The Sackler Family became billionaires by producing and marketing opioids. The family collectively is worth more than $14 Billion.
The Guardian reports that the Sacklers have plastered their name on some of the world’s great museums and universities in hopes of compensating for the damage that their drugs have done to so many thousands of individuals and families.
Jonathan Sackler is also a major sponsor of charter schools. He funded ConnCAN, which became 50CAN, and his daughter Madeline produced a gushing documentary about Eva Moskowitz that helped promote her brand.
The Sackler Family company Purdue Pharmaceuticals is running full-page ads saying that it is leading the way in combatting the opioid crisis (unsaid: which it created and benefits from).
It is past time for product liability lawsuits and efforts to claw back ill-gotten gains.
Perhaps those Grand museums might think twice about the drug-death money that pays for the names they plaster on their facades.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The damage is much worse than in the “thousands”
“Survey: nearly half of Americans have a family member or close friend who’s been addicted to drugs.”
“But opioids have been the key driver of the recent US increase in drug overdose deaths, from nearly 17,000 overdose deaths in 1999 to more than 64,000 in 2016. We don’t have reliable drug-by-drug data for 2016 yet, but over the previous few years nearly two-thirds of overdose deaths were linked to opioids.”
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/10/31/16580738/survey-drug-addiction-opioid-epidemic
“In 2012, 259 million prescriptions were written for opioids,” and “four in five new heroin users started out misusing prescription painkillers.”
Click to access opioid-addiction-disease-facts-figures.pdf
LikeLike
Arthur Sackler, who was definitely an “ad man” for Valium and other drugs, died in 1987. OxyContin was FDA approved eight years later. So if people are in a museum, medical school, or college science hall with a plaque or wing with Arthur’s name only, they can breathe easier.
LikeLike
This is the consequence of plutocracy… When the public relies on billionaires to fund public goods they are relying on them to make good choices about how they spend their billions and are compelled to accept their gifts no matter how ill begotten the earnings were. Ideally their firms would pay their fair share of taxes and our legislators would use their wealth to provide for the common good. The pushback against the .1% is an effort to get the plutocrats to subject their investments to public scrutiny.
LikeLike
Has “the public” ever been allowed to vote on turning the country over to billionaires?
LikeLike
Or stated slighty differently, has the public ever been allowed to vote on turning the country into a banana republic?
LikeLike
We don’t grow bananas in the US so maybe “Opioid Republic” would be a better term.
“As public health officials combat the opioid overdose epidemic, in part by reducing unnecessary prescribing, a study shows that drug manufacturers paid more than $46 million to more than 68,000 doctors over a 29-month period.”
https://news.brown.edu/articles/2017/08/opioids-influence
LikeLike
“Ransacklered”
The Sackler goal:
Addiction hole
To put them in a sack
The Sackler end
Is death, my friend
And none are coming back
LikeLike
The Sackler goal:
Addiction hole
To put them in a $ack
LikeLike
Thanks Diane for this Sackler post. I am in Sackler country in CT and have tried for years to stand up to them. In my PR career, at professional meetingsI sat with Purdue Pharm PR VPs and later when link to addition obvious tried unsuccessfully to have our PR professional groups do panel discussions on ethics of what PR should do to counter what had come before. And I see Sackler or his minions at meetings in Bridgeport etc. where his $s are funding efforts to privatize schools & spread ConnCan influence in the Legislature.
LikeLike