Author | Yin Taibai
Produced by | Entrepreneurship is at the forefront
The Sackler family, one of the nation's richest families, was recently accused of triggering the U.S. opioid crisis and has been embroiled in more than 1,600 lawsuits.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 72,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2017, of which 49,068 died as a result of opioids, in addition to more than 2 million people who were severely dependent on or abused opioid prescription painkillers.
The United States is in the throes of an opioid epidemic, and all the spearheads are aimed at the driving force behind the opening of The "Pandora's Box" - the American pharmaceutical giant Puduepharma and the Sackler family behind it.
In fact, before 2015, this family did not attract much attention from the outside world.
In 2015, the Forbes List of America's Richest Families was unveiled, and this family rose to the top 20 with assets of $14 billion.
Gradually, it became apparent that the Sackler family had quickly amassed tens of billions of dollars in wealth through false and over-marketing of the opioid painkiller Oxycontin, and that OxyContin was not the savior of the pain patients, but the black hand that dragged them straight into hell.
But it's too late, since OxyContin was launched in 1996, 7 million Americans have become addicted after use, more than 200,000 people have died from overdosing, an average of 130 deaths per day, and every grain of OxyContin is stained with the blood of patients.
The three brothers of the Sackler family, Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond, were born in 1913, 1916 and 1920, respectively.
The three brothers' parents were poor Jewish immigrants, their father was from Ukraine, and their mother came to New York from Poland after the outbreak of World War I. The family struggled to get by by opening a small grocery store in Brooklyn.
Fortunately, the three Sackler brothers were gifted and had Jewish blood flowing from them, and the three brothers not only had excellent grades but also showed their superb business acumen early on, especially Arthur, who was later known as the "godfather of modern medical marketing", who began to help people plan medical advertising copy to earn money for tuition fees.
In college, the three brothers chose to pursue the most difficult medical major, and after graduation, they all became psychiatrists. At the time, treatment of mental illness was mainly aided by electric shock therapy, but the three brothers agreed that drugs could replace the frightening shock therapy.
In 1952, Arthur bought a small pharmaceutical factory in Manhattan that was on the verge of closure, the predecessor of Purdue Pharmaceutical.
Arthur served as an investor, and his two younger brothers served as co-directors of the pharmaceutical company, responsible for specific business activities. Immediately after, the three of them pondered the production of drugs.
When the pharmaceutical factory was first established, the state was very strict about drugs for mental illness, and they could only produce some insignificant drugs, such as laxatives and earwax removers.
At the same time, Arthur's marketing talent began to show, he helped Pfizer gain a foothold in the field of prescription drugs, and wrote a scientific paper to help Stabilize become the first drug to exceed 100 million US dollars.
In fact, Arthur's achievement is not in how much advertising profit he creates, but in his disruptive marketing methods and methods - not advertising to patients, but directly targeting doctors.
As a doctor, Arthur realized that doctors are actually more likely to trust data and peers, so he used scientific research to support the efficacy of drugs, very cleverly packaged into rigorous papers and placed in medical journals, making many clinicians think that this is the result of scientific research.
John Khalil, a former head of Purdue's advertising and public relations business, said Sackler's ads looked very serious, like a doctor-to-doctor exchange.
With Arthur's marketing talent, Purdue Pharmaceuticals slowly made some achievements, taking over the production of antibacterial drugs, and Purdue Pharmaceuticals began to slowly emerge in the industry.
Arthur died in 1987 at the age of 73. If Arthur made Purdue Pharmaceuticals a small success, the subsequent rocket growth was the result of the painstaking management of the two younger brothers.
Arthur died and Mortimer and Raymond bought his shares, and it was at that time that the brothers began to get Purdue pharmaceuticals into the painkiller field.
Although Arthur was not personally involved in the marketing of OxyContin, any drug developed by Purdue Pharmaceuticals since then has strictly followed the marketing plan formulated by Arthur.
Eight years later, Richard Sackler, the son of raymond the elder, developed OxyContin based on oxycodone, and in 1995, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved OxyContin for marketing.
In 1996, when OxyContin was officially launched and became the best-selling opioid, there were media reports that by 2001, OxyContin's sales accounted for 80% of Purdue's total revenue.
Although the painkiller OxyContin produced and distributed by Purdue Pharmaceuticals is expensive, many patients have been captured with the publicity gimmicks of "12-hour painkiller effect" and "safer than other painkillers".
Soon after the drug was put on the market, many patients complained to doctors that the pain-relieving effect of the drug could not last for 12 hours.
In order to cover up the false propaganda of "12-hour pain relief effect", members of the Sackler family hired many sales representatives to advise and encourage doctors to increase the measurement of a single dose of the drug for patients, that is, if taking 1 capsule does not work, then try to eat 2 capsules at a time, eat 3 capsules, and make it clear to the doctor that OxyContin will not lead to abuse, and the patient's risk of addiction is less than 1%.
In fact, when OxyContin applied to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for marketing, Purdue Never Conducted Clinical Research on Woscondine's Ability to Cause Addiction or Abuse.
