PORTLAND — Oregon’s attorney general has filed a new lawsuit against the maker of prescription opioid painkiller OxyContin, this time targeting the company’s owners.
The Oregonian/OregonLive reports Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum alleges in a suit announced Thursday that Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma and eight members of the Sackler family took billions of dollars out of the company.
Rosenblum says they transferred the money to their own accounts and continued to illegally market OxyContin. She says they have known for 20 years that OxyContin was addictive and deadly.
In April, the Sackler family said that a lawsuit filed by the Massachusetts attorney general that accuses Purdue Pharma and the family of hiding the risks of opioids is riddled with inaccurate and misleading statements.
The lawsuits are among some 2,000 filed in the past few years seeking to hold the drug industry responsible for a deadly national opioid crisis.
