The Sackler family name is displayed on many buildings in Oxford, England, where the elite University of Oxford is bucking a trend of institutions cutting ties with the owners of the opioid cartel that profited from the U.S. opioid epidemic and the half million lives it claimed.

For the past two years and as recently as late 2022, Oxford University accepted funds from Sackler family charities, invited a Sackler family member to an exclusive event and gave the Sacklers naming rights on university buildings and fellowships, according to documents seen by the Financial Times.

Members of the Sackler family who own Purdue Pharma marketed the company’s OxyContin prescription painkiller aggressively for years, downplaying its addictive qualities while bagging tens of billions of dollars in revenue. Now the family has negotiated a multibillion-dollar bankruptcy settlement over its role in an opioid epidemic estimated to have claimed more than half a million lives since 1999.

The Sacklers have been described by two U.S. Congress members as the “most evil family in America” and “the worst drug dealers in history.” While they have denied any wrongdoing and never faced criminal charges, their alleged role pushing opioid sales brought a growing public backlash. Museums, universities and other institutions around the world have stripped the Sackler name from buildings and programs.

Other institutions and famous names tied to the Sackler family include McKinsey & Company (the world’s largest management consultancy); Walmart, (he world’s largest company and employer with about $570 billion in annual revenue); and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who was in charge of coordinating investigations involving federal, state and local law enforcement agencies during the Obama administration.

McKinsey’s relationship with Purdue Pharma included recommending that the drug maker “turbocharge” its sales of OxyContin. McKinsey “held remarkable sway at Purdue,” the New York Times reported. It also advised the largest manufacturer of generic opioids and the supplier of poppies, the raw material used to make many top-selling opioids. When the full brunt of the epidemic became apparent, McKinsey counseled government agencies on how to deal with the fallout.

Walmart’s relationship with Purdue Pharma resulted in a $3.1 billion settlement agreement in late 2022 to resolve opioid lawsuits brought by 17 states, plus cities and Native American tribes. Two other national chains, Walgreens and CVS, also signed off on multibillion-dollar settlements related to the national opioid epidemic.

Walmart was accused of dispensing the highly addictive pain pills despite red flags that allowed the drug to end up on the black market. The retailers said they followed the law and blamed doctors for overprescribing OxyContin.

Before he was Barack Obama’s U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder helped the Sacklers cover up their deception and get off with a slap on the wrist. The Sacklers built a $13 billion fortune off the OxyContin painkiller, making them one of the richest families in the U.S. They moved $10.7 billion from Purdue Pharma to holding companies and trusts between 2008 and 2017, a report commissioned by the drugmaker showed. Then they filed for bankruptcy in September 2019 as part of a settlement involving thousands of lawsuits. 

In 2001, Democratic West Virginia Attorney General Darrell McGraw Jr. sued Purdue Pharma alleging that the private pharmaceutical company had engaged in “coercive and deceptive” marketing of OxyContin. He alleged that Purdue had offered doctors free trips to “pain management” seminars where Purdue pitched the drug as safe, not mentioning it was easily abused and was supposed to be used only for severe pain.

Purdue targeted doctors in rural areas with poor patients. By 2002, overdose deaths shot up. A quarter of them were in Kentucky. Purdue’s spending on a huge new sales force paid off with sales of $1.5 billion.

The pharmaceutical giant had a lot to lose financially and called in Holder, then an attorney working for the lawfirm Covington and Burling in Washington, D.C., Salem News reported.

A large portion of the law firm’s corporate clients are mega-banks like JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Bank of America, Guardian reported. The law firm had a reputation for “getting clients accused of financial fraud off with slap-on-the-wrist fines.”

Holder helped negotiate a settlement in 2004 for Purdue Pharma. The company agreed to pay $10 million over four years into drug abuse and education programs in West Virginia and didn’t have to admit any wrongdoing.

There was no trial or public testimony. Holder managed to keep Purdue’s activities quiet. Many people think that Holder having his “hands in the pockets of Purdue Pharma” allowed the OxyContin epidemic, addictions, overdoses and deaths to perpetuate throughout the country.

“Those responsible for our plague of addiction, deaths, crime, broken families and homeless students extended well beyond Purdue,” wrote Ron Formisano, an author and history professor at the University of Kentucky, in an opinion piece for Kentucky.com. “Add to the devil’s roll-call prominent lawyers who work for law firms that defend corporate criminals.”

Holder served as 82nd U.S. Attorney General from 2009 to 2015 before returning to work for his old law firm, “the white-collar defense heavyweight Covington & Burling,” Rolling Stone, reported. He could have been a judge, but Holder told the National Law Journal, “I want to be a player.”

The Sacklers reached a deal with nine state attorneys general in 2022 to increase the amount the family pays from $4.5 billion under a previous settlement to $6 billion, NPR reported. In exchange, the states agreed to drop their objection to immunity from opioid lawsuits for members of the Sackler family.

Here are some institutions that have distanced themselves from the Sackler family, compiled by Business Insider: New York Academy of Arts and Sciences; London’s National Portrait Gallery; Boston hedge fund Balter Capital Management; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Hildene Capital Hedge Fund; The Guggenheim Museum; Columbia University; Tate Group, which controls four museums in London; Hastings Center, a bioethics institute; and The South London Gallery.

Images: Sackler and pill image: Mike Licht, https://www.flickr.com/photos/notionscapital/
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Eric Holder image, March 21, 2014, US Department of Education
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