“OxyContin was introduced in a market dominated by generic opioids,” a Purdue spokesman told The New Yorker in 2017. The vast majority of prescriptions for opioid pain medications is for generics, he said. But to some who worked at Purdue and were familiar with the convoluted holdings of the Sackler clan, this talking point seemed egregiously insincere, because the Sacklers secretly owned another pharmaceutical company, in addition to Purdue, and it was one of the biggest manufacturers of generic opioids in the United States.
