The Architects of the Flood: How the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma Fueled the Opioid Crisis
- Joshua Bennett-Johnson
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
Richard Sackler 2018 Deposition By ProPublica, CC BY 3.0,
May 11, 2026
Author of the Month
Joshua Bennett-Johnson, Author, LADC-II, Licensed Counselor, and JBJ Counseling
Tom O'Connor, Publisher
They flooded the market. As a former user myself, the first Oxy I ever purchased had been prescribed to a peer of mine. A young woman. All of 19 or 20 years old. She had been taking this new medication to aid the discomfort from her menstrual cycle, her pediatrician telling her it was a "safe, non-habit forming alternative to traditional pain management."
This was due to a revolutionary "time-release" feature, one designed to very slowly release the powerful chemical (just one molecule different from pharmaceutical grade heroin, for the record), so that with just one dose daily, an individual might expect an entire day's worth of relief from their ailments, with no risk of "getting high" and manifesting a growing proclivity or tolerance for more.
It was all bullshit, of course. Her doctor was just repeating what the drug rep had told him. Oh, and that revolutionary time-release feature? If one were to just add water or saliva to the little tablet for 30-45 seconds, it would melt away. It ceased to be, and what was left waiting was a potent and instantaneous euphoria of one of the most powerful opioid therapies ever to damn this country.
The story of the Sackler family and Purdue Pharmaceuticals is not just a tale of corporate greed: it is a literal blueprint for how a single entity can engineer a national crisis of catastrophic proportions, flooding the market with their exciting new product, profit from the wreckage that comes from creating an entire generation who got hooked on the stuff (many of them long dead and buried in the ground now), and to game then the American Justice System which, if we're being real, is designed to protect such malfeasance across countless mega-money-making-markets in this country.
1996 — The Rollout of Purdue Pharma's OxyContin.
The Flood. Under the orders of Dick Sackler and his cronies, Purdue Pharma launched a marketing campaign for the ages. They were selling a pill coated in a revolutionary time-released cloak of lies.
Sales representatives were trained to convince doctors that OxyContin was less addictive than other opioids due to its "delayed absorption" mechanism — blah, blah, blah — often hiring beautiful exotic dancers to meet with doctors to get them onboarded with selling their new product.
Doctors who hit a certain quota of prescriptions written for patients in pain were rewarded with first-class airline tickets to exotic destinations, and whatever else they might've received during the drug rep's elevator pitch in the locked back office.
Seriously. They flooded the market. And, as we all know now, the "delayed absorption/time-release" feature of their product was not, is not, and never would be supported by actual clinical evidence.
By funding "pain management" advocacy groups, Purdue shifted the medical culture, turning a drug once reserved for end-of-life care into a standard treatment for back pain and severe injuries. Oh, and sometimes menstrual cramps for 19-year-old kids.
The Opioid Crisis
One of the most sinister features of this manufactured flood, one that left any competitors in the dust of the crushed up tablets, was that Dick saturated the market with highly addictive opioids, got hundreds of thousands (conservative estimate) of Americans hooked, and made off with all the profits. Then the family looked for ways to profit from the resulting dependency after the fact. They got 'em on the front-end and on the back.
READ:
Wanna Know How Evil Free-market, For-profit Healthcare Can Be?
Through secret control of other pharma companies, the Sacklers poised themselves to profit from the "cure", buying patents for replacement therapy medications, designed to mitigate opioid dependence for long-term use, making another incredible dollar amount once again from the very epidemic they created in the first place.
A closed loop: they sold the poison, then sold the antidote, monetizing the entire life cycle of a patient's addiction. Most people on opioid replacement therapy will be on it for their entire lifetime.
When the medical community finally began to pull back on prescriptions, following countless armed robberies of your local CVS, accidental fatal overdoses, and predicating a new generation of heroin users — much cheaper, same bliss — those who had been hooked were abandoned in a void of perpetual agony.
And then, enter Fentanyl, stage right. Rural and poorer urban communities were hit the hardest. But OxyContin smoothly wormed its way into mainstream America, in all of its safe suburban enclaves, and created death and destruction on a scale that's hard even to fathom. Stolen Lives, I call them. Most of the OxyContin casualties were young people. I often wonder what they might've become if only………
For years, the American public has waited for true justice, like Dick Sackler being slapped in criminal handcuffs. But the Sackler family has remained immune from criminal prosecution.
While Purdue Pharma itself has pleaded guilty to federal felonies — including criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States — the family remains free to walk the streets to this very day.
The Sacklers used Purdue's alleged bankruptcy to seek cover. It worked. This legal tactic was designed to grant the family global immunity from future civil lawsuits in exchange for a multi-billion-dollar settlement. Sounds like a lotta dough, right? To the Sacklers? It's pocket change.
For the countless families of those lost to the crisis, the message from the legal system is clear: if you are wealthy enough to manufacture a flood on par with Noah's, the punishment is merely a write-off—a business expense.
And the justice system? It's just another marketplace where the accountability of the wealthy elites can be negotiated away, no matter how many citizens they killed.
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