Sales of OxyContin were at an all-time high, but the amount of oxycodone prescribed by American doctors was beginning to flatten. Ed Mahony, Purdue’s chief financial officer, warned the Sacklers that projections now indicated sales of OxyContin could plateau. If that was the case, the promised decade of annual $700 million disbursements would almost certainly not materialize, and this worried the family. Richard convened a meeting in the summer of 2009, in order to strategize about how to “reverse the decline.”
