The Sackler family were at the center of the opioid crisis over its manufacture of Oxycontin

Edited by: Fern Sidman

Over the last few years, glaring headlines about the true nature of the pharmaceutical industry and its major players have dominated the airwaves. As the Jewish Voice previously reported on a number of occasions, the Sackler family who owns the Purdue Pharmaceutical company was at the epicenter of the insidious opioid controversy that erupted.

The Sackler family, who have previously made major financial contributions to such iconic museums in New York City such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim were recently told of the Met’s decision to remove the Sackler name from seven galleries in the iconic museum, as was reported by the JTA.

“Our families have always strongly supported The Met, and we believe this to be in the best interest of the Museum and the important mission that it serves,” the descendants of the founders of the pharmaceutical giant, Purdue Pharma, said in a joint statement with The Met.

The JTA reported that in the statement the Met praised the Sacklers as among “our most generous supporters” said their gesture was “gracious.”

Mortimer and Raymond Sackler, who studied medicine abroad in the 1930s because of quotas limiting Jews from attending U.S. universities, turned Purdue into a pharmaceutical empire, as was reported by the JTA. A deal with the U.S. government led the Sacklers to dissolve Purdue in September and to pledge billions of dollars to address the epidemic. The Sacklers themselves are absolved of personal liability for the epidemic.

The Jewish Voice reported in 2019 that demonstrations against the Sacklers were held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan as well as at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue’s museum mile

Like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim has an area named after the Sackler family that is called the Sackler Center for Arts Education. At the time protestors gathered for a “die-in” that was meant to illustrate the victims who were lost to the greed of the Sacklers and the evil opioids they pushed. It focused on the countless mothers, brothers, sisters, and friends who were turned into addicts and thusly, were heralded into an early death. People dropped leaflets that looked like prescription pads, to draw attention to the “blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition,” according to court filings, in which the Sacklers appeared giddy at the thought of profiting off of people’s destructive and deadly addictions, at the same time that they publicly said opioids were safe.

In late November of this year, it was reported that Tel Aviv University, which is home to the Sackler School of Medicine had been quite reluctant to disassociate itself with the name Sackler or the family members that bequeathed upon them highly significant financial contributions over the years.

The Sackler name is still visible in areas of the Tel Aviv campus, as was reported by Sara Teller on LegalReader.com.

“The name Sackler has over the years become synonymous with greed, misleading science, misleading doctors and health authorities, and encouraging over-prescribing of addictive and dangerous drugs. In recent years, evidence, judgments and revelations about family acts have accumulated,” wrote Ha’aretz reporter Ronny Linder. “In this situation, the inconceivable dissonance sharpens between the role of a medical school, which is supposed to educate its students in light of the ethical commandment ‘First, do no harm’, and the horrific acts committed by the Sackler family at the Fredo company it founded and managed the addictive drug Oxycontin.”

Teller reported that Tel Aviv University officials have thus far fended off efforts made to remove the name from its buildings. The demand of some members of the university’s faculty to remove the name Sackler from the Faculty of Medicine building has been revived and it will be interesting to see if it resonates this time.

Back in March of 2019, the Jewish Voice reported that New York Attorney General Letitia James initiated a lawsuit against the now notorious Sackler family and Purdue Pharmaceutical as well as six national prescription drug distributors. The lawsuit alleged that through years of false and thoroughly deceptive marketing, and by thumbing their noses at their moral and legal responsibilities to prevent the unlawful dispersion of controlled substances, these six national prescription opioid manufacturers, the Sackler Family, and four national prescription drug distributors carry a major onus on themselves for creating the opioid epidemic that has seriously affected the lives of New Yorkers in terms of addiction problems, overdose deaths, and familial suffering.