Family behind OxyContin attests to its role in opioid crisis

Two of the owners of the company that makes OxyContin acknowledged to a congressional committee on Thursday that the powerful prescription painkiller has played a role in the national opioid crisis but stopped short of apologizing or admitting wrongdoing as they faced grilling during a rare appearance in a public forum.

“I want to express my family’s deep sadness about the opioid crisis,” David Sackler, a member of the family that owns Purdue Pharma, said at a congressional hearing. “OxyContin is a medicine that Purdue intended to help people, and it has helped, and continues to help, millions of Americans.”

Kathe Sackler, his cousin, told the U.S. House Oversight Committee that she knows “the loss of any family member or loved one is terribly painful and nothing is more tragic than the loss of a child.”

“As a mother,” she said, "my heart breaks for the parents who have lost their children. I am so terribly sorry for your pain.”

Asked about her role, she said she'd done soul-searching about it. “I have tried to figure out if there’s anything I could have done differently knowing what I knew then, not what I know now,” she said. “There is nothing I can find that I would have done differently.”

Rep. Kelly Armstrong, a North Dakota Republican, noted that OxyContin sales revenue increased even after the company pleaded guilty to crimes for improper marketing of the drug. “You want to ask what you could have done differently?" she asked. "Look at your own damn balance sheet.”

The two Sacklers, descendants of two of the three brothers who bought Purdue nearly 70 years ago, appeared before the committee in a video hearing held amid coronavirus restrictions.

They took the step after the committee's chairwoman, Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney...