions" with the Sackler Foundation.[58]

Opioid lawsuits
In 2019, a suit was brought in the Southern District of New York, which included more than 500 counties, cities and Native American tribes. It named eight family members: Richard, Jonathan, Mortimer, Kathe, David, Beverly and Theresa Sackler as well as Ilene Sackler Lefcourt.[59] In addition, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Utah all brought suits against the family. On the federal level, the family faced an overall bundle of 1,600 cases.[60]

According to the New Yorker, Purdue Pharma played a "special role" in the opioid crisis because the company "was the first to set out, in the nineteen-nineties, to persuade the American medical establishment that strong opioids should be much more widely prescribed—and that physicians’ longstanding fears about the addictive nature of such drugs were overblown."[61]

In late 2020, the Committee on Oversight and Reform of the US House of Representatives held a hearing on the role of Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family in the opioid epidemic. "We don't agree on a lot on this committee, in a bipartisan way," the ranking member, James Comer of Kentucky said, "but I think our opinion of Purdue Pharma and the actions of your family...are sickening." The Sacklers were also accused of being "addicted to money." Of the Sacklers responses in the hearing, author Patrick Radden Keefe stated "They could produce a rehearsed simulacrum of human empathy" but were "impervious to any genuine moral epiphany." Jim Cooper, a congressman from Tennessee, stated to David Sackler: "Watching you testify makes my blood boil. I am not sure I am aware of any family in America that's more evil than yours." Of the Sacklers' wealth and Richard Sackler's in particular, Keefe states: "No one wanted his money."[62]

In March 2021, Purdue Pharma filed a restructuring plan to dissolve itself and establish a new company dedicated to programs designed to combat the opioid crisis.[63] The proposal was for the Sackler family to pay an additional US$4.2 billion over the next nine years to resolve various civil claims[63] in exchange for immunity from criminal prosecutions. This "legal firewall" was opposed by 24 state attorneys general as well as the attorney general for Washington, D.C. "If the Sacklers are allowed to use bankruptcy to escape the consequences of their actions," said the state AGs who called the proposal legally unprecedented, "it would be a roadmap for other powerful bad actors."[64]

In a bankruptcy court filing on July 7, 2021, multiple states agreed to settle. Though Purdue admitted no wrongdoings, the Sacklers would agree never to produce opioids again and pay billions in damages toward a charitable fund.[65] Purdue Pharma was dissolved on September 1, 2021. The Sacklers agreed to pay $4.5 billion over nine years, with most of that money funding addiction treatment. The bankruptcy judge acknowledged that the Sacklers had moved money to offshore accounts to protect it from claims, and he said he wished the settlement had been higher.[66]

On December 16, 2021, U.S District Judge Colleen McMahon ruled that the bankruptcy judge did not have authority to give the Sacklers immunity in civil liability cases.[67] This ruling was overturned on appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.[68] This ruling was stayed in August 2023 by the U.S. Supreme Court pending oral argument in December 2023.[69]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Sackler

Raymond Sackler KBE (February 16, 1920 – July 17, 2017)[1] was an American physician and businessman. He acquired Purdue Pharma together with his brothers Arthur M. Sackler and Mortimer Sackler. Purdue Pharma is the developer of OxyContin, the drug at the center of the opioid epidemic in the United States.[2][3][4]

Sackler and his family have been linked to the rise of direct pharmaceutical marketing and the opioid crisis.[3] The Sackler family's philanthropy has been characterized as reputation laundering from profits acquired from the selling of opiates.[5][6]

Early life
Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1920 to a Jewish family, Sackler was educated at Erasmus High School and attended New York University, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1938. Due to Jewish quotas imposed by the major U.S. medical schools during that era, he started his medical education at Anderson College of Medicine in Glasgow, Scotland, which he attended from 1938 to 1940.[7]

When World War II began, he stayed in Scotland and volunteered in the British Home Guard, and he also served as a plane spotter.[8] He returned to the U.S. and completed his studies at Middlesex University School of Medicine (a school on the site of the present-day Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts), where he received his MD degree in 1944.

Sackler married Beverly Feldman in 1944. They had two sons, Richard S. Sackler and Jonathan D. Sackler. Beverly Sackler died on October 15, 2019, at the age of 95.[9]

Career
Medical career
Sackler was certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (P) in 1957, and was a Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.[10] Sackler, with his two brothers, Arthur and Mortimer, co-founded the Creedmoor Institute for Psychobiological Studies in New York City, where they engaged in research in the psycho-biology of schizophrenia and manic depressive psychosis.

