Lawrenceville, NJ (Dr Simone) – Each day 145 Americans die from opioid overdose and hundreds of thousands have died since 1999.  In 2013 the total economic burden that you, the taxpayer paid for opioid use was $80 billion: health costs + criminal justice costs + loss of work. 

My plan HOW TO STOP THE OPIOID CRISIS is at the end of this Report.

Arthur, Mortimer, and Raymond Sackler, brothers, were born in Brooklyn, all became physicians working in psychiatry, and thus learned how to influence human behavior. New physicians take the Hippocratic Oath and swear among other things: DO NO HARM.  

 

Through their privately held pharmaceutical company, Purdue Pharma, they chose to manufacture and market a highly addictive drug, OxyContin, and made billions of dollars from it.  OxyContin is a cousin to heroin that is twice as powerful as morphine. The Sacklers targeted cancer patients and patients with much less pain from many other medical illnesses.  They manufactured pills with large doses that caused quick addiction and the need for more between the prescribed doses. 

 

The Sacklers made sure that their name was not associated with OxyContin or with Purdue Pharma.  But they made sure to promote themselves by attaching and weaving the Sackler name into the most highly recognized institutions evoking immediate respect and awe: the Sackler Gallery in Washington; the Sackler Museum at Harvard; the Sackler Center for Arts Education at the Guggenheim; the Sackler Wing at the Louvre; and Sackler institutes at Yale, Cornell, Columbia, Tufts, McGill, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Sussex, King’s College London, hospitals and more; endowed professorships and medical research.  The Sackler family rarely comments on the source of their money and Purdue’s web site hardly mentions the Sackler name and omits family members who are on the Board of Directors. 

 

Dr Arthur Sackler bought an advertising agency and wrote ads for medications.  He realized that doctors were unimpeachable in the eyes of the public so he paid them well to endorse his products and to cite studies paid for by pharmaceutical companies. He got rich initially by writing ads and marketing Valium for Roche encouraging physicians to prescribe it to patients with no psychiatric symptoms – more than a hundred million dollars in sales and patients became addicted.

 

Arthur Sackler started the Medical Tribune to gain direct access to more than 600,000 physicians.  He also owned, MD Publications, that paid almost $300,000 to Henry Welch, the chief of the antibiotics division of the Food and Drug Administration, to promote certain drugs. That $300,000 converts to $867,000 in today’s dollars. 

 

U.S. Senator Kefauver investigated the pharmaceutical industry in the 1960s and his staff noted, “The Sackler empire is a completely integrated operation in that it can devise a new drug in its drug development enterprise, have the drug clinically tested and secure favorable reports on the drug from the various hospitals with which they have connections, conceive the advertising approach and prepare the actual advertising copy with which to promote the drug, have the clinical articles as well as advertising copy published in their own medical journals, [and] prepare and plant articles in newspapers and magazines.”

 

Purdue Pharma developed MS Contin, a timed released morphine pill. Contin is short for Continuous. Then they developed a timed release formula of oxycodone, OxyContin, in doses higher than any other prescription pain killer.  Knowing that OxyContin was highly addictive, they decided to misinform doctors of its addictive potential. Purdue did not do any studies about how addictive OxyContin was. The warning label that came with each prescription said, “Taking broken, chewed or crushed OxyContin tablets could lead to the rapid release and absorption of a potentially toxic dose.”  This warning essentially informed patients that they could get a quick high if they crushed the pill into powder and then snorted it or injected it once it was put in liquid.  Many became addicts quickly and needed more between doses. Babies became addicts from pregnant mothers.

Dr Curtis Wright of the Food and Drug Administration approved a package insert that said OxyContin was safer than rival painkillers because it had a patented delayed absorption mechanism that “reduce[s] the abuse liability.” He quit the FDA and was hired by Purdue 2 years later.  Dr Kessler, then the Commissioner of the FDA, said he, Kessler, was not involved. 

 

Dr. Richard Sackler, said at a party for the debut of OxyContin, “[there] will be a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition.”

OxyContin became a block-buster within a few years raising concern about its risk for addiction and overdose.  According to the State of Massachusetts lawsuit 2018-2019 the Sackler’s strategy was to divert the blame onto others, particularly the people who became addicted to opioids themselves. In an email in February 2001 he wrote, “We have to hammer on the abusers in every way possible. They are the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals.”  

Purdue praised the expansive opioid industry for which they were largely responsible and started a secret project, Project Tango, in September 2014 to take advantage of the growing industry of addiction treatment.  It involved Purdue executives and Dr. Kathe Sackler, a daughter of the company co-founder Dr. Mortimer Sackler and a defendant in the Massachusetts lawsuit.  According to the complaint she participated in phone calls and told staff that the project required their “immediate attention.”  The Purdue team wrote, “It is an attractive market.  Large unmet need for vulnerable, underserved and stigmatized patient population suffering from substance abuse, dependence and addiction.”

The State of Massachusetts lawsuit states “the company, the Sackler family, and company executives misled prescribers and patients as they aimed to blanket the country with prescriptions for their addictive medications.”

 

PURDUE PAID:

1) Dr Russell Portenoy, the pain specialist of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Hospital in New York, to say that opioids have few side effects and that concerns about addiction are a “medical myth.”

2) Dr Haddox to write a position statement that opioids should be used to treat pain.  This became the position statement for the American Academy of Pain Medicine and the American Pain Society funded with millions of dollars by Purdue Pharma. These organizations insisted that pain be one of the vital signs that all doctors must ask and record during every patient visit using a scale of 1 to 10.  This legitimized the use of opioids for all patients and not just those with cancer.

3) Doctors to speak about OxyContin’s safety with studies and literature produced by doctors who were paid or funded by Purdue.  

4) Several thousand doctors to attend medical conferences and speak about the benefits of OxyContin.

5) 5,000 doctors to attend pain management seminars all expenses paid.  Those who attended wrote OxyContin prescriptions twice as often compared to those who did not attend.  Purdue also paid for 20,000 pain “education” programs.

6) Patients and pain specialists to make promotional videos about OxyContin that were sent to tens of thousands of doctors.

7) Sales representatives tens of millions of dollars in bonuses to minimize addiction risks.

8) Wholesalers to keep OxyContin off “prior authorization” lists.

9) Pharmacists refunds on their initial orders.

10) For free starter coupons for patients.

11) Medical journals millions in advertising fees.

12) Academics millions in grants 

13) Former Mayor of New York Rudolph Giuliani and his associate, Bernard Kerik, to prevent any government interference.

14) US Senators and Members of Congress on key committees – from Purdue and the Sacklers as well.