Richard Sackler, the former president of Purdue Pharma, agreed with his head of sales and marketing in 1997 not to alert doctors that OxyContin is a stronger painkiller than morphine, according to secret court documents obtained by David Armstrong of ProPublica and Stat News.
Why it matters: The deception around OxyContin, a drug that many say has fueled the country's opioid crisis, appears to have gone all the way to the top to include the billionaire family that founded Purdue.