The Jewish Family Making Billions From The Opioid Crisis

The prescription opioid painkiller OxyContin is displayed at a drugstore. Image by Getty Images
If you’ve ever been to a famous art museum or glanced around a prestigious university, you’ve probably seen a wing or building named after a member of the Sackler family. But many may not know that the family’s fortune comes from selling pharmaceuticals—most notably OxyContin, the addictive painkiller at the center of America’s opioid epidemic.
A new profile in Esquire chronicles the life and business practices of Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond Sackler, three brothers from a Jewish immigrant family who built a medical empire. Their descendants privately own Purdue Pharma, which was instrumental in using lobbying and advanced marketing techniques to convince doctors of the need to manage patients’ pain—and then prescribe OxyContin to manage it.
As OxyContin use ballooned in the 1990s and 2000s, so did addiction. Journalist Christopher Glazek noted that under the direction of Richard Sackler, Raymond’s son, “Purdue responded [to criticism] with symbolic concessions while retaining its volume-driven business model. To prevent addicts from forging prescriptions, the company gave doctors tamper-resistant prescription pads; to mollify pharmacists worried about robberies, Purdue offered to replace, free of charge, any stolen drugs.”
In 2007, Purdue was fined $600 million by the federal government for lying to doctors about the potential for patients to abuse OxyContin. No members of the Sackler family were named in the case.
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 3
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
- 4
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history.
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Gaza and Trump have left the Jewish community at war with itself — and me with a bad case of alienation
-
Fast Forward Trump administration restores student visas, but impact on pro-Palestinian protesters is unclear
-
Fast Forward Deborah Lipstadt says Trump’s campus antisemitism crackdown has ‘gone way too far’
-
Fast Forward 5 Jewish senators accuse Trump of using antisemitism as ‘guise’ to attack universities
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.