[1] Purdue Pharma, and some members of the family, have faced lawsuits regarding overprescription of addictive pharmaceutical drugs, including OxyContin.
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.
In 1916, researchers Martin Freund and Edmund Speyer first synthesised the opioid oxycodone,[12] which was subsequently marketed as the analgesic Eukodal by Merck & Co.;[13] a case of "eucodalism" was first described in 1919 and its symptoms were compared to those of morphine addiction.
While some [20][21] 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.
[24][25] 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.
[52] On July 1, 2019, Nan Goldin, an American photographer and the founder of P.A.I.N.,[53] led a small group of protesters who unfurled a banner "Take down the Sackler name" against the backdrop of the Louvre's glass pyramid.
[53][54][55][56][57] 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.
"[66] 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."
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."
"[67] 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.
[68] 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[68] in exchange for immunity from criminal prosecutions.
The bankruptcy judge Robert Drain[71] 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.