THE SACKLER LINKED DYNASTY

OPIOID SCANDAL

In many parts of the United States, the Sacklers are now considered criminals while in Europe they have always been welcomed as princes. But the Sackler's reign seems to be coming to an end. The wealthy family was denied donations on March 21 by the prestigious National Portrait Gallery in London followed by the Tate Modern and Guggenheim New York.

Prince Charles Monday, March 25 announced that his foundation for education, The Prince's Trust, would no longer accept his donations. Several other beneficiaries could follow suit, like the MET in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, also the Louvre in Paris.

But why ?

The artist Nan Goldin, at the head of the organization PAIN, is at the origin of this movement. She asked "all museums, universities and educational institutions around the world" to withdraw their postings in honor of this family but also to publicly refuse "future funds it could propose. ". To convince the National Portrait Gallery to engage in this fight - and thus refuse a new donation of a million euros - the photographer has threatened to cancel its major exhibition that will be scheduled soon !! According to her, this money can no longer be accepted, simply because it is covered in blood ...

Because yes the Sackler family lived the American dream. His saga is the American dream incarnated by three Brooklyn-born brothers of Jewish immigrants who arrived in New York from Europe after the First World War.

The Sacklers are a family of Jewish immigrants, who moved to Brooklyn in the 20's. They opened a grocery store there. Their three children, boys, Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond, went on to study at the university. medicine and become psychiatrists, then researchers for a company specialized in laxatives. In 1952, they bought this company. And now Purdue Pharma is becoming an empire in the pharmaceutical industry. The Sacklers become the sixteenth richest family in America according to Forbes.

And here they are, great patrons courted. Their influence is visible on the pediments of the American universities of Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, Yale, Tufts or even British Oxford. An entire wing of the Louvre in Paris and another at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York bear their name.

But that was not counting with the opioid crisis that hit the United States hard. The dynasty is accused of being behind the opioid crisis that is killing hundreds of people every day in the United States and which Donald Trump has made a national health emergency. This is to say the gravity of the situation.

These powerful painkillers, based on natural opiates or synthetic, have become a scourge in the United States, where they make thousands of victims each year. They kill more than guns. Dependent people die from overdose or sometimes switch to harder drugs, such as heroin.

In 2017, 47,000 people died in the United States of an opiate-related overdose (drugs, heroin and fentanyl) and, according to the National Center for Drug Abuse, 1.7 million people suffered from addiction to painkillers like OxyContin.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio intends to sue the laboratories that marketed these treatments, the most important of which is of course the Sackler brothers. The family business would indeed have earned $ 35 billion with the marketing of OxyContin, the most used painkiller. The company has also been fined $ 634.5 million by the federal authorities ... for lies.

Because Purdue Pharma is mainly accused of having developed opioid addiction, paying scientists, lobbyists and salespeople to hide the ravages of its flagship drug. And let it be said that Richard Sackler, son of Raymond Sackler, is now trying to take advantage of the crisis created by his ancestors. He has just patented a drug ... anti-addictions. What generosity !!!

It is true that we remember the tirade Sackler son. "My father raised us, Jon and I, by leading us to believe that philanthropy is an important part of how we have to fill our lives," said the discreet Richard, at the inauguration in 2010 of a Sackler Chair at Yale University. The company and the Sackler family on Tuesday reached an amicable agreement with Oklahoma (south) agreed to pay $ 270 million to stop the lawsuits.

End of the American dream.