The Sackler family, one of the richest in the country, has made their fortune on sales of the prescription pain killer OxyContin. The drug was introduced in the mid-1990s and since that time, there have been 200,000 deaths in the U.S from prescription opioids.
Now the Sackler family faces a flurry of new lawsuits over what they knew about how addictive OxyContin can be — and when they knew it.
Barry Meier has been following this story for many years. He’s the author of “Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit,” and a former New York Times reporter.