Nonprofits Named in Opioid Lawsuit Stay Mum About Ties to Sacklers

Most of the nonprofits carrying the Sackler family name that were cited in a lawsuit filed by the New York Attorney General’s Office are staying mum about whether they might consider removing the Sackler name from their properties.

The lawsuit seeks penalties against the Sackler family, which owns Purdue Pharma. Among its many allegations, the lawsuit claims that the family used philanthropy as a shield against criticism for its role in marketing addictive painkillers.

“Ultimately, the Sacklers used their ill-gotten wealth to cover up their misconduct with a philanthropic campaign intending to whitewash their decades-long success in profiting at New Yorkers’ expense,” the lawsuit says. The suit specifically names the following organizations, all in New York, as beneficiaries of Sackler funds:

• The American Museum of Natural History’s Sackler Educational Laboratory
• The Dia Art Foundation’s Sackler Institute
• The Guggenheim Museum’s Sackler Center for Arts Education
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Sackler Wing
• NewYork Presbyterian Hospital, which received $6 million from the Dr. Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation.

Before the New York lawsuit, the Guggenheim announced that it would not accept future gifts from the Sackler family and that it hadn’t received a gift from them since 2015. Daniel Weiss, president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, said the museum was reviewing its gift-acceptance policies.

The Chronicle reached out to the other institutions cited in the lawsuit. NewYork Presbyterian Hospital declined to comment, and the others did not respond to messages.

A spokeswoman said the Sackler family is supporting solutions to save lives by preventing addiction and abuse of prescription medicines. “That is why we are voluntarily contributing $75 million to the groundbreaking National Center for Addiction Studies and Treatment, which was announced earlier this week in Oklahoma,” the statement says. That contribution is linked to a $270 million settlement in Oklahoma where Purdue denied any wrongdoing.

The lawsuit follows news of museums and universities in Britain and the United States reviewing their ties to Sackler money, in some cases refusing future donations. However the majority have decided not to give back funds or remove the Sackler name from buildings and programs.

Other defendants in the New York lawsuit include Johnson & Johnson and Janssen Pharmaceuticals; British-based Mallinckrodt; Dublin-based Endo and Allergan; Israeli pharmaceutical company Teva; and the drug distributors McKesson, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and the Rochester Drug Cooperative.