They received two awards from the Medical Society of the State of New York: the First Award for Scientific Research; and one year later, Honorable Mention for Scientific Research. In 1998, Sackler was awarded a Doctor of Law Honoris Causa from the University of Cambridge.[11]

Pharmaceutical business
With lessons learned in research, Sackler and his brother Mortimer transitioned into the development of numerous pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and research companies, Sackler being closely associated with the now global reach of Purdue Pharma in the United States and Canada and Mundipharma, Ltd. in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Purdue Pharma, which is 100% privately owned and operated by the families of Raymond and Mortimer Sackler, researched, developed, markets and distributes[3][2] the opiate drug Oxycontin and related compounds.

A year prior to his death, Sackler was estimated by Forbes to have a net worth of around $13 billion.[12]

Contribution to the US opioid epidemic
On October 30, 2017, The New Yorker published a multi-page exposé on Raymond Sackler, Purdue Pharma, and the Sackler family.[3] The article links Raymond and Arthur Sackler's business acumen with the rise of direct pharmaceutical marketing and eventually to the rise of addiction to OxyContin in the United States. The article implies that Raymond Sackler bears moral responsibility for the opioid epidemic in the United States.[3]

In 2019, the New York Times revealed that Sackler had told company officials in 2008 to "measure our performance by Rx’s by strength, giving higher measures to higher strengths."[13] This was verified by legally obtained documents tied to a new lawsuit filed in June 2018 by the Massachusetts attorney general, Maura Healey. The lawsuit claims that Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family knew that putting patients on high dosages of OxyContin for long periods increased the risks of serious side effects, including addiction. Nonetheless, they promoted higher dosages because stronger pain pills brought the company and the Sacklers the most profit. On February 1, 2019, Healey released unredacted documents showing that the Sacklers directed doctors to overprescribe the drug and listed doctors (under the code name "Region Zero") who overprescribed Oxycontin for the Sackler family's profit rather than patients' health.[14]

Philanthropy
Sackler and his wife, Beverly, directly and through the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Foundations, initiated and sustained major research programs in the biomedical, biological, physical and engineering sciences through endowments.[15] In support of the arts, the Sacklers were recognized by the British Museum (Raymond and Beverly Sackler Wing, the Ancient Near East and Egypt), the Louvre, and, together with his two brothers, the Sackler Wing (former) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,[15] New York City, which houses the Temple of Dendur and study centers for Chinese and Japanese Art History.[citation needed] Many institutions have since distanced themselves from the family.[16]

Together with his brothers, in 1980 Sackler established doctoral educational programs at two US Universities: the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts University and the Sackler Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at New York University School of Medicine. He and his wife Beverly established the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Medical Research Centre at the University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine (UK) and were sponsors at that medical school of the MD/PhD Program and a new cancer research program.[citation needed]

The Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, sponsored conjointly with Sackler's two brothers in 1964, includes the Sackler School of Medicine, the Maurice and Gabriel Goldschleger School of Dental Medicine and the Sackler Institute of Molecular Medicine. These names were removed in 2023. [17]

Tel Aviv University also serves as the institutional sponsor of two prizes endowed by Sackler and his wife Beverly: The International Prize in Physical Sciences and The International Prize in Biophysics.[citation needed]

At Leiden University in the Netherlands, Sackler supported the Laboratory for Astrophysics named after him.[citation needed] He also gave Leiden University an endowment for the establishment of the Raymond and Beverly Chair of American History.[citation needed] Sackler was the moving force, one of the founders, and oversaw the implementation of the Sackler School of Medicine New York State / American Program chartered by the New York State Board of Regents that provides a four-year medical education program for American students at the Sackler School of Medicine of the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University.[citation needed]

In 2010, the Foundation established The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Foundation Science Fund in honor of Ralph J. Cicerone, at the National Academy of Sciences (USA) was established to provide support of scientific programs independent of governmental requests/funding.[citation needed]

In 2011, it established The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Distinguished Lecture Series in Neuroscience was established at Cardiff University.[citation needed]

On December 9, 2021 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, along with the Sackler family, announced the removal of the Sackler family name from seven named galleries, including the wing that houses the iconic Temple of Dendur.[18] In 2022, the British Museum announced that it would rename the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Rooms and the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Wing, as part of "development of the new masterplan", and that it "made this decision together through collaborative discussions" with the Sackler Foundation.[19]

See also
Sackler family





https://www.propublica.org/article/we-are-releasing-the-full-video-of-richard-sacklers-testimony-about-purdue-pharma-and-the-opioid-crisis

We Are Releasing the Full Video of Richard Sackler’s Testimony About Purdue Pharma and the Opioid Crisis
A settlement is about to shield members of the Sackler family from civil litigation regarding their alleged roles in the opioid crisis. So it’s a good time to release the full video of Richard Sackler’s 2015 deposition.

A settlement close to being finalized in a bankruptcy case would provide a shield from civil litigation to the members of the Sackler family who own OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma. The development means that family members will be significantly less likely to be questioned under oath about their role in the marketing of the potent prescription painkiller blamed for fueling a nationwide opioid epidemic.

