It’s hard to talk about the opioid epidemic without mentioning the family that was essentially at the heart of it: the Sackler family. In 1952, three psychiatrist brothers, Raymond, Arthur, and Mortimer Sackler purchased a pharmaceutical company by the name of Purdue. Arthur Sackler also proved to be a pioneer in advertising within the pharmaceutical industry. Because of him, Valium became the first drug to pass 100 million sales. He did this by marketing it as a cure-all drug for a made-up ailment he called “psychic tension.” Before this, a drug like Valium would only be used to treat anxiety. By simply making up something like “psychic tension” that entailed a wider variety of symptoms that almost anyone could fit, Valium was able to be marketed to a much wider audience.
In the interest of condensing the story a bit, let’s skip a few steps to when Arthur Sackler’s nephew, Richard Sackler, invented OxyContin. Purdue needed to make a drug similar to Morphine and its effects, but they couldn’t simply start commercially selling morphine. By this point, morphine had gained a reputation as an end-of-life hospice drug, and they needed a new way to profit. OxyContin, which has the active ingredient of Oxycodone, replaced the morphine. Additionally, by 1999, Purdue found that the addiction rate for opioidswas 13%, not 1% as previously thought. By 2015, Purdue was even allowed to market this drug to children as young as 11 years old. Interestingly enough, they never officially published this paper.
As OxyContin became more commonly prescribed, cases of addiction became apparent. Instead of admitting that the drug is addictive, Purdue simply blamed users for misusing it. On top of that, Purdue constantly wanted to expand their market, so they started pay people off all throughout the supply chain. Distributors were given rebates, pharmacists were given refunds, and patients were even given coupons. Most importantly, though, Purdue began paying off doctors. They were, after all, the people that citizens went to in order to receive recommendations or prescriptions for the different medications they had to take. Between 1996 and 2001, OxyContin prescriptions grew from 300,000 to almost 6 million in the U.S. alone. By 2001, OxyContin sales had passed $1 billion annually.
While Purdue was doing well for itself for a long time, they would keep pushing the limits that eventually led to their now multiple multimillion- and multibillion-dollar settlements and lawsuits. People began complaining that OxyContin’s promised 12-hour long effect were wearing off within 8 hours. Hearing this, Purdue could’ve done one of two things: increase the frequency of the opioid dosage, or increase the dosage itself. If they chose the latter, it would increase peoples’ risk of become addicted to the drug. What did Purdue end up doing, exactly? Choosing the latter. Opioid addiction increased rapidly.
Eventually, people began having problems with Purdue’s practices. Whether it was the misleading marketing, or purposely lying to the public about the dangers of opioids, they had to pay. There is much more to this story, and I encourage you to look into it. It’s unfortunate to see the the that people had for their doctors and medical professionals was exploited by those who wanted nothing more than profit.
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