Nearly half a million Americans have lost their lives from the ongoing public health emergency we’ve come to know as the opioid crisis. While many pharmaceutical companies have had a hand in creating the crisis, Purdue Pharma has played a special role. Purdue, which is owned by the Sackler family, was the first company in the 1990’s to successfully persuade the American medical establishment that these powerful and addictive drugs should be much more widely prescribed.