Mortimer Sackler was the second son of Jewish immigrants Isaac Sackler, who was born in what is now Ukraine, and Sophie Sackler from Poland. His father was a grocer in Brooklyn, where Sackler attended Erasmus Hall High School. He had two brothers, Arthur, the oldest who died in 1987, and Raymond, the youngest of the three who died in 2017.
Education
He attended the Anderson College of Medicine of Glasgow University between 1937 and 1939. Although he was born in New York, he said that he was not accepted by a New York medical school because they had quotas on the number of Jewish students they would accept, at that time. He sailed steerage to the United Kingdom. In Glasgow there was a well-established Jewish community that offered him hospitality and supported him while he attended university. Due to the outbreak of the Second World War, Sackler was prevented from finishing his medical education at this school. He instead obtained an M.D. degree at the Middlesex University School of Medicine in Massachusetts, United States in 1944.
Early career
During the Korean War, he was an army psychiatrist in Denver, Colorado, before joining his brothers, Arthur and Raymond, both newly graduated medical doctors, at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Hospital in New York City. The three "became a moving force in the research and clinical outpatient department at Creedmore, which would become the Creedmore Institute for Psychobiologic Studies". According to The Independent, during the 1950s the brothers "undertook pioneering research into how alterations in bodily function can affect mental illness. This work contributed to a move away from treatments such as electroshock therapy and lobotomy towards pharmaceutical treatment or psychoanalysis."
Pharmaceuticals
In 1952, Mortimer and Raymond became the co-chairmen of a small Greenwich Village-based pharmaceutical company that Arthur had financed. The Purdue Frederick Company later became the Stamford, Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma. With Raymond, he established pharmaceutical companies in Austria, Canada, Cyprus, Germany, Switzerland, and the UK.
Purdue Pharma
At the time of Arthur Sackler's death in 1987, Purdue Pharma was a small drug company. In 1996, Purdue introduced its opioid drug, OxyContin. By 2001, eighty percent of Purdue Pharmacy's revenue came from the sale of OxyContin worth $3 billion. According to The New Yorker, OxyContin, a blockbuster drug "reportedly generated some 35 billion dollars in revenue for Purdue". Forbes listed the Sackler family as the 19th wealthiest in the United States in 2016 with a fortune of $13 billion. The largest part of the Sackler family's fortune came from the sale of OxyContin. Mortimer served as co-chairman of Purdue Pharma Inc from 1952 until 2007.
Sackler married three times. His first wife was Glasgow-born Muriel Lazarus ; they had three children before divorcing, Ilene Sackler Lefcourt, Kathe A. Sackler, M.D., and Robert Mortimer Sackler. His second wife was Gertraud "Geri" Wimmer; they had two children before divorcing, Mortimer David Alfons Sackler, and Samantha Sophia Sackler Hunt. In 1980, he married his third wife, Theresa Elizabeth Rowling, from Staffordshire, England who was formerly a teacher at the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion convent in London's Notting Hill Gate. In 2011, Rowling became Dame Theresa Sackler for her work as philanthropist. They had three children, Marissa Sackler, Sophia Sackler and Michael Sackler who were raised in London. Theresa is a member of the board of directors of Purdue Pharma. Sackler lived in London since 1974, when he renounced his American citizenship; he also spent time at his other properties including his estate in Berkshire Downs, Rooksnest, Berkshire with nineteen acres of ornate gardens by award-winning designer Arabella Lennox-Boyd. and in their residences in the Swiss Alps, and the French Riviera. According to a February 13, 2018 article in The Guardian, Mortimer Sackler had seven surviving children, three of whom are on the board of directors of the company he co-founded, Purdue Pharma—Ilene Sackler, Kathe A. Sackler, and Mortimer David Alfons Sackler, and four who are not—Samantha Sophia Sackler Hunt, Marissa Sackler, Sophie Sackler, and Michael Sackler.
Death
Sackler died at age 93 in Gstaad, Bern, Switzerland, survived by his wife and their son and two daughters, as well as four children from his previous two marriages, and his younger brother, Raymond Sackler.
Controversy
On October 30, 2017, The New Yorker published a multi-page exposé on Mortimer Sackler, Purdue Pharma, and the entire Sackler family. The article links Raymond and Arthur Sackler's business acumen with the rise of direct pharmaceutical marketing and eventually to the rise of addiction to OxyContin in the United States. The article implies that Sackler bears some moral responsibility for the opioid epidemic in the United States. In 2019 The New York Times ran a piece confirming that Sackler told company officials in 2008 to "measure our performance by Rx's by strength, giving higher measures to higher strengths". This was verified again with legally obtained documents tied to a new lawsuit, which was filed in June by the Massachusetts attorney general, Maura Healey. The Times reported that the lawsuit claims Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family "knew that putting patients on high dosages of OxyContin for long periods increased the risks of serious side effects, including addiction. Nonetheless, they promoted higher dosages because stronger pain pills brought the company and the Sacklers the most profit".
