A member of the family that owns Purdue Pharma cast blame on victims of the opioid epidemic in nearly 20-year-old emails that have been made public in a lawsuit brought by Connecticut’s attorney general.
The lawsuit says Richard Sackler wrote to an acquaintance in 2001, “Abusers aren’t victims; they are the victimizers.”
The emails are similar in tone to other previous statements from Sackler that have been made public through lawsuits against Purdue or its controlling family.
About 2,000 lawsuits against the Connecticut-based company, the maker of OxyContin, have been filed around the country.
In a partial transcript of a March deposition provided this week by a family spokesman, Sackler said of the 2001 emails that he no longer sees addiction the same way and that “my views have evolved.”