Kate Tasker
Kate Tasker
Kate is the director of the Industry Documents Library.

Over 1.5 Million Opioid Industry Documents Now Available in UCSF Industry Documents Library

The Opioid Industry Documents Archive (OIDA), a project of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Johns Hopkins University (JHU), now contains more than 1.5 million previously internal documents which have been made public through litigation against the opioid industry.

Last month the OIDA released over 1.4 million documents from the generic opioid maker Mallinckrodt, which filed for bankruptcy in 2020. They include emails, memos, presentations, sales reports, budgets, audit reports, Drug Enforcement Administration briefings, meeting agendas and minutes, expert witness reports, and depositions of company executives.

This week the OIDA also released more than 114,000 documents related to McKinsey and Company’s work as a management consulting firm for the opioid industry. As recently reported in The New York Timesthe documents show how McKinsey advised opioid makers Purdue Pharma, Endo Pharmaceuticals, Johnson and Johnson, and Mallinckrodt to help them increase sales, despite the growing public outcry over the opioid epidemic. 

UCSF and JHU launched the OIDA in March 2021 as a free digital resource for anyone interested in learning more about the circumstances leading to the opioid crisis, which has contributed to the deaths of more than half a million people. UCSF hosts the OIDA as part of the Industry Documents Library.

The archive’s mission is transparency—to deliver to the public a wealth of information that those who have been personally affected, as well as researchers, policymakers, and others, can now analyze to gain insights into the epidemic. 

The OIDA builds upon the foundation of UCSF’s groundbreaking Truth Tobacco Industry Documents archive, which for over two decades has fostered scientific and public health discoveries transforming tobacco policy in the U.S. and worldwide. 

Read the press release or visit the Opioid Industry Documents Archive to learn more.

Image by David Schwarzenberg from Pixabay