Met Museum Will No Longer Take Money From OxyContin's Sackler Family

Source: Huffington Post

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City will no longer accept money from members of the billionaire Sackler family, which owns the company that makes the opioid OxyContin, the museum announced Wednesday.

The museum said its board of trustees made the decision Tuesday after reflecting on the current opioid crisis, the individuals’ ties to opioid production and the scores of lawsuits against them and their company, Purdue Pharma.

“The Sackler family has graciously supported The Met for 50 years and has not proposed any new contributions,” Daniel Weiss, president and CEO of the Met, said in a statement to HuffPost. “Nonetheless, in consideration of the ongoing litigation, the prudent course of action at this time is to suspend acceptance of gifts from individuals associated with this public health crisis.”

Litigation from U.S. states, counties and cities accuse members of the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma of exacerbating and profiting from the opioid epidemic through deceptive marketing of the prescription painkiller. New York’s attorney general, in a lawsuit filed in March, accused the Sackler family of being the “masterminds” of a scheme that led to the national opioid epidemic, NPR reported.

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U.S. NEWS 05/15/2019 02:29 pm ET Updated 1 hour ago
By Nina Golgowski


Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/met-museum-sackler-donations_n_5cdc3cf4e4b09d94af540f64