It was a runaway bestseller, earning the Sacklers more than $10 billion in profits. Introduced in the late 1990s by the Sackler's private company, Purdue Pharma, the prescription painkiller was marketed to doctors and patients as less risky, less prone to addiction and abuse. Machiavellian might be the label used now.īecause of journalists such as Keefe, we've learned how members of the Sackler family worked behind the scenes, goading their sales reps to push more and more (and ever more) Ox圜ontin into America's medicine cabinets. Not so long ago the Sacklers were compared to the Medicis. In exchange, their name was literally carved in stone over the entrances to prestigious medical schools and world-class art galleries. The children and grandchildren of Jewish grocers from Brooklyn wound up doling out cash to institutions ranging from the Louvre in Paris to Tufts University in the Boston area. Though never quite making the cut as members of America's name-brand aristocracy, such as the Guggenheims or Rockefellers (or more recently, the Kardashians and the Trumps), the Sacklers still made their mark as one of the country's philanthropic dynasties. In an interview at the time with the New York Post's Page Six, she called the offer 'shameless and offensive.' ( In an interview last year with Women's Wear Daily, Joss Sackler disputed this account and said no formal offer was made to Love.)īy now the wrenching arc of the Sackler family's rise and fall is fairly well known. She was barely a year sober at the time.Īccording to Love, she declined the Sacklers' cash. Love had struggled for years with addiction to opioids, including Ox圜ontin. 'The irony was almost too much to contemplate,' Keefe writes. So Joss Sackler and her staff send a personal invite to the 'singer, tabloid-icon and fabled hell-raiser' Courtney Love.Īlong with the invite they offer a $100,000 enticement and the promise of a custom-made dress 'embroidered with 24-karat gold thread.' Hundreds of people are dying every day from overdoses.īut Joss Sackler, a designer and businesswoman married to David Sackler (who had left Purdue Pharma's board a year earlier) is busy in New York City hustling up a crowd for her spring fashion line.Ĭelebrities are understandably reluctant to lend their fame to a Sackler-branded gala.

The scandal surrounding Ox圜ontin, Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers' role in America's devastating opioid epidemic is front-page news. Late in Patrick Radden Keefe's brutal, multigenerational treatment of the Sackler family, Empire of Pain, he offers a jarring anecdote. Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

Empire of pain sackler