Members of the Sackler family, which controlled Purdue Pharma, used sales of the controversial OxyContin painkiller to “stretch” financial targets and pressured company executives to grow its market share for opioids by targeting high-volume prescribers and pushing higher-strength doses, according to documents released by a Congressional committee.
The trove of internal emails, slide decks, and financial charts help to reinforce previous impressions — gleaned from years of litigation — about the way the notorious drug maker was run by the secretive clan. The documents also note how members of the Sackler family treated one of its opioids as a “cash cow” and withdrew approximately $10 billion from Purdue coffers since 2008.
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