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Despite years of litigation alleging some Sacklers pushed Purdue to aggressively and inappropriately market OxyContin, members of the family successfully avoided most attempts to force them to answer questions about their stewardship of Purdue or the multibillion-dollar fortune they amassed as OxyContin became a bestselling pain medicine. They have repeatedly denied acting inappropriately, and the settlement under consideration in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, New York, does not require the Sacklers to admit wrongdoing. Family members would pay $4.5 billion over nine years to resolve civil lawsuits filed by states, cities, insurers and families impacted by the opioid crisis.

An exception occurred in 2015, when Dr. Richard Sackler was questioned for more than eight hours by lawyers representing the state of Kentucky in a lawsuit against Purdue. Richard Sackler served as president of Purdue Pharma and was a longtime board member.

Purdue fought for years to keep the deposition secret, unsuccessfully appealing the case to the Kentucky Supreme Court after a lower court ruled it should be released. Although a transcript of the deposition was released by a Kentucky court, the video was not. It was obtained in 2019 by ProPublica, which posted selected passages from the video.

In the deposition, Sackler is asked about his role in launching and overseeing the marketing of OxyContin, how Purdue incentivized its sales force to sell the drug, and a decision he supported not to correct the false belief among doctors that OxyContin is weaker than morphine.

With the settlement imminent, we are posting the entire video of the deposition.





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortimer_Sackler

Mortimer David Sackler KBE (December 7, 1916 – March 24, 2010) was an American-born British psychiatrist and entrepreneur who was a co-owner, with his brother Raymond, of Purdue Pharma. During his lifetime, Sackler's philanthropy included donations to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Tate Gallery, the Royal College of Art, the Louvre and Berlin's Jewish Museum.

After Sackler's death, his family's company became embroiled in a scandal about its role in the opioid crisis, including the aggressive marketing of highly addictive opioids.[3][5][6][4][7] Many of the museums and galleries that Sackler donated to have distanced themselves from Sackler and his family in the wake of this, and the Sackler family's reputational fall. On December 9, 2021, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City officially removed the Sackler family name in dedicated galleries.[8]




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Sackler

Controversy
In October 2017, Esquire[15] and The New Yorker[16] published critical articles outlining connections among Purdue Pharma, the larger Sackler family and Oxycontin's role in the opioid crisis. In response, Elizabeth Sackler claimed that neither she, nor her children, "benefited in any way" from the sale of Oxycontin or ever held shares in Purdue Pharma.[17] Articles confirmed that her father's option in a different pharmaceutical company, Purdue Frederick, were sold shortly after his death in 1987, to Purdue Pharma owners Mortimer and Raymond Sackler, years before the advent of Oxycontin. Online outlet Hyperallergic reviewed legal documents confirming her statement [18] and later articles in the New York Times,[19] Associated Press,[20] and other outlets published clarifications and corrections all confirming her branch of the family's separation from Purdue Pharma and all Oxycontin profits. Elizabeth Sackler said she admired Nan Goldin and all activists seeking to hold Purdue accountable for "morally abhorrent" behavior.[19]

In response, Goldin noted that Elizabeth's father, Arthur, earned his fortune in significant part through marketing of tranquilizers, including Valium, that were widely abused.[21] "We have heard repeatedly from Arthur's widow, Dame Jillian Sackler, and Elizabeth that because Arthur died before the existence of Oxycontin, they didn't benefit from it. But he was the architect of the advertising model used so effectively to push the drug. He also turned Valium into the first million-dollar drug," Goldin said in 2018.[22] "The whole Sackler clan is evil," she added.

Goldin's claims regarding the connection between Arthur Sackler's legacy and the opioid crisis in the United States have been echoed by some researchers and academics. Former New York Times journalist Barry Meier wrote in his book Pain Killer that Arthur Sackler "helped pioneer some of the most controversial and troubling practices in medicine: the showering of favors on doctors, the lavish spending on consultants and experts ready to back a drugmaker's claims, the funding of supposedly independent commercial interest groups, the creation of publications to serve as industry mouthpieces, and the outright exploitation of scientific research for marketing purposes."[23] Psychiatrist Allen Frances told The New Yorker in 2017 that "[m]ost of the questionable practices that propelled the pharmaceutical industry into the scourge it is today can be attributed to Arthur Sackler."[24][25]




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sackler
Richard Stephen Sackler (born March 10, 1945)[1] is an American billionaire businessman and physician who was the chairman and president of Purdue Pharma, a former company best known as the developer of OxyContin, whose connection to the opioid epidemic in the United States was the subject of multiple lawsuits and fines, and that filed for bankruptcy in 2019.[2][3][4] It has been claimed that Richard Sackler's Purdue is among ”the worst drug dealers in history”[5] and the Sackler family have been described as the "most evil family in America".[6][7][8][9] The company's downfall was the subject of the 2021 Hulu series Dopesick and the 2023 Netflix series Painkiller.

