Book about Sackler family and opioid crisis wins UK prize

By JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — A book about a wealthy American family whose actions helped unleash the United States’ opioid epidemic has won Britain’s leading nonfiction book prize. Patrick Radden Keefe’s “Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty” was awarded the 50,000 pound ($67,000) Baillie Gifford Prize during a ceremony Tuesday at London’s Science Museum. Keefe’s book chronicles the billionaire Sackler clan, owner of Purdue Pharma, whose members used their fortune to fund museums and art galleries around the world. A reckoning has come with the revelation that much of that fortune was based on OxyContin, a powerful prescription painkiller that the company developed in the 1990s and marketed aggressively to doctors.