Discovering
anything about the Sackler family, let alone the innermost workings of its privately owned companies, is not easy. The earliest investigations into OxyContin and the emerging overdose crisis did not mention the Sackler family by name at all. Even a front-page story in
The New York Times, “Cancer Painkillers Pose New Abuse Threat,” did not use the Sackler family name. This gets to a paradox at the heart of their story. The Sacklers donated lavishly to art museums and galleries, insisting in return that the family name be plastered prominently on the walls of institutions like the Guggenheim and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.