Raymond Sackler

On December 9, 2021 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, along with the Sackler family, announced the removal of the Sackler family name from seven named galleries, including the wing that houses the iconic Temple of Dendur. In 2022, the British Museum announced that it would rename the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Rooms and the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Wing, as part of "development of the new masterplan", and that it "made this decision together through collaborative discussions" with the Sackler Foundation.

Sackler married Beverly Feldman in 1944. They had two sons, Richard S. Sackler and Jonathan D. Sackler. Beverly Sackler died on October 15, 2019, at the age of 95.

In 2019, the New York Times revealed that Sackler had told company officials in 2008 to "measure our performance by Rx’s by strength, giving higher measures to higher strengths." This was verified by legally obtained documents tied to a new lawsuit filed in June 2018 by the Massachusetts attorney general, Maura Healey. The lawsuit claims that 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. On February 1, 2019, Healey released unredacted documents showing that the Sacklers directed doctors to overprescribe the drug and listed doctors (under the code name "Region Zero") who overprescribed Oxycontin for the Sackler family's profit rather than patients' health.

On October 30, 2017, The New Yorker published a multi-page exposé on Raymond Sackler, Purdue Pharma, and the 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 Raymond Sackler bears moral responsibility for the opioid epidemic in the United States.

In 2011, The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Distinguished Lecture Series in Neuroscience was established at Cardiff University.

In 2010, The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Foundation Science Fund in honor of Ralph J. Cicerone, at the National Academy of Sciences (USA) was established to provide support of scientific programs independent of governmental requests/funding.

They received two awards from the Medical Society of the State of New York: the First Award for Scientific Research; and one year later, Honorable Mention for Scientific Research. In 1998, Sackler was awarded a Doctor of Law Honoris Causa from the University of Cambridge.

Together with his brothers, in 1980 Sackler established doctoral educational programs at two US Universities: Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts University and Sackler Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at New York University School of Medicine. He and his wife Beverly established the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Medical Research Centre at the University of Cambridge, School of Clinical Medicine (UK) and were sponsors at that medical school of the MB/PhD Program and a new cancer research program.

The Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, sponsored conjointly with Sackler's two brothers in 1964, includes the Sackler School of Medicine, the Maurice and Gabriel Goldschleger School of Dental Medicine and the Sackler Institute of Molecular Medicine.

Sackler was certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (P) in 1957, and was a Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. Sackler, with his two brothers, Arthur and Mortimer, co-founded the Creedmoor Institute for Psychobiological Studies in New York City, where they engaged in research in the psycho-biology of schizophrenia and manic depressive psychosis.

When World War II began, he stayed in Scotland and volunteered in the British Home Guard, and he also served as a plane spotter. He returned to the U.S. and completed his studies at Middlesex University School of Medicine (a school on the site of the present-day Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts), where he received his MD degree in 1944.

Raymond Sackler KBE (February 16, 1920 – July 17, 2017) was an American physician and businessman. He acquired Purdue Pharma together with his brothers Arthur M. Sackler and Mortimer Sackler. Purdue Pharma is the developer of OxyContin, the drug at the center of the opioid epidemic in the United States.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1920 to a Jewish family, Sackler was educated at Erasmus High School and attended New York University, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1938. Due to Jewish quotas imposed by the major U.S. medical schools during that era, he started his medical education at Anderson College of Medicine in Glasgow, Scotland, which he attended from 1938 to 1940.