EXCLUSIVE: NEW INFO ABOUT OPIOID-PROFITEERING FAMILY PUSHES LARGEST MUSEUM IN US TO RETHINK GIFT ACCEPTANCE POLICIES
https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/17/sackler-family-met-museum/
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is reviewing its gift acceptance policies after new information that members of a prominent donor family behind sales of the prescription opioid OxyContin covered up the drug’s dangers, The Met told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
A Tuesday court filing claims members of the Sackler family knew Purdue Pharma, the company they own, routinely failed to notify authorities that OxyContin was being abused and sold illegally, reported The New York Times.
More than 40,000 people died of opioid-related drug overdoses in 2016, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and about half of those deaths involved legally obtained prescription meds.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is reviewing its gift acceptance policies after information that members of a prominent donor family headed a deceit campaign to push the highly addictive prescription opioid OxyContin, The Met told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Other New York City art museums that have taken money from the Sackler family, which owns Purdue Pharma, refused to comment on the Tuesday court filing with documents showing members of the Sackler family covered up information about the dangers of OxyContin.
“The Sackler family has been connected with The Met for more than a half century. The family is a large extended group and their support of The Met began decades before the opioid crisis. The Met is currently engaging in a further review of our detailed gift acceptance policies, and we will have more to report in due course,” Daniel H. Weiss, president and CEO of The Met, told TheDCNF in a statement Thursday.
An employee at The Met told TheDCNF news about the Sackler family is what prompted the institution to review its policy, although the employee would not detail any review timeline. (RELATED: Opioid Profiteering Family Headed Deceit Campaign Surrounding OxyContin, Documents Show)
Sackler family members gave a whopping $20 million to the Dia Art Foundation, $300,000 to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and $180,000 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art between 2013 and 2015, according to a 2017 investigation by TheDCNF.
The New York City art institutions are open about their affiliations with the Sacklers, even though some critics have referred to the family’s donations as “blood money.” Because of these donations, the Sackler name is featured prominently at the Guggenheim Museum’s Sackler Center for Arts Education and The Met’s Sackler Wing.
But $20.4 million is a paltry sum compared to the family’s Purdue Pharma fortune. The Sacklers have given away millions for science, medicine and the arts in recent years, but a 2017 DCNF investigation found no evidence the family is using its vast personal wealth to help recovering opioid addicts. The Sacklers were the 19th-richest family in the U.S. in 2016 with an estimated $13 billion net worth, according to Forbes. OxyContin was Purdue Pharma’s biggest revenue stream with $35 billion in sales between 1995 and 2015.
More than 40,000 people died of opioid-related drug overdoses in 2016, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Nearly half of those deaths involved legally obtained prescription medications, according to the National Institute for Health Care Management.
“It’s blood money,” Andrew Kolodny, Brandeis University’s co-director of Opioid Policy Research, told TheDCNF in 2017. “I would hope the institutions that are taking Sackler money would begin to think about it and treat it in the same way they would a donation from [Colombian drug lord] Pablo Escobar.”