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Welcome to "Full Frontal."
I am Samantha Bee.
Now, despite what you may have heard on Fox News,
not everyone on the Left wants to eat the rich.
For one thing, the rich are high in additives, like silicone
and Viagra and whatever it is that changed the entire shape
of Jeff Bezos's torso.
I wanna say powdered Vin Diesel.
But in this age of extreme inequality,
we do need to scrutinize how the super wealthy
came by their billions and what that means for the rest of us--
in a new segment we like to call Meet the Rich.
Meet the Sackler family--
art patrons, cosmopolitans, and, believe it or not,
almost single-handedly responsible for
the nationwide opioid crisis.
The Sacklers aren't just rich.
They are rich.
They have wings named after them at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, the Louvre, an entire museum at Harvard,
a center at the Guggenheim.
And if the deal goes through, Post Malone will soon be called
the Sackler Post Malone--
horrifying, and yet somehow an improvement.
So how do you get to have this many museums
name shit after you?
By having a fortune of $13 billion, which you, woops,
largely made by creating the opioid crisis.
The Sacklers' family business, which they own in full,
is Purdue Pharma, a company best known for developing OxyContin,
one of the most prescribed and abused opioids
in the United States.
Before OxyContin, there was no opioid crisis
because most opioid prescriptions
were saved for only serious conditions like cancer.
Gee, I wonder what could have changed.
There's no question that the marketing of OxyContin
was the most aggressive marketing
of a narcotic drug ever undertaken
by a pharmaceutical producer.
The FDA allowed them to make the claim that because it was
a long-acting drug, it might--
the stress being on the word might--
be less prone to addiction and abuse than traditional drugs.
There was absolutely no science to support this idea--
zero.
The Sacklers deliberately marketed a drug
as possibly less addictive when they had no reason
to believe that was true?
That is insanely evil.
Even drug dealers will say, don't
take too much of this, lady.
I can tell by your blazer that you cannot handle it.
After this marketing push, the number of opioid prescriptions
jumped from 76 million to more than 200 million
over just 22 years.
The number of oxycodone prescriptions
alone jumped 850%.
One family did that--
one.
The biggest thing my family ever accomplished
was getting banned in three consecutive Olive Gardens.
When you're there, you're family--
unless you're a family who steals other people's
breadsticks.
That kind of accomplishment must be commemorated.
Since they like museums so much, we made them one.
Welcome to the Sackler Museum of Stupid Shit the Sacklers Bought
With Their Blood Money.
The opioid crisis that the Sackler family created
kills roughly 130 Americans per day.
That's at least 200,000 overall and probably many more.
That means that the Sackler family has made roughly $20,000
per overdose death-- or one Toyota Yaris per death.
Beep, beep.
If I had caused that much suffering,
I would never show my face in public again.
But the Sacklers regularly flaunt their wealth,
like in a 2013 "Vogue" spread on the Hamptons weekend house
owned by Mortimer Sackler, Jr., and his wife
Jacqueline Sackler.
Oh-ho-ho.
Sounds lovely, especially the garden
where one of their children likes
to grow herbs as a self-taught student
of traditional medicines.
Oh, traditional medicines?
What a great hobby for the more than 40,000
children in foster care because of their parents'
opioid addiction.
Maybe they wouldn't be in this predicament
if they just crushed up a wholesome [INAUDIBLE]
root for Mummy's headache.
Aw.
The Sacklers knew exactly what they were doing
when it came to pushing drugs.
In fact, even after Purdue pled guilty to misrepresenting
OxyContin, then-president Richard Sackler,
who wins the fiercely competitive title
of worst Sackler, came up with a game plan
to keep selling pills.
WOMAN: Purdue Pharma, trying to protect sales of its painkiller
OxyContin, made plans to fight back
against the emotional messages from mothers
with teenagers that overdosed.
In an email in the court filing, the company's former president
Richard Sackler wrote, "We have to hammer on the abusers.
They are the culprits and the problem.
They are reckless criminals."
Then he added, "And I definitely
hope nobody finds this email, or they're gonna
know I'm a real piece of shit.
Robble, robble, robble, robble."
Oh my god.
Why would he put that line in there?
And why is he the Hamburglar?
The Sacklers were already disgustingly rich before they
started the opioid crisis.
In the '80s, Mortimer Sackler, Sr.,
had his birthday party in the family's
Egyptian wing of the Met.
Do you know how rich you have to be to rent out the Met?
And you have to buy a bat to fight off the paintings
when they come alive at night.
By the way, at that party, he had the most
horrifying cake of all time.
That is Mortimer Sackler's face on the Sphinx
as interpreted by I'm guessing a contestant from "Nailed It!"
But terrible cake notwithstanding, they
were rich enough to have the fanciest birthday party
possible in New York City.
They could've stopped there.
But they thought, eh, let's go ahead and do an epidemic.
The Sacklers actively tried to hide the strength of OxyContin
from doctors, which in turn hid the risk from patients.
But at least Purdue didn't directly
tell patients that the chance of opioid addiction
was far from actual fact.
Some patients may be afraid of taking opioids
because they're perceived as too strong or addictive.
But that is far from actual fact.
That video actually played in doctors' offices.
You know, nothing makes me feel safer when I'm waiting
for my test results than an "X-Files"
villain standing on a blood-red background
telling me to take a pill.
Now, some of the Sacklers think it's totally unfair to mention
where their money comes from.
Joss Sackler, because of course her name is Joss,
launched a line of neon hoodies.
Now, these hoodies are definitely
the most fashionable way to say, nobody
ever gives me honest feedback.
Joss, who married into the Sackler family,
was so mad that a "New York Times" article
about her fashion line mentioned the opioid epidemic that she
said, stop talking about who the men in my life are
and review the fucking neon hoodies.
Joss, queen, no woman should be judged for what
the men in their lives do--
I mean, unless that woman got the money for her fashion line
from her husband's billion dollar drug dealership.
But fair is fair.
So let me take a moment to review your hoodies.
Fugly.
Now, not all the Sacklers I've talked about share
equal culpability in the opioid crisis.
For example, only Richard Sackler did this.
Richard Sackler complained that he was getting
too much information about the dangers of Purdue opioids
after setting up one of those Google alerts
for news about OxyContin.
The filing says his staff immediately
offered to replace the alert with something that provided
more flattering stories.
Wow.
If you're watching my show online right now,
that's why the video is titled "Richard Sackler Handsome
Big Penis Not a Murderer."
But the Sacklers do share one thing.
Much of their vast personal fortunes
come from the sale of drugs that have killed hundreds
of thousands of people.
Purdue Pharma is currently being sued
and is reportedly considering bankruptcy
to protect their assets.
Well, fuck that.
They need to give every penny of that blood money
to addiction treatment.
So you pill-pushing aristocrats, save your weirdo cake money,
and sell your fancy Hamptons homes,
and give it all to help the countless people you've hurt.
Maybe then your family can focus on its next real passion,
making apparel for wealthy crossing guards.
We'll be right back.
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