Opioid Maker Purdue Pharma’s 6-Year Bankruptcy Ends, Questions Remain for Foulkes’ Ties
GoLocalProv News Team and Josh Fenton
Opioid Maker Purdue Pharma’s 6-Year Bankruptcy Ends, Questions Remain for Foulkes’ Ties
Purdue Pharma is considered the company that, through its marketing and products, fueled the opioid crisis.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST
Sackler Money Poured into Foulkes' Family Center - Campaign Donations From Their Lobbyist
Purdue Pharma was owned and managed by the Sackler family. The Sacklers have had close ties to Rhode Island gubernatorial candidates Helena Foulkes and her family.
The Sacklers were major donors to Foulkes’ family center — the Dodd Center. Foulkes' uncle is former U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd. He was a strong defender of Purdue Pharma and repelled investigations into the company's practices.
For more than a decade, while Foulkes served on and chaired the board and other handpicked board members were Jonathan Sackler, Vice President of Purdue Pharma and a powerful Purdue Pharma lobbyist. Jonathan's parents — Raymond and Beverly Sackler — underwrote the “Raymond and Beverly Distinguished Lecture Series” at the Dodd Center.
The drug money poured into the Dodd Center.
Raymond Sackler was one of the three brothers who created the massive Purdue Pharma empire. He and his wife pumped millions into the Dodd Center and UConn as a whole — a reported $4.5 million. UConn refused to release the details of the Sacklers' donations.
And that Sackler lobbyist and Foulkes family friend, Steve Kinney, also served on the board under Foulkes.
Kinney is a longstanding Purdue Pharma lobbyist, a former staffer and close confidant to Senator Dodd, and a repeated donor to Foulkes’ gubernatorial campaign. Kinney was the vice chair of the Dodd Center board as Foulkes was chair.
During Foulkes' first run for governor and just two months before Foulkes pronounced her “anger” at Purdue Pharma — the company that is considered to have been the leading cause of the opioid crisis and the corresponding impacts on families across the country and in Rhode Island — she solicited a $1,000 campaign contribution from Kinney.
In an interview on GoLocalLIVE in January of 2022, Foulkes took no responsibility for her or CVS's role in the opioid epidemic and blamed Purdue Pharma and made one of the first of many false claims about her knowledge and CVS’s role in the epidemic.
“I’m also really angry. I am angry because Purdue Pharma, in particular, lied to all of us, and that, that really makes me angry. You know, all I can say is that as soon as we saw what was going on, we took action, and I feel very strongly about that,” said Foulkes.
And just two months after that interview, she took another $1,000 from Kinney, the Purdue Pharma lobbyist.
It was an all-in-the-family relationship between the Sacklers and Foulkes' family.
Early Warning, Dodd's Defense of Purdue Pharma
In the early 2000s, it was becoming clear that the Sackler family's Purdue Pharma was driving a massive marketing effort to push Oxycodone to doctors and potential customers.
On February 12, 2002, a critical hearing was held by the United States Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor, and Pensions. Dodd was a senior member of the committee — second only to chairman Ted Kennedy.
As public health experts were raising concerns about the spread of opioids and specifically the role of Purdue Pharma's OxyContin, Dodd voiced at the hearing his “high regard” for Purdue Pharma.
“As I said at the outset in my prepared statement, I represent Purdue Pharma, they are constituents of mine, and I know them well and the people who work there. I have been down there on numerous occasions during my service in the Senate. I have a very, very high regard for them and their employees who work very, very hard producing quality products,” said Dodd.
One of the individuals testifying was a small-town physician named Art Van Zee. He raised concerns at that time, now more than two decades ago, about how his county was being ravaged specifically by Purdue Pharma and its lead product, OxyContin.
Dr. Van Zee warned the Committee in his testimony, “Contrary to what is sometimes portrayed in the media as long term drug addicts switching to the drug du jour, what we have seen for the most part is numerous young people recreationally using OxyContin and then becoming very rapidly addicted. Many of these kids are good kids, good families, with bright, promising futures that are being destroyed in every way by their opioid addiction. Opioids—as derivatives of opium—are the most powerful pain medication—with morphine being most familiar to you. OxyContin addiction is opioid addiction, the same as morphine or heroin addiction and wreaks the same havoc on individuals, families, and communities. It is hard to find a family in Lee County that has not been touched directly or indirectly by this problem of OxyContin abuse. This is a sadly repetitive story for the numerous areas of the country now affected by this from Washington County, Maine to southern Florida.”
According to the CDC, the opioid crisis took more than 700,000 lives — driven by OxyContin and similar drugs.
Friday’s ruling in a New York bankruptcy court functionally ends the six year bankruptcy battle, but additional litigation could continue.
Further, the U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuit against CVS continues on a separate track.
The lawsuit has implications for the Rhode Island governor’s race, as Foulkes was the president of CVS for a portion of the time that the government is litigating.
If the claims by the Justice Department are proven true; they unveil a perverse, profit-driven strategy implemented by the corporation that not only violated the health standards but constructed a system that required pharmacists to ignore “red flags” and to fill as many opioid prescriptions as possible.
The Sackler owners have denied wrongdoing but agreed to fund $6.5 billion in settlement payments over time that will be distributed to state and local governments, healthcare providers and individuals. Purdue itself will contribute another $900 million.
Members of the Sackler family will also cumulatively retain billions of their personal wealth derived from he companies profits from the sale of OxyContin.
EDITOR’S NOTE: An ongoing investigation by GoLocal starting in 2017 into the opioid crisis and the devastating effect it has had on Rhode Island families, led us to the role Helena Foulkes — the president of CVS — the pharmacy giant that has agreed to pay $4.9 billion for its role and is presently being sued by the U.S. Department of Justice.
In 2022, GoLocal asked Foulkes, then a gubernatorial candidate, about her role and she told us a story. Foulkes is a highly educated and accomplished businesswoman, but the story simply did not compute.
Over the past few months, as we dug into thousands of documents — including SEC records, documents from her family’s Dodd Center, and a range of other public documents — we uncovered the intertwined financial and political relationship between Foulkes and her family with the Sackler family, Purdue Pharma, and one of their top lobbyists. The relationship’s foundation is money and influence.
Foulkes has made statements that were intentionally misleading or meant to deceive by omission.