Prior to the introduction of OxyContin, America did not have an opioid crisis. After the introduction of OxyContin, it did.”
~ Patrick Radden Keefe
In the Great Poisoning saga that continues to unfold in America, the opioid epidemic is one of the most brutal and far-reaching chapters. A 2023 poll found that three in ten people—rural residents, especially—reported that they or someone in their family had a history of opioid addiction.
The six-episode miniseries Painkiller dramatizes this epidemic, focusing on the Sackler-family-owned company Purdue Pharma and the impact of its blockbuster drug, OxyContin, in six individuals’ lives. The series, which stars Matthew Broderick as smarmy company chairman and relentless OxyContin marketer Richard Sackler, draws from the 2018 book Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic by Barry Meier and 2021’s Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe. (Keefe calls Meier “a heroic reporter” and his book “a muckraking classic.”)
In Catherine’s book review of Empire of Pain, she points out the remarkable timing of OxyContin’s FDA approval, which occurred in October 1995 right after a disastrous budget confrontation. She explains:
“This was the moment when the U.S. establishment, in frustration, gave up on trying to achieve financial responsibility in the U.S. […] If you cannot get the body politic to save the necessary funds for retirement, then another option is to lower life expectancy below the retirement age.”
Hypothesizing that the Sacklers may have been “ground troops in a much larger [poisoning] effort,” Catherine lists concurrent developments that also debilitated the U.S. population, including predatory mortgage lending, crack cocaine trafficking by U.S. intelligence agencies, and increased imprisonment to support a burgeoning private prison industry. Similarly, Painkiller’s fictional federal investigator argues, “They [Purdue Pharma] are doing the exact same thing as every crack dealer in America, except they are getting rewarded for it. They know they are killing people.”
In July 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Purdue Pharma bankruptcy settlement that would have granted the Sacklers immunity from lawsuits. However, lawsuits are frozen until the company, the Sacklers, and state and local governments reach a new bankruptcy settlement, which reportedly is close at hand.
Related:
Painkiller (TV series) (Wikipedia)
Sackler family (Wikipedia)
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