Erin ’s Reviews > Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty > Status Update

Purdue called these paid representatives "pain ambassadors " and the company flew them to emerging markets to promote opioids and warn about the dangers of opioiphobia.

At board meetings the Sackler's would vote to pay themselves 100 million here, 100 million there.

In 2016 overdoses had surpassed car accidents to become the leading cause of preventable death.

According to Richard Sackler, if people die because they abuse OxyContin, "Good riddance".

For those who had passed the point of no return, there was an inexpensive substitute for OxyContin that was cheaper and stronger and widely available: Heroin.

The DEA discussed the possibility of tightening the quotas on legal oxycodone that Purdue would have access to. The Sackler's called it a clear attack on the pain movement.

The Sackler's blamed "The Liberals" for cooking up a fake controversy over OxyContin.

In a 1996 email it was pointed out that according to Purdue's own data, physicians who attended dinner programs or weekend meetings wrote 2x more prescriptions for OxyContin.

Sales reps were instructed to inform doctors that fewer than 1% of patients who took OxyContin became addicted.

Portenoy described the fear of opioids as a kind of hysteria. He gave it a name "opiophobia".