The opioid crisis isn’t just the Sacklers’ fault – and making Purdue Pharma pay isn’t enough on its own to fix the pharmaceutical industry’s deeper problems

Many companies have sold dangerous prescription drugs. Peter Dazeley/The Image Bank via Getty Images

You may have heard of the Sackler family and the role that they and their privately held company, Purdue Pharma, played in the opioid crisis. One TV series depicting the family as a villainous clan has earned 14 Emmy nominations. Another is in the works.

Purdue is infamous for its hard-sell marketing of its powerful, long-acting opioid OxyContin. Among its troubling tactics: co-opting legitimate medical organizations to spread messages overstating the drug’s effectiveness and understating its addiction risks. Sales boomed, making its owners fabulously wealthy and building what journalist Patrick Radden Keefe memorably calls an “empire of pain.”