Purdue Pharma

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Purdue Pharma L.P., known from 1892 to 2019 as the Purdue Frederick Company, was an American privately held pharmaceutical company founded by John Purdue Gray. It was sold to Arthur, Mortimer, and Raymond Sackler in 1952, and then owned principally by the Sackler family and their descendants. The company manufactured pain medicines such as hydromorphone, fentanyl, codeine, hydrocodone and oxycodone, also known by its brand name, OxyContin. The Sacklers developed aggressive marketing tactics persuading doctors to prescribe OxyContin in particular. Doctors were enticed with free trips to pain-management seminars (which were effectively all-expenses-paid vacations) and paid speaking engagements. Sales of their drugs soared, as did the number of people dying from overdoses. As well as this, levels of heroin consumption increased significantly following Purdue's aggressive marketing campaign, and it is generally accepted that OxyContin played a large role in causing this. It did this either...

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