REVIEW: EMPIRE OF PAIN

by Kiekiat

A work of investigative journalism that chronicles the misdeeds of three generations of the Sackler family, and a peek into the chicanery regularly employed by their company, Purdue Pharma, in creating and hawking Oxycontin, a highly addictive and sometimes deadly synthetic opiate. Author Keefe does an outstanding job of showing how Purdue Pharma sales reps hoodwinked physicians into believing Oxycontin was a safe alternative for patients with chronic pain and concocted an Orwellian narrative alleging that opioid addiction was actually impossible if Oxycontin was taken as prescribed.

This false narrative resulted in countless cases of addiction, which was possible even if the drug was taken as directed. Oxycontin was hyped as a drug a suffering patient only had to take twice a day, with a 12-hour duration of pain-free bliss that allowed people having chronic pain to lead normal lives. This was not actually true, of course, and the reality is that the drug did not stymie pain for 12 hours--which encouraged users to take more, resulting in thousands of people becoming addicted and Oxy becoming one of the most abused opiates in America.

Meanwhile, the Sackler family made billions of dollars from sales of this powerful opiate, which they had marketed as being less potent than many other pain pills. Keefe digs deep to dredge up the family's complicity in creating the country's latest opioid crisis and provides a compelling account of the family's fall from grace, culminating in Purdue Pharma's demise due to dozens of lawsuits filed by many state attorney generals on behalf of families and patients whose lives had been ruined by Oxycontin.

Keefe is a great writer and only occasionally did the book become a bit tedious, usually when he wandered into chapters about various Sackler family members who had reaped the profits of the family business and were completely out-of-touch regarding the sorrow wreaked by their roles in the opioid crisis.

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