Monday, February 26, 2018 by: Rhonda Johansson
Tags: #shameonsackler, addiction, badhealth, badmedicine, Big Pharma, dangerous drugs, drug epidemic, drug overdose, heroine, morphine, nan goldin, Opioid, opioid addiction, Opioids, oxycodone, oxycontin, painkillers, Purdue, Purdue Pharmaceuticals, sackler
(Natural News) World-renowned and distinguished photographer Nan Goldin is using her art to yet again expose the hidden truths of an unreported world — this time in lambasting the billionaire family responsible for the pain relief drug, OxyContin. Goldin, a recovering drug addict, says that the Sackler family has turned a blind eye to the growing epidemic of drug abuse happening in our country and in most of the Western world. In a sardonic interview with The Guardian in late January, Goldin describes the “philanthropic” family as one that is not being held accountable for the millions of lives ruined by drug addiction. The Sacklers are one of the richest families in the U.S. and are regular patrons of the arts.
Goldin has created a campaign to shame the family into paying for the rehabilitation and overdose antidotes of affected Americans instead of shamelessly donating their ill-gotten earnings into museums and other art endeavors. Her online petition has been posted on Change.org and Goldin is encouraging everyone to begin using the hashtag #ShameOnSackler. Goldin is also asking museums and universities who benefit from Sackler donations to refuse associating with the family henceforth. The overall campaign is being called Prescription Addiction Intervention Now or PAIN.
The Sacklers were definitely not slackers
Most of you are probably unfamiliar with the Sacklers, unless you’ve visited museums. As mentioned, the family is prominent in the art scene and have continually given generous donations to various museums, the most prominent being the Metropolitan Museum in New York. That said, the family earned its wealth by helming Purdue Pharmaceuticals, the company behind the revolutionary and highly-addictive painkiller, OxyContin. In 1995, they aggressively marketed the painkiller as a drug that was legal, safe, and concentrated. OxyContin was said to have a unique formula, one that involved a slow-release mechanism that allowed patients to be free of pain longer and at a steadier onset.
It was brilliant. The marketing for the drug was simply phenomenal and OxyContin began being routinely prescribed to patients and given freely like TicTacs. What Purdue failed to mention was that the painkiller was not appropriate as a long-term solution to chronic pain and that it was highly addictive.
To fully understand the brilliance of the marketing of Purdue, you must remember that in the early 1990s, doctors were incredibly wary of opioids. Clinical trials at the time suggested that the drug was effective, but also extremely dangerous. The active ingredient of OxyContin especially (oxycodone) was a chemical cousin to heroin and was noted to be twice as powerful as morphine. Drugs as strong as these were only given (and even then, reluctantly) as end-of-life palliative care.
