Arthur Mitchell Sackler (August 22, 1913 – May 26, 1987) was an American psychiatrist and marketer of pharmaceuticals whose fortune originated in medical advertising, profits from drug sales including Valium, and trade publications.

[3] Since his death, Sackler's reputation has been tarnished due to his company Purdue Pharma's central role in the opioid crisis.

[10] Sackler paid his tuition by working as a copywriter in 1942 at William Douglas McAdams, an ad agency specializing in medicine, a company that he would buy in 1947 and revolutionize.

"[16] Human subject research, which was stopped for the most part after World War II, did not yet have the oversight of the Nuremberg Code and later the Declaration of Helsinki and the Belmont Report.

Initially they were attracted to contemporary artists like Marc Chagall but later also collected Renaissance majolica and Post-Impressionist and School of Paris paintings.

His collection was composed of tens of thousands of works including Chinese, Indian, and Middle Eastern art as well as Renaissance and pre-Columbian pieces.

Following the Chinese Civil War, exporters cashed out their holdings and young collectors like Sackler were fortunate to be good targets.

He amassed tens of thousands of objects in his life, representing wide and varied interests—Shang dynasty oracle bones, Achaemenid vessels from Iran, and South Asian temple sculpture from the tenth to fourteenth century.

[18][20] He later gave money quarterly to psychiatrist Paul Singer, another enthusiastic collector of Chinese works, who did not have funds but whose taste Sackler trusted.

In 1997, while cataloguing the collection for acquisition, the Smithsonian museum staff determined that 160 documented objects were missing from Dr. Singer's residence at the time of his death.

"[24]With Sackler's help, the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, previously a chemical manufacturer, began its business in prescription drugs.

But 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, even if the patient doctor relationship was irreversibly perverted due to his actions.

[33] Sackler had somewhat unusual overlapping businesses and developed silent partnerships with the L. W. Frolich ad agency and MD Publications owned by his friends.

His notable contributions included: Sackler donated drawings and paintings by the Italian architect and engraver Giovanni Battista Piranesi to Avery Library at Columbia University in the early 1970s.

In 1987, the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C. was opened months after his death, with a gift of $4 million and 1,000 original artworks.

[49] 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.

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.

Purdue came to sell practical over-the-counter products like the antiseptic Betadine, the laxative Senokot, and earwax remover Cerumenex.

Eight years after Arthur's death, Purdue began selling OxyContin, about 1.5 times the strength of morphine, under the direction of his brothers.

[62] Journalists and authors who have covered the Sackler family and Purdue have described how the same deceptive marketing tactics Arthur employed selling medications such as Librium and Valium (including false testimonials, dubious medical studies and concealing side effects), and his tactic of blurring the lines between drug companies, medical press, regulators and advertisers, were later redeployed in the marketing of OxyContin by his brothers and his nephew, Richard Sackler, setting the opioid epidemic in motion.

According to a quote in The Guardian, “This is essentially a crime family … drug dealers in nice suits and dresses.”[63] Senator Estes Kefauver's subcommittee examined the pharmaceutical industry in 1959.

[24] Barry Meier wrote in his book Pain Killer that 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.