The opioid epidemic, also referred to as the opioid crisis, is the rapid increase in drug use and overdose deaths attributed either in part or in whole to the class of drugs called opiates/opioids since the 1990s.
Opioids are a diverse class of moderate to strong painkillers, including oxycodone, hydrocodone, morphine, heroin, and fentanyl.
Due to the sedative effects of opioids, opioids may cause respiratory failure and death.
From 1999 to 2021, approximately 645,000 Americans died from opioid use. The number of overdose deaths involving opioids in 2021 was ten times what it was in 1999.
The Sackler family is a Jewish family who owned the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma and later founded Mundipharma. They were described as the "most evil family in America", and "the worst drug dealers in history".
In late 2020, the Committee on Oversight and Reform of the US House of Representatives held a hearing on the role of Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family in the opioid epidemic. Regarding the Sacklers, author Patrick Radden Keefe stated "They could produce a rehearsed simulacrum of human empathy" but were "impervious to any genuine moral epiphany." Jim Cooper, a congressman from Tennessee, stated to David Sackler: "Watching you testify makes my blood boil. I am not sure I am aware of any family in America that's more evil than yours."
