Purdue Pharma, the maker of Oxycontin, announced through a court filing that co-owner Jonathan Sackler has died from cancer.
Jonathan Sackler, the son of Raymond Sackler, who bought Purdue Frederick in 1952, was an executive board member and oversaw the company’s name change to Purdue Pharma. He died last week, the company confirmed on Monday.
Sackler and his family had come under fire in recent years for producing the drug Oxycontin, which has killed more than 400,000 U.S. citizens since 2000. In May of 2019, New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art refused further donations from the Sackler family amid uproar surrounding the surge in deaths attributed to Oxycontin.
The family is expected to pay at least $3 billion to settle close to 3,000 lawsuits that have been filed against Purdue as a result of the large number of deaths from the painkiller.
