Patrick Radden Keefe’s searing expose on the opioid overdose death epidemic, “Empire of Pain The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty,” is a feat of investigative journalism I found nearly impossible to put down. Keefe describes, toward the end of his 560-page book, the leadership role our own State Attorney General Maura Healey played in exposing the nefarious tactics of the Sackler’s and their family company, Purdue Pharma.
Keefe spent considerable time documenting the lengths Sackler family members went to protect the financial geyser that was the highly-addictive drug oxycontin — as well as their image as stellar philanthropists. This family of billionaires led lives of privilege and opulence all while their company was creating unimaginable heartache across the nation. One of these family members, daughter-in-law to oxycontin mastermind Richard Sackler and wife of David, Joss Sackler, was nicknamed the Lady Macbeth of Opioids by one newspaper.
“One major source of Joss’s troubles was a woman named Maura Healey, who was serving her second term as the attorney General of Massachusetts,” Keefe writes. “Opioids had hit Massachusetts especially badly. Healey had started investigating in 2015, right after she took office in her first term, because on the campaign trail people from across the state kept telling her about how these pharmaceuticals had devastated their communities. … Healey began focusing on Purdue.”
Although I’ve followed this epidemic, I hadn’t paid close enough attention to the ins and outs of the lawsuit Healey’s office filed in 2018. I learned more about the depth of her focus on Purdue in Keefe’s book and then by watching a recording of the July 8, 2021 press conference in which Healey announced a settlement of that lawsuit. The settlement happened, oddly enough, in bankruptcy court in New Hampshire. In the years since filing the suit, Healey had assembled a coalition of attorneys general from states where opioids had hit especially hard.
Attorneys general from 15 states signed on to the settlement. Nine state attorneys general, unhappy that the agreement made the Sackler’s immune from additional civil litigation, did not sign, instead challenging the settlement. Healey, who had been among those rejecting at least one previous settlement offer, said while this one was not all she hoped it would be, it gained important ground.
In her press conference, she noted that the lawsuit sought to prove the culpability of the Sackler family in the opioid overdose death epidemic, which for years had been virtually unknown. She believed that the terms of the settlement did just that.
“Until we sued, the Sacklers had always used their wealth to keep their deception going, their profits flowing and their secrets hidden. But that changes today,” AG Healy said on that July day in 2021. “Today’s resolution delivers the most important things we’ve been fighting for — a reckoning that exposes the Sackler’s misconduct, strips them of their power, provides money that will dedicated entirely to prevention, treatment and recovery.”
Other elements of the settlement: the Sackler’s must pay $4.3 billion, will be permanently banned from sales of opioids, and are prohibited from having the Sackler name on public buildings. Also, Purdue Pharma will cease to exist.
In her mind, a ground-breaking concession from the Sackler family is public disclosure. Purdue and Sackler family documents that have been collected over the past 20 years in the various criminal and civil cases — including previously protected correspondence between the Sackler’s and their attorneys — are to become public.
“The families that have been hurt in this crisis deserve the full truth and I can announce today that they are going to get it… More evidence of their deadly misconduct than has ever been revealed in history,” said Healey. “We’ve treated this company’s secrets as public property. Everything’s got to be disclosed.”
Those documents — millions of pages including transcripts of depositions, court filings and confidential communications that expose the Sackler’s scheme of high-pressure sales of oxycontin to doctors — would go into a free, searchable database available to the public under the settlement terms. In other words, researchers, journalists, academics and the general public would be able to see for themselves the devious lengths the Sackler’s went to make money from oxycontin sales.
“They even decided to blame and stigmatize the very people who became addicted to their drugs. That stigma made this crisis even worse. It tore families apart,” she said. “Exposing the Sackler’s evil acts is a step forward towards ending that stigma, and I hope is a step forward towards healing.”
Roger Brunelle Jr. stood at the podium introducing himself as president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades District Council 135 in Boston, and then, in a ragged voice said: “But today I stand before you as a dad.”
His only son died in 2014 at age 26 of an opioid overdose. He had become addicted, his father said, when he was overprescribed pain medication at age 22. Brunelle is on the attorney general’s family advisory council, whose members advise Healey and her team.
“My family’s story is not unique and today, I’m not here to celebrate,” Brunelle said as he talked about his son, Brent Hastings. “We fought alongside him to battle his addiction. But what we didn’t know then, but what we know now, is the deck was stacked against us and we were battling a goliath.”
Press conferences often are muted, controlled events that deliver data and news and facts. The raw heartbreak and seething anger expressed at this one struck me as unusual.
Healey did not hide her fury when she declared the Sackler’s “the perpetrators of this crisis” or when she characterized them as “villains for the history books.”
She softened — but she also did not entirely hide her feelings — when she talked about the heroes of the opioid crisis, especially parents, like Roger Brunelle; people still fighting addiction; and people in recovery.
“The future belongs to these heroes,” said Healey, staring down at the podium, struggling for composure as she lost her own voice for a moment. “Their voices will continue to guide our work.”
But there is yet another twist in a story full of them. On Dec. 16, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon of the southern district of New York rejected the settlement, putting the hard-fought deal in peril.
McMahon’s decision is somewhat on procedural grounds; her 142-page decision states that the bankruptcy court lacks the authority to immunize the Sackler’s from claims by other litigants. And she says: “I also acknowledge that the invalidating of these releases will almost certainly lead to the undoing of a carefully crafted plan that would bring about many wonderful things, including especially the funding of desperately needed programs to counter opioid addiction.”
In a brief statement to the press after the decision came down, Maura Healey said this: “My goal has always been to do right by the families who suffered from the Sacklers’ greed. They are the reason I brought the first lawsuit exposing the Sacklers’ misconduct; the reason I fought for full disclosure, compensation, treatment, and harm reduction; and the reason I testified before Congress against the abuse of our bankruptcy laws. The test for success in this case is whether we deliver for the people the Sacklers hurt.”
Purdue Pharma says it will appeal.
And so, the fight continues.
Laurie Loisel is director of communication and outreach for the office of Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan and a member of Hampshire HOPE, the opioid prevention coalition run out of the city of Northampton’s Health Department. Hampshire HOPE members contribute to this monthly column about local efforts addressing the opioid epidemic.