© Smilow Cancer Hospital/FacebookThe Sackler dynasty - makers of powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin - has agreed to pay up to $7.4 billion of their own money to settle claims over its role in fuelling the opioid epidemic
The Sackler dynasty, owners of Purdue Pharma and makers of powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin, has agreed to pay up to $7.4 billion of their own money to settle claims over its role in fuelling the opioid epidemic.
The deal reflects an increase of more than $1 billion on a previous settlement that was rejected in 2024 by the Supreme Court.
As part of the settlement, the billionaire family behind Purdue Pharma has agreed to pay up to $6.5 billion and give up ownership of the company, which would pay nearly $900 million.
It's among the largest settlements reached over the past several years in a series of lawsuits by local, state, Native American tribal governments and others seeking to hold companies responsible for a deadly opioid epidemic.
The deal still needs court approval, and some of the details are yet to be ironed out.
© ReutersBottles of prescription painkiller OxyContin pills, made by Purdue Pharma LP sit on a counter at a local pharmacy in Provo, Utah, U.S., April 25, 2017
'While no amount of money will ever fully repair the damage they caused, this massive influx of funds will bring resources to communities in need so that we can heal,' said New York Attorney General Letitia James, one of 15 state attorneys general involved in negotiating the deal.
In West Virginia, the epicenter of the opioid crisis, Attorney General JB McCuskey agreed to the deal but had harsh words for the company and its owners.
© Bloomberg via GettyThe Sackler family has been blamed for contributing to the US opioid addiction epidemic
Not every state has signed on yet.
Under the new proposal, members of the Sackler family would also give up ownership of Purdue.
They've already stepped down from the company's board and have not taken distributions from Purdue since before the bankruptcy filing.
The company would become a new entity with its board appointed by states and others who sued the company.
MailOnline has reached out to Purdue Pharma for comment.
Between $800 million and $850 million is also to go to victims of the opioid crisis or their survivors, said Ed Neiger, a lawyer for individual victims.
The deal also includes as much as $800 million set aside to pay for future settlements if new lawsuits arise against the Sacklers, according to the New York attorney general's office.
The Supreme Court blocked an earlier agreement last year because it protected members of the wealthy family from civil lawsuits over OxyContin — even though the family members themselves were not in bankruptcy.
The new agreement protects family members from lawsuits only from entities that agree to the settlement.
If a new deal is not approved, it could open the floodgates to lawsuits against Sackler family members.
A U.S. bankruptcy judge is expected to decide Friday whether to keep temporary protections for them in place through February.
Collectively, Sackler family members have been estimated to be worth billions more than they'd contribute in the settlement, but much of the wealth is in offshore accounts and might be impossible to access through lawsuits.
'This is about families impacted by this crisis. And this is about a group of people and a family that are among the most notorious wrongdoers ... and we are holding them accountable,' he said.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, a Democrat, said the settlement would not bring the family financial ruin.
The new settlement could bring to a close a chapter in a long legal saga over the toll of an opioid crisis that some experts assert began after OxyContin hit the market in 1996.
Since then, opioids have been linked to hundreds of thousands of deaths in the U.S.
The deadliest stretch has been since 2020, when illicit fentanyl has been found as a factor in more than 70,000 deaths annually.
Members of the Sackler family have been cast as villains and have seen their name removed from art galleries and universities around the world because of their role in the privately-held company.
They've continued to deny claims of any wrongdoing.
The ascent of the Sackler family is a remarkable rags to riches story that starts with the rise of three brothers from Brooklyn: Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond, the sons of Jewish grocers who emigrated from Eastern Europe.
Within their lifetimes, they amassed an enormous $13 billion fortune (more than the Rockefellers or the Mellons) and began collecting art, wives and houses around the world. Their children and grandchildren enjoyed a life of luxury, attended the finest schools, and became fixtures on the glitzy society circuit.
Using their OxyContin lucre, the Sacklers burnished their reputation through charity by donating lavishly to prestigious medical schools and world-class art galleries - this in turn drew fierce criticism from those who believed that the family was using their deep pockets to obscure the dark source of their wealth.
The family-owned Purdue Pharma became a household name in the US as the maker and promoter of the prescription painkiller OxyContin, which was promoted as safe, despite being aware it was highly addictive.
Their fall from grace began in 2014, when the Massachusetts and New York attorney generals implicated eight Sackler family members in the nation's deadly opioid epidemic.
In a lawsuit, the Sackler matriarchs, Theresa and Beverly Sackler were listed among their children, Kathe, Mortimer Jr, Richard, Jonathan and Ilene Sackler Lefcourt; and David Sackler, a grandson.
Amid a cascade of litigation all remaining Sacklers stepped down from the board of directors in April 2019.
Highly addictive narcotics like OxyContin have hooked millions of people who, when their prescriptions ran out, turned to cheaper heroin and eventually its even deadlier cousin fentanyl.
Whole towns and neighborhoods have been decimated by the crisis. In Williamson, West Virginia, a state where more people have fatally overdosed than in any other in the US, out-of-state wholesalers had shipped nearly 21 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to two pharmacies just four blocks apart.
The tiny town of just 3,200 people was inundated with pills - more than 6,500 per resident.
Doctors were overly generous with the pills for patients just coming out of surgery, both major and minor, in part because Purdue Pharma rewarded prescribers the more pills they doled out.
People recovering from a root canal or a broken bone were commonly prescribed strong painkillers to improve the recovery process.
Overprescribing was so pervasive that up to 92 percent of patients reported having leftover opioids after common operations.
Drug dealers. With a licence to harm.