In the decades since, Purdue's false marketing tactics have branded OxyContin as an indispensable and safe painkiller product, leading physicians to increasingly frequently order patients for OxyContin and even using OxyContin as a substitute for Tylenol.
Within a few years, OxyContin's sales had made Purdue Pharmaceuticals billions of dollars in profits.
In fact, the active ingredient of Oxycontin is oxycodone, similar to the composition of heroin, the pain relief intensity is twice that of morphine, very easy to lead to addiction, the behavior of taking OxyContin in large doses is very dangerous for patients, the more patients take OxyContin each time, the stronger the dependence, the higher the probability of death.
Because the ingredients are similar to heroin, OxyContin tablets can basically be used as a substitute for heroin after grinding and dilution.
According to the New York Times, people chewing Oxycontin, or grinding it into a powder and inhaling it with their noses and injecting it with a needle, will make people feel like taking heroin.
The black industrial chain took shape rapidly. Many people sell tablets on the black market for $1 milligram for a huge profit, and many doctors make money by prescribing OxyContin to patients.
As this manipulation was discovered by more and more teenagers and addicts, OxyContin's abuse began to grow exponentially.
Since Purdue Pharmaceutical is 100% controlled by the Sackler family and belongs to a private pharmaceutical company, the Sackler family has the right to decide the sales of drugs, but for everything that happens, the Sackler family chooses to turn a blind eye, not only that, they have also been planning to expand OxyContin's global market share, and the use of drug discount cards to promote OxyContin sales, according to incomplete statistics, Purdue Pharma's sales revenue has exceeded 35 billion US dollars.
For years, members of the Sackler family and Purdue pharmaceutical executives have tried to shirk their responsibilities and gloss over their role in driving the opioid epidemic. When there was growing evidence that opioid abuse was beginning to spread, Richard Sackler, then president of Purdue Pharmaceuticals, put the entire blame on addicts.
In 2001, Richard wrote in an email, "We must do everything possible to combat drug abusers." They are the culprit and the problem. ”
Opioid abuse has led to outrage, and in 2007, a U.S. federal court filed criminal charges against Purdue Pharmaceuticals and three of its executives for misrepresenting and concealing the dangers of OxyContin.
Purdue Admitted to "Intentional Deception and Misleading" in the drug sales process and subsequently paid a fine of $634.5 million.
Since then, the company's board of directors, including the Sackler family, has signed a corporate good faith agreement with the federal government, promising not to violate the law in the future.
After 2007, members of the Sackler family resigned from the company, and although they had nothing to do with Purdue Pharmaceuticals on the surface, they still controlled the company's decision-making power behind their backs.
Prosecutors later found that Purdue was still illegally selling and promoting the use of OxyContin.
Although Purdue Pharmaceuticals has been involved in lawsuits, the members of the Sackler family have been unscathed, and have always controlled the day-to-day operations of the company as "outsiders", and even transformed into a philanthropist disguised as a philanthropist, in addition to donating museums, the Sackler family also actively donated to universities and sponsored medical research.
Around the world, there are museums and galleries named after their families, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Sackler Museum in Beijing, the Sackler Pavilion at the Louvre in France, and the Royal Sackler Pavilion in London.
In the face of public opinion, in April 2010, it was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and the new OxyContin developed by Purdue Pharmaceuticals was listed.
The difficulty of grinding new OxyContin has reduced drug abuse caused by inhalation through the nose or injection with needles, resulting in a nearly 40% drop in OxyContin's prescriptions and more than billions of dollars in gains for Purdue Pharmaceuticals.
But how could the big capitalistSackler family watch these billions of real money and silver go away in vain?
In order to protect their own interests, they then set their sights on overseas markets, at all costs to seize the painkiller market share in Asia, Africa, Latin America and other places, where the revenue combined is roughly the same as the size of the business in the United States.
In January, Massachusetts Attorney General Molahili filed a lawsuit against Purdue Pharmaceuticals and eight members of the Sackler family, saying the wrong choices made by the Sackler family led to a massive epidemic of opioids that brought more than 200,000 lives to an abrupt end.
But Purdue pharmaceuticals insisted the allegations were "misleading."
According to the Wall Street Journal, Purdue Pharmaceuticals is now facing 1,600 lawsuits, most of which point to the Sackler family's deceptive marketing efforts to amass wealth from the sale of the addictive and potentially deadly painkiller OxyContin, involving claims of up to $10 billion.
The Sackler family, the closest family to the art and culture circle, has long established the image of cultural patron for themselves, and even the exhibition halls of many of the top museums in Europe and the United States will be named after the family.
But the American public believes that the real purpose of the Sacklers' donations is to raise their profile and distract them from their immoral enrichment.
In the face of huge negative pressure, the Tate Museum in the United Kingdom announced not long ago that it will no longer accept charitable donations from a family involved in the opioid crisis in the United States in the future.
Several famous galleries and museums also said on the same day, "We don't need donations from drug lords!" ”
The three Sackler brothers who founded Purdue Pharmaceutical Factory are all doctors, but the most well-known "achievement" of their lives is not to cure diseases and save people.
For 23 years, the Sackler family has disregarded life for the sake of profit, a crime that cannot be covered up and compensated for no matter how much charity they do and how much money they donate.