For decades, the Sackler family bestowed tens of millions of dollars on hallowed universities and museums in the United States, the U.K., Europe, and Asia. Their philanthropy extended to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Peking University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, the Louvre, the British Museum, the Tate, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Serpentine, to name a few. As recognition for the billionaire pharmaceutical clan's largesse, their name was plastered on galleries, wings, and rooms housing valuable artworks and artifacts—until, that is, information about the source of one branch's wealth came to light: They owned and operated Purdue Pharma, maker of Oxycontin, the highly addictive supernova painkiller regarded as the kick-starter of the opioid crisis, which has claimed the lives of…
