Sackler family

Family tree of the Sacklers most involved in Purdue Pharma.

The Sackler family are the owners of Purdue Pharma, a pharmaceutical company known for its creation of the opioid OxyContin and role in the United States opioid epidemic. Purdue Pharma was purchased in 1952 by the brothers Arthur, Raymond, and Mortimer Sackler. The Sacklers also own Mundipharma and Napp Pharmaceuticals, which are sister companies of Purdue. The family is known for their philanthropy and extensive donations to universities and museums. As of December 2020, the Sackler family's net worth is $10.8 billion. Their net worth peaked at $14 billion in 2015. The Sacklers have been criticized for creating what is called "the worst drug crisis in American history".

In 2018, Purdue Pharma and several members of the Sackler family began facing a cascade of thousands of lawsuits filed on behalf of various municipalities and nearly every US state in regards to each party's involvement in perpetuating the country's opioid crisis. In August 2019, Purdue Pharma announced a settlement offer of $10 to $12 billion to settle the lawsuits. At least $3 billion of that total would come from the Sacklers personally after the sale of their company Mundipharma; if the sale of the company were to exceed $3 billion, up to $1.5 billion more could be paid. The Sacklers would also forfeit ownership of Purdue Pharma, and the company would declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy and be restructured into a for-profit public benefit trust. Purdue stated that if the plaintiffs did not accept the proposed settlement, the company would instead be liquidated through Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which would be a considerably lower value than the settlement offer.

In September 2019, Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy as per the proposed settlement plan. Other terms included a payment of between $7 billion and $9 billion, $3 billion of which would come from the Sackler family's personal fortune. A final settlement was reached on October 21, 2020 when Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to three felonies: one count of dual-object conspiracy to defraud the US and violate the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and two counts of conspiracy to violate the Federal Anti-Kickback Statute. The charges included a criminal fine of $3.544 billion and criminal forfeiture of $2 billion, the largest penalties ever levied against a pharmaceutical manufacturer. A $2.8 billion civil settlement was also reached in order to resolve Purdue's civil liability under the False Claims Act. The Sackler family paid a separate fee of $225 million to resolve their own personal civil liability. No part of the settlement granted the criminal release of any members of the family. Another term of the deal was that Purdue Pharma would cease operations and instead form a public benefit company, the proceeds of which will be directed toward local and state opioid abatement programs.

A bankruptcy settlement was reached in September 2021. Terms of the agreement absolved the Sacklers of any civil liability for the opioid crisis in exchange for $4.5 billion to be paid in installments over the course of nine years. The money would be given to addiction treatment and prevention programs, as well as victim compensation funds, across the US. Other terms of the settlement included the dissolution of Purdue Pharma and construction of a new company called Knoa Pharma, the profits from which would fund opioid addiction treatment efforts. The ruling, made by Judge Robert D. Drain, was widely controversial for its legal protection of the Sacklers. Bob Ferguson, the Washington State attorney general, described it as "morally and legally bankrupt" for allowing the Sacklers "to walk away as billionaires with a lifetime legal shield." Multiple states announced intentions to appeal the ruling, and it was overturned three months later in December 2021 by Judge Colleen McMahon of the Southern District of New York. McMahon stated that Judge Drain lacked the authority to release the Sackler family from civil liability.

The case was then brought to mediation, where the Sacklers agreed to pay an additional $1 billion. The new settlement, totaling $5.5 to $6 billion, was reached in March 2022 and brought in front of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit the following month for approval. A $750 million shared fund for opioid victims would be set up. An additional $150 million would be reserved for Native American tribes, and a further $100 million for the medical monitoring and payments for children born into opioid withdrawal. The Sacklers were banned from future involvement in opioid businesses, ordered to publish over 30 million Purdue company documents, and ordered to dissolve or sell Purdue Pharma by 2024. They were also granted protection from future civil, but not criminal, claims regarding the opioid crisis and ordered to issue an apology to the victims of the opioid crisis. As of March 2023, the plan still awaits a final ruling due to a small number of remaining opponents, most notably the Department of Justice.

The Sackler Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

The Sackler family has made many donations to educational and artistic institutes. They include the American Museum of National History, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Tate, Louvre, Jewish Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, University of Sussex, Yale University, University of Oxford, Cornell University, Rockefeller University, and Columbia University. Some institutions have honored the family's donations by naming schools or wings after them. Arthur Sackler's art donations garnered him multiple honors such as the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian, Sackler Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard University, and the Jillian and Arthur M. Sackler Wing of Galleries at the Royal Academy of Arts. Additional Sackler family namesakes include the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Center for Biomedical and Physical Sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine, Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, Sackler Institute for Translational Neurodevelopment at King's College, Sackler Pavilion at National Theatre, Sackler Studios at Shakespeare’s Globe, Sackler Crossing at Kew, and Sackler Escalators at Tate Modern. There is also a species of rose and an asteroid named after the family.

Protestors in front of the Louvre in July 2019 holding signs reading "Take down the Sackler name" and "Shame on Sackler".

Many recipients of Sackler funds have since disassociated themselves from the family's name due to the money's ties to the opioid crisis. An influx of organizations did so in 2019 when the Sackler family's malfeasances were heavily publicized, to which the Sackler trust responded by suspending donations and stating that Purdue's significant media attention "has created immense pressure on the scientific, medical, educational and arts institutions here in the UK. This attention is distracting them from the important work that they do." Various institutions have since announced plans to refuse future donations and remove references to the family's name. They included the Tate, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Jewish Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYU Langone Medical Center, American Museum of Natural History, National Portrait Gallery, Serpentine Galleries, Cornell, Yale, California Institute of Technology, Brown University, and University of Washington. Brown stated it would be redirecting its unspent donations to nonprofit groups treating opioid addiction in Rhode Island. Some recipients were at first unable to remove their honors to the Sacklers due to contractual obligations of their donations. However, terms of Purdue Pharma's 2022 bankruptcy settlement permitted recipients to remove the Sackler name from physical facilities, programmes, scholarships, and endowments without penalty under the conditions of a forty-five day notice and a promise to not disparage the Sackler name.