The Red OxyContin Kings

Newly Declassified FBI Files Reveal that the Three Founding Brothers of the Sackler Dynasty were Committed Communists

It might surprise many people that the three Sackler brothers who founded Purdue Pharma were zealous communists before they became uber-capitalists. Decades before Forbes listed them as one of America’s wealthiest families, with a net worth of $14 billion, the FBI had investigated the Sacklers for 25 years over suspicions about their communist sympathies and at one stage whether they might have been involved in espionage.

I broke the news about the family's communist history in my 2020 book, Pharma Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America. That scoop came from declassified FBI files I received after I made a series of Freedom of Information Act requests starting in 2015 about the brothers, Arthur, Mortimer, and Raymond.

When Beverly Sackler (née Feldman), Raymond's wife, a long time Purdue board director, died in 2019, I made another FOIA request (government agencies will not release information when someone is alive, unless that person gives written permission).

Three and a half year…