The House Oversight Committee is asking Purdue Pharma for documents that could shine a light on the billionaire family that owns the company and its alleged role in the opioid crisis.
In a letter to Purdue CEO Craig Landau, Democratic Reps. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the committee’s chairman, and Mark DeSaulnier of California asked for a list of Sacklers who had served on the board of Purdue or worked as company officers. The lawmakers are also seeking documents prepared for the Sackler family about the company’s marketing strategies for its medications and communications between company employees and family members.
Purdue is fending off increasing accusations that it misled prescribers and patients about the safety of its drugs and helped ignite the addiction crisis. It is a defendant in hundreds of lawsuits from cities, counties, states, and tribes tied to the opioid epidemic.
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This started in 1996 with the deregulation of pharmaceutical and health advertising. The Mercers made the media and advertisers complicit. They even undermined the DEA and efforts to control or even acknowledge this problem. The Mercers and Perdue, created a false narrative that the media, and politicians picked up and spread. 1996 was 22 years ago, and they are just looking at this now…. More people are going to die, because of the lies, denial and misinformation. At least this was profitable.