Photographer Nan Goldin is leading a campaign to hold the Sackler family and their privately owned company Purdue Pharma accountable for the opioid crisis caused by the addictive painkiller OxyContin. Marketed as 12-hour pain relief, the synthetic drug, which began selling in 1996, is closely related to heroin. Despite claims of long-lasting pain relief, the drug is known to wear off in varying amounts of time, the results of which, according to an article in the LA Times, lead to withdrawal symptoms and an ‘intense craving’. In Goldin’s change.org campaign, it’s stated that ‘In 2016, in the US alone, more than 43,000 people died from opioid overdoses, over a quarter of them from prescription opioids; 80 percent of heroin addicts began on prescription opioids.’ The campaign demands that the Sackler family find solutions to the opioid crisis by funding treatment and education programmes, and asking for institutions such as museums and art spaces to refuse any further donations from the Sacklers.
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16 January 2018
