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The New York state attorney general has begun issuing subpoenas to 33 financial institutions and investment advisers with ties to the Sackler family, part of an aggressive effort to track billions of dollars that prosecutors claim the family siphoned out of Purdue Pharma to hide profits gained from the company’s opioid painkillers. (Rabin, 8/15)

A confidential government document containing evidence so critical it had the potential to change the course of an American tragedy was kept in the dark for more than a decade. The document, known as a “prosecution memo,” details how government lawyers believed that Purdue Pharma, the maker of the powerful opioid, OxyContin, knew early on that the drug was fueling a rise in abuse and addiction. They also gathered evidence indicating that the company’s executives had misled the public and Congress.“ The Weekly” shines a light on that 2006 Justice Department memo and its consequences for today’s wave of lawsuits against opioid makers and members of the Sackler family, which owns Purdue Pharma. (8/16)

The maker of the powerful painkiller OxyContin has agreed to provide access to proprietary research and other data to researchers at Oklahoma State University to help them find causes and treatments for drug addiction. Stamford, Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma announced the agreement Thursday in a joint statement with the university. (8/15)

Internal documents from 2016 show company officials discussed diverting online traffic away from a series of stories published by the Los Angeles Times that detailed the company’s marketing of OxyContin and its links to the deadly opioid crisis. ... The documents describing Purdue’s strategy were filed earlier in the day in U.S. District Court in Cleveland by attorneys for Cuyahoga and Stark counties in Ohio. They are among more than 1,500 governments and other entities that have sued key players in the opioid epidemic to recover their costs for services and other damages stemming from the addiction crisis. (Christensen, 8/15)