Prior to Tuesday's filing, an earlier version of the memo had been submitted on December 21, according to NPR. However, that particular version was "more than half redacted after Purdue Pharma argued to withhold information about the Sacklers."
It should be noted that Purdue Pharma is owned by the Sackler family, which is regarded as one of the richest families in the US. Healey's allegations implicate eight members of the family and nine other Purdue directors and executives, including former Purdue Chairman and President Richard Sackler.
The filing details various instances in which Sackler obsessed about the drug's profits, stressing to other Purdue officials that representatives needed to push doctors harder to prescribe the narcotic to patients.
The pressure to have doctors prescribe the addictive product began at the OxyContin launch party, where Sackler, then the senior vice president responsible for sales, told event goers that "the launch of OxyContin Tablets will be followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition. The prescription blizzard will be so deep, dense and white."
A prescription blizzard, indeed. Over the next several years, doctors issued patients OxyContin as means to drown out pains and body aches, a practice that would eventually contribute to the US' current opioid crisis.
"They created a manmade disaster," Healy's memo reads. "Their blizzard of dangerous prescriptions buried children and parents and grandparents across Massachusetts, and the burials continue. From the beginning, the Sacklers were behind Purdue's decision to deceive doctors and patients."
In an email highlighted by Healy, in which a co-worker discusses the risks associated with OxyContin if the drug were abused by users, Sackler responds by simply saying: "How substantially would it improve your sales?"
In February 2001, after a federal prosecutor reported that 59 OxyContin-related deaths had taken place in just one US state, Sackler wrote in an email to Purdue executives that the report had underestimated the possible number of fatalities. "This is not too bad. It could have been far worse," he wrote
With reports of OxyContin-related deaths beginning to repeatedly pop up and families blaming Purdue, Sackler suggested a new tactic: placing the blame on users, court documents show.
"We have to hammer on the abusers in every way possible," Sackler wrote in another email. "They are the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals."
Also included in the court filing is a map which outlines the various areas within Massachusetts that the company targeted for promotion and marketing. Those included Boston, southeastern Massachusetts and Cape Cod.
The listed defendants have denied the allegations put forth by Healey, and Purdue Pharma released a statement disputing the memo's "biased and inaccurate characterizations" of company executives.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for January 25.
