‘Scourge to humanity’: victims of opioid abuse address Sacklers

Survivors of opioid abuse and relatives of victims deliver emotional and stinging rebukes to members of the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma, accused of fueling the US addiction crisis.

As part of Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy settlement, members of the Sackler family are compelled to listen at an extraordinary court hearing to the stories of opioid victims and their relatives.

“We buried Matthew and Kyle because of your family’s vicious acts of disregard for human life,” Liz Fitzgerald says of the deaths of two of her sons. “Two boys are gone because of your ‘safe’ medication.”

“We lost Kyle at the age of 25 after a nine-year battle with opioids because of a medication you peddled no different than the typical street drug dealer,” she says. “After nearly 15 years of addiction, Matthew lost his life at 32.”

Listening to the stories on Zoom are former Purdue president Richard Sackler, his son David, and Theresa Sackler, the wife of one of the three Sackler brothers who purchased the company in the early 1950s and turned it into a pharmaceutical empire.

Addressing Richard Sackler directly, Fitzgerald calls him a “parasite” and a “scourge to humanity.”