Bitter pills

摘要

AT 50,000 OVERDOSE deaths a year and rising, America's opioid crisis has never been worse. What began in the late 1990s as an epidemic of prescription pain-pill abuse morphed into a worse one of illicit heroin and, later, fentanyl. Prosecutors and the public have zeroed in on Purdue Pharma, which introduced the blockbuster drug OxyContin in 1996. Of the colossal revenues it generated, some $13bn was paid to the company's previously low-profile owners, members of the Sackler family, who have recently sunk from honoured arts patrons to society pariahs.Patrick Radden Keefe's excellent new book tells the story of this now-infamous clan. He traces the empire of the title to Brooklyn in 1920, and a trio of brothers born to Jewish immigrants: Arthur (the eldest and, in Mr Keefe's telling, the "patriarch"), Raymond and Mortimer. Arthur Sackler's business acumen and questionable ethical judgment proved lucrative. He in effect invented the field of medical advertising, creating the first family fortune after aggressively marketing the sedatives Librium and Valium to doctors, without a serious study of the addiction risks. A fascination with Chinese artefacts led him to bequeath huge sums to prestigious museums. For decades the Sackler name would primarily be associated with that largesse.