An exhibit on addiction sits above Harvard’s Sackler Museum. Yes, those Sacklers.

I am a drug addict, albeit a sober one for just over five years. Like many, my experience with addiction brought devastation, despair and destruction, culminating in the loss of my job, my home, my family and almost my life. But I did not want to die, so I clawed my way out of the early grave I’d dug for myself.

Sobriety is always in the back of my mind, so when I saw the word “Addiction” in bold black letters on the Boston subway in November, my curiosity was piqued. It was an ad for an exhibit titled “Objects of Addiction: The Opium Empire and the Chinese Art Trade” at the Harvard Art Museums. I made a plan to visit a few weeks later with my brother.

The Harvard Art Museums, a collection of smaller museums and galleries, are housed in a beautiful building with a glass ceiling and five-story atrium courtyard. The Opium and Addiction Exhibit was housed in the special exhibitions hall on the third floor. Before my brother and I made our way up to the special exhibit, we decided to stroll through the second floor, which had hundreds of stunning and priceless works of art. However, the more pieces I admired, the more I saw the name “Arthur M. Sackler” proudly displayed on the accompanying placards.

As we left the second floor gallery, I looked up at the entrance. Regal silver letters announced it was the Arthur M. Sackler Museum. My stomach churned as I realized the irony before me: An exhibit about the opium trade was located directly above a museum donated by Arthur M. Sackler.

The Sacklers need no introduction — they are arguably the most hated family in America. Their privately held drug company, Purdue Pharma, developed and peddled OxyContin, helping to catalyze the opioid crisis that has brought misery to our country for over two decades. When Purdue Pharma first introduced OxyContin, it was hailed as a revolutionary non-habit-forming “miracle drug” that could safely and effectively manage pain, from minor headaches to debilitating cancer. In reality, Purdue Pharma grossly underreported the drug’s potential for abuse and used fraudulent and deceptive tactics to market OxyContin as a less addictive alternative to other painkillers on the market.

Purdue Pharma’s ruthless marketing tactics work — sales skyrocketed from $48 million in 1996 to over $1 billion in 2000. A 2021 research paper in Voices in Bioethics found that Purdue often cherry-picked data from studies the company itself either partly or fully funded; referenced decades-old flawed research over more current and applicable data; and intentionally misrepresented research and paraphrased unsupported claims to argue for increased prescribing.

The key figures in the Sackler family were three brothers, Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond, whose management of Purdue Pharma bore striking similarities to that of a drug cartel, except run by middle-aged white men with “MD” after the end of their names. When the DEA began investigating the pharmaceutical industry’s role in the opioid crisis, it did so in the same way it investigated drug cartels — the agents began with those at the lowest level (in this case, the “street dealers” were doctors), then slowly moved up the chain of command from pharmacies to wholesalers and distributors to drug manufacturers.

Arthur M. Sackler died in 1987, before the formulation of OxyContin, but opioid addiction has become irrevocably linked to his namesakes and heirs. For me, seeing a museum wing adorned with the Sackler name was comparable to seeing a gallery named after Josef Mengele. And to make matters worse, the fact that it was located directly below an exhibit about opium and the empire it funded cannot be overlooked — although it seems to have been by the curators of the Harvard Art Museums.

Boston is the major city in a state with addiction rates 30 percent higher than the national average. One might think that such scholarly and cultured academics, who are part of the oldest educational institution in the country, might have some semblance of situational awareness. I am appalled that such a renowned university hasn’t followed in the footsteps of its fellow elite institutions — like the Smithsonian Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim, Oxford University, the Louvre and many more — that have had the presence of mind to remove the Sackler name from their halls.

And while your average citizen may not experience the same gut-wrenching reaction I did seeing the Sackler name, anyone who has experienced addiction, or who loves someone who has, would see it as a slap in the face — which will go unpunished, just like the extensive crimes committed by the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma.

Caroline Walz is a health sciences undergraduate student at Northeastern University and works at a hospital in Boston.