Purdue Pharma / the Sackler family

That Purdue Pharma knowingly marketed OxyContin as carrying a low addiction risk while internally aware that it did not, seeding a mass addiction crisis.

Purdue launched OxyContin in 1996 with the claim that its slow-release formulation made addiction rare, under one percent. The supporting evidence was thin to the point of misrepresentation, resting substantially on a one-paragraph 1980 letter to the New England Journal of Medicine that described hospitalised patients and was never a study. Sales representatives were incentivised to push higher doses; the concept of "pseudoaddiction" was promoted to reframe drug-seeking as undertreated pain.

Accounts are deliberately not collected here. This entry documents a historical case rather than a circulating remedy.

Purdue pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges of misbranding in 2007 and again to fraud and kickback charges in 2020. The company was dissolved; the Sacklers agreed to a multi-billion-dollar settlement. US overdose deaths involving opioids exceed 500,000 since 1999. This is a case in which the conspiracy allegation was true, was proven in court, and produced criminal convictions.