Purdue Pharma

Purdue Pharma L.P., formerly the Purdue Frederick Company (1892–2019), was an American privately held pharmaceutical company founded by John Purdue Gray. It was sold to Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond Sackler in 1952, and then owned principally by the Sackler family, and their descendants. The company manufactured pain medicines such as hydromorphone, fentanyl, codeine, hydrocodone and oxycodone, also known by its brand name, OxyContin. The Sacklers developed aggressive marketing tactics persuading doctors to prescribe OxyContin in particular. Doctors were enticed with free trips to pain-management seminars (which were effectively all-expenses-paid vacations) and paid speaking engagements. Sales of their drugs soared, as did the number of people dying from overdoses. From 1999 to 2020, nearly 841,000 people died from drug overdoses in the United States, with prescription and illicit opioids responsible for 500,000 of those deaths. The Sackler family have been described as "the worst drug dealers in history" and the "most evil family in America". A series of law suits followed. In 2007, Purdue paid out one of the largest fines ever levied against a pharmaceutical firm for misleading the public about how addictive the drug OxyContin was compared to other pain medications. In response to the law suits, the company shifted its focus to abuse-deterrent formulations, but continued to market and sell opioids as late as 2019 and continued to be involved in lawsuits around the opioid epidemic in the United States. Purdue filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on September 15, 2019, in New York City. On October 21, 2020, it was reported that Purdue had reached a settlement potentially worth US$8.3 billion, admitting that it "knowingly and intentionally conspired and agreed with others to aid and abet" doctors dispensing medication "without a legitimate medical purpose." Members of the Sackler family will additionally pay US$225 million and the company will close.