Scottish universities urged to cut ties with Oxycontin’s Sackler family

IT WOULD BE HYPOCRITICAL NOT TO –

May 30, 2021- They say it is hypocritical for the NHS in Scotland, where the drug death toll is Europe’s highest, to be supported by profits from a drug linked to the biggest addiction scandal in the United States. The Sacklers made £8 billion from the drug, launched in the late-1990s and wrongly marketed as being safer than alternative painkillers. A new book by investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe exposes how the company – and the family – continued to profit from the powerful painkiller despite damning and conclusive evidence it was fuelling addiction and death.

Purdue went into bankruptcy in 2019, facing a mountain of lawsuits, before the family agreed to pay $225 million in damages last year while continuing to deny any wrongdoing. Members of the family gave evidence to Congress in December when congressman James Comer, co-chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, told them: “We don’t agree on a lot on this committee in a bipartisan way but I think our opinion of Purdue Pharma and the actions of your family we all agree are sickening.”