How the Opioid Crisis Started

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2018

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Prosecutors, seeking to hold someone accountable for the opioid epidemic, have been targeting doctors, dealers and users themselves. But those who made billions of dollars from sales of OxyContin, a painkiller at the center of the crisis, have gone largely unpunished. Guest: Barry Meier, the author of “Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic,” who has reported on Purdue Pharma and the opioid crisis for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From The New York Times, I'm Michael Warburrow, this is The Daily.
0:09.2	Today, in seeking accountability for the opioid epidemic,
0:14.0	prosecutors have been targeting the bottom wrong, users themselves.
0:19.9	But the family who made billions off the sales of the painkiller at the center of the epidemic
0:27.4	has gone largely unpunished.
0:32.4	It's Thursday, July 5.
0:38.7	There were three saccala brothers.
0:40.5	There was Arthur, Mornimer, and Raymond.
0:44.3	They all grew up in New York City.
0:46.0	They were from Brooklyn.
0:47.1	Their parents were immigrants, and they all eventually went to medical school and were trained
0:52.3	as research psychiatrist.
0:54.6	Barry Meyer has reported on the origin of the opioid epidemic for the times.
0:59.6	Arthur, the older brother, even while he was in medical training, worked part-time as a copywriter
1:06.7	in an advertising company that specialized in advertising prescription drugs.
1:12.2	And right around this time, which was not long after the end of World War II,
1:16.8	the pharmaceutical industry itself was exploding.
1:20.0	Companies were growing, they were producing more types of drugs,
1:23.9	lots of different antibiotics, for example.
1:26.9	And Arthur discovered he's got a real knack for this.
1:34.9	One of the more infamous ads that he created was an ad for an anti-biotic.
1:40.9	And it was essentially a testimonial where you had doctors testifying about what a great drug it was.
	...

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