Quotes About Sacklers

OxyContin was, in his view, entirely beyond reproach—a magnificent gift that the Sacklers had bestowed upon humanity that was now being sullied by a nihilistic breed of hillbilly pill poppers.

David had talked about his desire to "humanize" his family, but one problem for the Sacklers was that, unlike a lot of human beings, they didn't seem to learn from what they saw transpiring in the world around them.

The following month, the Guggenheim announced that after a two-decade relationship in which the Sacklers had donated $9 million, the museum would no longer accept any future donations from the family. The same week, the National Portrait Gallery in London revealed that it had turned down a $1.3 million gift from the Sacklers. Two days after the National Portrait Gallery, the Tate announced that it would not "seek or accept further donations from the Sacklers.

The Sacklers had already been rich, by any measure. But with the introduction of their first painkiller, they suddenly became a lot richer.

The younger generation of Sacklers were becoming increasingly involved in the company. Richard officially joined the board in 1990, along with his brother, Jonathan, and Kathe and her sister, Ilene. The following year, the family created a new company, Purdue Pharma.

Overdoses had now surpassed car accidents to become the leading cause of preventable death in America. In a midyear update to the Sacklers in June 2016, staffers told the family that, according to surveys, nearly half of all Americans knew someone who had been addicted to prescription opioids.

Red state AGs were more inclined to go along with the deal the Sacklers were proposing, whereas blue state prosecutors wanted to fight for more.

the offices could feel quite cosmopolitan, with a conspicuous diversity of accents and religious observances. But the second-generation Sacklers showed no trace of humble origins.

They're a family of American tycoons and philanthropists," the paper reported. "Their international spectrum of friends includes Britain's Princess Diana, Nobel Prize winners, influential entrepreneurs—in general, the upper crust of society . . . They're not the Rockefellers. They're the Sacklers.

Department of Justice concluded its investigation without so much as interviewing any member of the family. The authorities were so deferential toward the Sacklers that nobody had even bothered to question them.

A hedge fund, Hildene Capital Management, which had invested some of the family's wealth, said that it was no longer comfortable doing business with the Sacklers. Brett Jefferson, the fund's manager, revealed that someone close to the firm had suffered an "opioid-related tragedy," and said, "My conscience led me to terminate the relationship." Even Purdue's banker, JPMorgan Chase, cut ties with the company.

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.

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.

Sacklers as one of the twenty wealthiest families in the United States, with an estimated fortune of some $14 billion,

The Sacklers had given away hundreds of millions of dollars, and for decades the Sackler name had been associated in the public mind with philanthropy.

the precise origins of the Sacklers' wealth had, for a long time, been more mysterious.

Sacklers' wealth had been accumulated not in the era of the robber barons but in recent decades.