{"id":48732,"date":"2022-07-31T08:12:38","date_gmt":"2022-07-31T15:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=48732"},"modified":"2022-07-31T08:12:38","modified_gmt":"2022-07-31T15:12:38","slug":"everyday-erinyes-329","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/31\/everyday-erinyes-329\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyday Erinyes #329"},"content":{"rendered":"

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto<\/span><\/strong>, Megaera<\/strong><\/span>, and Tisiphone<\/span><\/strong>. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”<\/p>\n

I’m confident everyone here has heard of the Sacklers and Purdue. And I expect everyone here would, if we thought about it , have realized that no one corporation, even a conglomerate, and no one family is ever the problem by itself. There are always competitors and imitators. But I for one could never have come up with this kind of detail from my own thinking, not even combined with my own research.
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The opioid crisis isn\u2019t just the Sacklers\u2019 fault \u2013 and making Purdue Pharma pay isn\u2019t enough on its own to fix the pharmaceutical industry\u2019s deeper\u00a0problems<\/h1>\n
Many companies have sold dangerous prescription drugs.
\nPeter Dazeley\/The Image Bank via Getty Images<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

David Herzberg<\/a>, University at Buffalo<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

You may have heard of the Sackler family<\/a> and the role that they and their privately held company, Purdue Pharma<\/a>, played in the opioid crisis. One TV series depicting the family as a villainous clan has earned 14 Emmy nominations<\/a>. Another is in the works.<\/p>\n

Purdue is infamous for its hard-sell marketing of its powerful, long-acting opioid OxyContin<\/a>. Among its troubling tactics: co-opting legitimate medical organizations to spread messages overstating the drug\u2019s effectiveness and understating its addiction risks. Sales boomed, making its owners<\/a> fabulously wealthy<\/a> and building what journalist Patrick Radden Keefe memorably calls an \u201cempire of pain<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Purdue\u2019s profit-seeking became a model for other drugmakers<\/a>, distributors<\/a> and pharmacy chains<\/a>. The ensuing sales frenzy led to skyrocketing rates of opioid addiction and related harms by the early 2000s \u2013 perhaps the worst pharmaceutical crisis<\/a> in U.S. history.<\/p>\n

So when Purdue Pharma\u2019s bankruptcy settlement was revised in March 2022 to make the family pay US$6 billion<\/a>, mostly to local and state governments, the news was greeted with at least some satisfaction<\/a>. Although it looks as though no members of that family will go to prison, the people often regarded as the saga\u2019s primary villains<\/a> were at least paying a price for their misdeeds.<\/p>\n

But as a historian of addictive pharmaceuticals<\/a>, I see a danger in associating the opioid crisis too closely with the Sackler family. My research has shown that the crisis isn\u2019t an aberration caused by the individual misdeeds of bad actors. Punishing people who broke the law, and making business leaders pay to repair the harms they caused, surely helps. Yet broad reforms are also needed to prevent similar disasters from happening again.<\/p>\n

Who are \u2018the Sacklers\u2019?<\/h2>\n

Despite the many individuals and companies involved, the Sacklers became the public face of the opioid crisis. In part this acknowledged their status as pioneers: They were the first to hypermarket strong opioids, and they led the pack in blaming the resulting catastrophe on consumers who became addicted<\/a> to those prescription painkillers.<\/p>\n

But who are they? Their story began with Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond Sackler<\/a>, three brothers who were all doctors and made a collective fortune in medical marketing. They acquired what was then called Purdue Frederick Co. in 1952.<\/p>\n

After Arthur died in 1987, Mortimer and Raymond bought their brother\u2019s stake<\/a> in the company from his family for $22 million. For that reason, Arthur Sackler\u2019s heirs<\/a> aren\u2019t involved in opioid-related litigation that\u2019s on track to be resolved through Purdue\u2019s bankruptcy settlement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Sacklers\u201d I refer to here \u2013 and when you read about them elsewhere \u2013 are Mortimer and Raymond and their heirs who benefited from Purdue\u2019s profit machine, many of whom worked there, served on its board<\/a> \u2013 or both.<\/p>\n

Richard Sackler ran the company for years and subsequently became a micromanaging board member. His cousin Kathe Sackler, another former Purdue executive, repeatedly claimed that OxyContin was her idea<\/a>, Patrick Radden Keefe has reported. Pinpointing exactly how much money they collectively extracted from Purdue is impossible, but in 2021 those two branches of the Sackler family were estimated to hold about $11 billion in assets<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pop culture villainy<\/h2>\n

The Sacklers used their profits to protect the family\u2019s reputation through lavish charitable donations<\/a> to museums like the Guggenheim and the Louvre, and several universities \u2013 including Tufts<\/a> and Yale<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Their philanthropy produced an aura of respectability but also made them highly visible. Eventually journalists connected the dots, leading to a cottage industry of books<\/a> and media<\/a> coverage<\/a> of the opioid crisis casting the Sacklers as the bad guys responsible for historic levels of addiction and overdose.<\/p>\n

The Sacklers-as-comic-book-villains story is on full display in actor Michael Stuhlbarg<\/a>\u2019s Emmy-nominated performance as a remarkably creepy Richard Sackler in the Hulu series \u201cDopesick<\/a>,\u201d based on Beth Macy\u2019s book<\/a> by the same name.<\/p>\n

Viewers can probably expect similar fare from Michael Broderick<\/a>, who will play Richard Sackler in \u201cPainkiller<\/a>,\u201d an upcoming Netflix limited series about how the opioid crisis began.<\/p>\n