Jonathan Sackler, co-owner of Purdue Pharma, dies of cancer aged 65

Jonathan Sackler, co-owner of Purdue Pharma, dead of cancer at 65

  • Jonathan Sackler, one of the owners of Purdue Pharma, has died aged 65 
  • His death was revealed in a court filing which lists the cause as cancer 
  • Purdue, which makes painkiller OxyContin, is at the center of US opioid crisis
  • Company is facing thousands of lawsuits, and Jonathan was due to testify 

Jonathan Sackler, one of the owners of Purdue Pharma which makes opioid painkiller OxyContin, has died from cancer at the age of 65. 

Sackler died on June 30, the company revealed in a court filing. He was the son of Raymond Sackler, who bought the drug company with his two brothers in 1952, and served on the executive board.

Purdue Pharma is facing thousands of lawsuits totaling billions of dollars in damages from states which claim prescription painkillers such as OxyContin left people with crippling addictions. 

OxyContin

Jonathan Sackler, one of the owners of Purdue Pharma which made painkiller OxyContin which has been blamed for sparking America’s opioid crisis, has died aged 65 

OxyContin was first marketed by the company in 1996 as a slow-release painkiller that lasted for 12 hours.

However, patients quickly began abusing it by crushing or dissolving the tablets to ingest the whole dose in one go.

That led to opioid addiction, with users sometimes turning to heroin when they could no longer get access to the pills.

More than 400,000 Americans have died from opioid overdose since 2000, while in 2018 alone some 2million were believed to be abusing some form of the drug.

Purdue Pharma has been front and centre of the crisis since at least 2007, when executives pleaded guilty to misleading regulators, doctors and patients about the potential for abuse of and addiction to the drug.

At the time, the company agreed to pay some $600million in damages.

But that did little to quell the outcry, and Purdue is now facing around 3,000 lawsuits brought by state and local governments over the harm they say painkillers such as OxyContin did to their citizens.  

Purdue has sought bankruptcy protection in order to try and settle the lawsuits, for a sum that could total up to $12billion.

The settlement plan calls for the Sackler family, one of America’s wealthies, to pay at least $3billion and give up ownership of the company.

The Sacklers are thought to have pocketed $4billion from the sale of prescription medications between 2008 and 2016.

Jonathan Sackler, like many of his family members, had stepped away from the board of Purdue in recent years amid the scandal.

He was named in several of the lawsuits, and in August last year was ordered by a court to testify in a suit filed by the Rhode Island Attorney General.

It came after a judge rejected the Sacklers’ attempts to have the lawsuit dismissed.

Jonathan Sackler had been served with a subpoena to testify in May.

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk