Sacklers Deny Personal Responsibility for Opioid Epidemic in House Hearing

Three generations of family members have overseen Purdue since the 1950s, when three brothers — including Raymond (David’s grandfather) and Mortimer (Kathe’s father) — founded it. (A third brother, Dr. Arthur Sackler, sold his shares long before OxyContin was introduced.) During the opioid epidemic, family members served as Purdue board members, and often took a vigorous hands-on approach in urging the sales department to swarm high-prescribing doctors and downplay the addictive properties of the medication, according to extensive court documents.

Last month, Purdue pleaded guilty to three felonies involving kickbacks and fraud related to promotion of its opioid and failure to report aberrant sales. The Justice Department settled with the company for $8.3 billion in criminal and civil penalties, and family members for $225 million in civil penalties. The Sacklers did not admit any wrongdoing. The amount they paid represents about 2 percent of the family’s net worth.

Maura Healey, the attorney general for Massachusetts, the first state to name individual Sacklers in litigation, said that the Sacklers want “special treatment.” In a letter to the House committee she wrote: “If we let powerful people cover up the facts, avoid accountability, or create a government-sponsored OxyContin business — that’s not justice. This time, we have to get it right.”

In 2019, Congressman Elijah E Cummings, the now-deceased committee chairman, initiated an investigation into the company and the family to examine whether their actions should lead to potential policy or legislative changes. In October, the committee released a trove of documents, underscoring how individual Sacklers urged the company to rev up sales. The committee sought to bring in numerous Sacklers to testify, which, through their lawyers, they refused to do, saying that the appearances would impede ongoing bankruptcy proceedings.

Committee lawyers threatened to issue subpoenas. After considerable wrangling, the Sacklers agreed to present two of the four family members originally requested.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/17/health/opoids-sacklers-purdue-testimony.html