How OxyContin Was Sold to the Masses

How OxyContin Was Sold to the Masses

When OxyContin came on the market, in 1995, physicians were understandably wary of the addictive potential of a powerful new opioid. As Patrick Radden Keefe reports, the manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, aggressively marketed OxyContin to physicians, claiming that the drug’s delayed-release mechanism could limit the risk of addiction. Instead, OxyContin led to many new addictions, and many addicted patients eventually sought street drugs like heroin. Steven May started at Purdue Pharma as a sales rep in 1999, and years later went on to allege fraud against Purdue as a participant in a whistle-blower lawsuit (which was dismissed on procedural grounds). May tells Keefe that he was trained to market the drug as one “to start with and to stay with,” despite seeing early on its addictive potential.

Purdue Pharma is a privately held company controlled by members of the Sackler family, who have a net worth of thirteen billion dollars. The Sacklers have donated handsomely to cancer research, medical schools, art museums, and universities. But Keefe tells David Remnick that the Sacklers have donated “nothing for the opioid crisis. Nothing for addiction treatment. If there is any sense in that family that they bear any moral culpability for where we are today, they’re not acting on it.”

Jaksot(1019)

Richard Linklater on His Two New Films, “Blue Moon” and “Nouvelle Vague”

Richard Linklater on His Two New Films, “Blue Moon” and “Nouvelle Vague”

Richard Linklater is one of the most admired directors working today, and yet moviegoers may admire him for very different things. There are early comedies such as “Slacker” and “Dazed and Confused”; ...

21 Loka 202521min

How the Trump Administration Made Higher Education a Target

How the Trump Administration Made Higher Education a Target

The swiftness and severity with which the Trump Administration has tried to impose its will on higher education came as a shock to many, not least university presidents and faculties from Harvard to U...

17 Loka 202529min

John Carpenter Picks Three Favorite Film Scores

John Carpenter Picks Three Favorite Film Scores

The filmmaker John Carpenter has a whole shelf of cult classics: “They Live,” “The Thing,” “Escape from New York,” “Halloween,” and so many more. And while he hasn’t directed a new movie in more than ...

14 Loka 202512min

Zohran Mamdani Says He's Ready for Donald Trump

Zohran Mamdani Says He's Ready for Donald Trump

Next month, New York City may elect as its next mayor a man who was pretty much unknown to the broader public a year ago. Zohran Mamdan, who is currently thirty-three years old and a member of the Sta...

10 Loka 202548min

How Lionel Richie Mastered the Love Song

How Lionel Richie Mastered the Love Song

Lionel Richie has been making music for fifty years. He has sold more than a hundred million albums, his hits too numerous to list, and he has endeared himself to younger generations as a judge on “Am...

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A Conservative Professor on How to Fix Campus Culture

A Conservative Professor on How to Fix Campus Culture

Robert P. George is not a passive observer of the proverbial culture wars; he’s been a very active participant. As a Catholic legal scholar and philosopher at Princeton University, he was an influenti...

3 Loka 202526min

Jimmy Kimmel and the Power of Public Pressure

Jimmy Kimmel and the Power of Public Pressure

The Political Scene’s Washington Roundtable—the staff writers Jane Mayer, Susan Glasser, and Evan Osnos—discuss how, in the wake of the reinstatement of Jimmy Kimmel’s show, public resistance has a ch...

30 Syys 202543min

Ezra Klein’s Big-Tent Vision of the Democratic Party

Ezra Klein’s Big-Tent Vision of the Democratic Party

The author and podcaster Ezra Klein may be only forty-one years old, but he’s been part of the political-culture conversation for a long time. He was a blogger, then a Washington Post columnist and ed...

26 Syys 202550min

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