Quotes About Purdue

Eddie Takesue. Takesue had joined Purdue as director of clinical research in 1975.

According to the former executive, Purdue eventually went over the agency's head, appealing to the political leadership in the Reagan administration. "They were putting pressure on the White House," the executive said. This strategy succeeded.

Purdue argued that the patented Contin coating on a dose of OxyContin would obviate the risk of addiction.

It wasn't just the implicit threat that rankled Maura Healey. It was the fact that the Sacklers were playing a shell game: they were throwing their lot in with Purdue when it suited them to do so and distancing themselves from the company when it didn't.

People microwaved the pills, baked them in the oven, stuck them in the freezer, soaked them in all manner of solvents. But if Purdue's narrow objective was to prevent people from breaking down the pills, then this new coating seemed to work. In fact, there were telling indications, almost immediately, in Purdue's own sales data, which suggested that some habitual OxyContin users were frustrated by the tamperproof pills.

It was now in the grip of a full-blown opioid epidemic. Millions of Americans had become addicted to OxyContin and other opioids, whether they had done so through recreational abuse or under a doctor's care. Indeed, whatever the Sacklers might have wanted to tell themselves about their own intentions and the nature of the business they were in, this large population of addicted people was part of the reason that Purdue's sales were still so strong. The numbers didn't lie.

But Purdue was a privately held company entirely owned by Kathe Sackler and other members of her family. In 1996, Purdue had introduced a groundbreaking drug, a powerful opioid painkiller called OxyContin, which was heralded as a revolutionary way

Her father died in 1987, she pointed out, long before the introduction of OxyContin, and she and her siblings had agreed to sell their one-third stake in Purdue to her uncles soon thereafter. So, none of Arthur's heirs had profited from OxyContin, she insisted.

pain specialists were validating the commercial research and development that Richard and his colleagues were doing at Purdue.