Culture | The guilty and the gone

America’s opioid crisis developed in plain sight

Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz chronicle the tragedy in “American Cartel”

BINGHAMTON, NEW YORK - AUGUST 21: Family members of people who have died from overdosing on opioids mark International Overdose Awareness Day on August 21, 2021 in Binghamton, New York. The organization Truth Pharm gathered them together to call for drug reform policies and the prosecution of the Sackler family which manufactured and marketed Oxycontin. (Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

Jul 21st 2022

No name is more synonymous with the devastation inflicted by America’s opioid epidemic than Sackler. For over two decades, Purdue Pharma, a drug firm owned by members of the Sackler family, pumped OxyContin, a highly addictive opioid painkiller, into communities across the country. In “American Cartel”, Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz shed light on the other culprits—the callous executives, elected officials and government bureaucrats who fuelled what would become the deadliest drug crisis in American history—and on the few who tried to stop them.

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “The guilty and the gone”