Sackler Drug Crimes

I've started "Empire of Pain," a history of the Sackler family, by Patrick Radden Keefe.

The Sacklers launched their USA lives in Brooklyn in the early 1900s. The patriarch said, if you can't leave money to your children, then you can at least leave your good name.

These words were meaningful: The Great Depression meant that the Sacklers lost basically everything. But an enterprising son, Arthur, was undeterred. Arthur was inventing side-hustles while still a high-school student at Erasmus; he considered a career in medicine, but wondered if a doctor's life would limit his stunning creative potential. At some point, Arthur began to work with mentally-ill patients, and he felt uncomfortable with ECT, and with lobotomies. So intrusive! Couldn't mental health grow out of a commitment to some new kind of drug?

From here, I skipped forward to the present day, or something close to the present day. The Sacklers, today, are drug lords. A good portion of their money comes from OxyContin, a source of the opioid crisis in America. Though the Sacklers are happy to attach their names to various institutions and wings, at Harvard, the Met, the Louvre, and the Guggenheim, among other spots, the Sacklers are careful to distance themselves from their own money-making creation, Purdue Pharma. The FDA has been complicit in Purdue's misdeeds; when, in the past, someone has tried to hold the Sacklers accountable, the Sacklers have been able to say: "Blame the FDA." Or: "We're the Sacklers. We're not really Purdue."

Right now, I'm vacationing (in an imaginary way) with Mortimer Sackler, Jr., in the quieter part of the island of Turks. (Brad Pitt is nearby.) At the hotel, each room has materials shipped from twenty-nine far-flung nations, and the staff-to-guest ratio is five-to-one. Prince once stayed in a neighboring home--but, of course, Prince is dead now (because of opioids).

This is an entertaining detective story, a tale of good-versus-evil--and Patrick Radden Keefe is an admirable detective. A good choice for a rainy day.

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