Early life and education
Sackler was born in 1945 in Roslyn, New York, the son of Beverly (Feldman) and Raymond Sackler.[10][11][12]

He received a bachelor's degree from Columbia College, followed by an MD degree from the New York University School of Medicine.[13][14]

Career
Sackler joined Purdue Pharma in 1971, as assistant to his father, the company's president.[15] He became head of research and development and head of marketing. Sackler was a key figure in the development of Oxycontin, being the moving force behind Purdue Pharma's research around 1990 that pushed Oxycontin to replace MS Contin that was about to have generic competition. Sackler also worked to enlist Russell Portenoy and J. David Haddox into working within the medical community to push a new narrative claiming that opioids were not highly addictive.[3] In pushing Oxycontin through to FDA approval in 1995, Sackler managed to get the FDA to approve a claim that Oxycontin was less addictive than other pain killers, although no studies on how addictive it was or how likely it was to be abused had been conducted as part of the approval process. The addictive nature of opiates has been known for several decades.[3]

Sackler became president in 1999. In 2001, he issued an email to employees of the company urging them to push a narrative that addiction to Oxycontin was caused by the "criminal" addicts who had the addiction, and not caused by anything in the drug itself.[16] Sackler also urged pharmaceutical representatives to urge doctors to prescribe as high doses as possible to increase the company profits.

He was made co-chairman in 2003.[15] Sackler was in charge of the research department that developed OxyContin. As president, he approved the targeted marketing schemes to promote sales of OxyContin to doctors, pharmacists, nurses, academics, and others. Shelby Sherman, an ex-Purdue sales rep, has called these marketing schemes "graft".[2]

In 2008, Sackler, with the knowledge of Mortimer Sackler and Jonathan Sackler, made Purdue Pharma measure its "performance" in proportion to not only the number but also the strength of the doses it sold, despite allegedly knowing that sustained high doses of OxyContin risked serious side effects, including addiction.[17]

8-hour 2015 deposition of Richard Sackler about his family's role in the opioid crisis in the United States.[18]
In 2015, Sackler was deposed by four lawyers in Louisville, Kentucky. The deposition concerned the development and marketing of OxyContin under his watch and that of his family, who were and are active board members of their private company, Purdue Pharma. The marketing and prescribing of OxyContin in Pike County, Kentucky, was of particular interest.

Before the case could go to trial and thus before the deposition could become a matter of public record, Purdue settled for $24 million, admitting no liability, sealing the deposition, and requiring the Kentucky prosecutors to destroy, or return to Purdue, millions of pages of internal documents obtained from the company during discovery. The medical news website STAT then sued to unseal Richard Sackler's deposition. A state judge ruled in its favor. Purdue appealed,[3] but the deposition was later made public .[18]

In 2018, the State of Massachusetts sued Richard Sackler, Purdue Pharma, and 15 other Purdue Pharma executives and Sackler family members alleging they misled doctors and patients about the risks of its opioid-based pain medications in order to boost sales and to keep patients away from safer alternatives.[19][20] Richard Sackler wrote, "We have to hammer on the abusers in every way possible. They are the culprits and the problem. They are the reckless criminals," in an email regarding the Massachusetts court filing.[21]

In January 2019, The New York Times confirmed that Sackler told company officials in 2008 to "measure our performance by Rx’s by strength, giving higher measures to higher strengths."[17] This was verified again with legally obtained documents tied to a new lawsuit, which was filed in June by the Massachusetts attorney general, Maura Healey, and claims that Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family knew that putting patients on high dosages of OxyContin for long periods increased the risks of serious side effects, including addiction. Nonetheless, they promoted higher dosages because stronger pain pills brought the company and the Sacklers the most profit, the lawsuit has charged. In addition, on February 1, 2019, unredacted documents were released by AG Healey showing the Sacklers were directing doctors to over-prescribe the drug and encourage medicating strategy under the code name "Region Zero", that details a list of doctors who prescribed inordinately large amounts of Oxycontin for no true medical reason, but rather for the directly related profit of the Sackler family.[22]

Personal life
Sackler was married to Beth Sackler but is now divorced;[2] they have three children: Rebecca, Marianna, and David.[14] They have a charitable foundation, the Richard and Beth Sackler Foundation.[23] Since 2013, he has lived outside Austin, Texas.[3]

In popular culture
Sackler was portrayed by Michael Stuhlbarg in the 2021 Hulu series Dopesick.

Matthew Broderick portrays Sackler in the Netflix limited series Painkiller, which premiered on August 10, 2023.