Richard Stephen Sackler (born March 10, 1945)[1] is an American businessman and physician who was the chairman and president of Purdue Pharma, a former company best known as the developer of OxyContin, whose role in the opioid epidemic in the United States became the subject of many lawsuits and fines, filing for bankruptcy in 2019.
As president, he approved the targeted marketing schemes to promote sales of OxyContin to doctors, pharmacists, nurses, academics, and others.
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.
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.
[13] 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.
"[12] 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.