This piece by The New Yorker (a timely follow-up to last week’s post about prescription opioids) gives a look into how one of America’s wealthiest families, the Sacklers, accumulated much of their fortune through the development and success of prescription pain medication OxyContin.

The Sackler name is synonymous with their philanthropic contributions to the arts and can be found on plaques across the world, from the Guggenheim museum to a wing at the Louvre. But it is much harder to find this name associated with the family’s pharmaceutical business, Purdue Pharma. Since sales of this powerful drug started in the mid to late 1990s, America’s dependence on opioid pain medications has skyrocketed, and so has the number of deaths related to prescription opioid overdoses.