Collins took opioid-linked contributions, opposed corporate accountability

Since the onset of the opioid epidemic, Senator Susan Collins has taken thousands of dollars in political contributions from companies and individuals that have profited from the manufacture and distribution of prescription opioids.

In 2007, Collins’ re-election campaign received $2,300 from Jonathan Sackler, former vice president and son of the former head of Purdue Pharmaceuticals.

That donation was made just two months before Purdue agreed to pay $600 million in fines for misleading regulators, doctors, and patients about the addictive nature of OxyContin, its version of oxycodone. But the Sackler family’s business practices continued even after this settlement. In 2011, they were still pushing the company to develop a low-cost equivalent to OxyContin, to “capture more cost sensitive patients,” as one family member put it in an email.

The surge in supply of legal, prescription opioids resulted in nearly 100,000 deaths in the U.S. from 2006 through 2012. In Maine, over 2,200 people died by overdose between 2007 and 2018.

Read more: https://mainebeacon.com/collins-took-opioid-linked-contributions-opposed-corporate-accountability/