By 2008, Purdue Pharma’s then-president Richard Sackler linked OxyContin sales to not only the number of pills sold but their potency, creating the pharmaceutical equivalent of hollow-point ammunition—indistinguishable delivery mechanism, far greater lethality. As for Richard Sackler’s response to the crisis he had sparked? Addicts were to blame for their own deaths. As the New York Times reported, in 2001 he emailed: “We have to hammer on abusers . . . they are the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals.”

The Sacklers weren’t content to be a family of multimillionaire heirs; they wanted to be a family of multibillionaires. Thanks to OxyContin, this succeeded; the Sacklers rank thirtieth on the 2020 Forbes list of America’s richest families. As public and legal scrutiny grew, the Sacklers used a network of shell companies and offshore banking to siphon over $10 billion out of their beleaguered company and into their pockets in the last dozen years. No wonder their $4.5 billion settlement doesn’t sting so much. While announcing the settlement yesterday, even Judge Drain expressed frustration that (as the New York Times paraphrased him) “so much Sackler money was parked in offshore accounts.”

The Sacklers haven’t just used their privately held company as a personal ATM. They sought to sow the seeds of addiction as wide and deep as possible, so as to better reap its carrion rewards.