cottage outside Floyd, Virginia, is a tranquil stage-set for Ellen Isaacs to wage one of the longest-running wars of the opioid epidemic: the battle to hold OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma, its owners and executives, to just account.
“Ryan didn’t choose to live his life this way,” she wrote in a recent legal submission to a New York court, describing the devastation caused by opioid addiction as a national mental health crisis. “The Sacklers poisoned my son’s mind … and used their marketing team and physicians to administer synthetic heroin to my son.”
If the ruling that vacated the bankruptcy settlement is overturned, and the deal is reinstated in bankruptcy court, the mom turned activist-advocate plans to take her case to the supreme court. If it’s upheld, then members of the Sackler family, facing legal exposure, would probably do the same. “This needs to stop and the government needs to intervene. I’m sick of hearing about Purdue’s money. The money isn’t going to make a dent in the crisis that’s going on,” Isaacs says. “The Sacklers need to be indicted. No swanky prison, no TVs, no Bernie Madoff, Martha Stewart specials. Put an ankle monitor on them and put them out in the community to help clear up the mess.”
Isaacs was put on OxyContin repeatedly after a surgeries in the late 90s. Her son Ryan had a similar experience. Living in Florida, they found themselves at the center of the pill-mill distribution era of the early 2000s.