text: A member of the family that owns Purdue Pharma — which is being sued by more than 1,000 jurisdictions for its alleged role in seeding the opioid crisis with its pain medication OxyContin — has been awarded a patent for a treatment for opioid use disorder. 
   
   Dr. Richard Sackler is listed as one of six inventors on the patent, which was issued in January and was first reported Friday by the Financial Times. Critics told the FT that they were disturbed that the patent could enable Sackler to benefit financially from the addiction crisis that his family’s company is accused of fueling. 
   
   Purdue has denied the allegations in the lawsuits, which also target a range of other opioid painkiller manufacturers and distributors. 
   
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   The patent concerns a new formulation of buprenorphine, one of the medications shown to help people with opioid addiction. It is already approved by the Food and Drug Administration in tablet and film form, but the patent describes a wafer that could dissolve even faster than existing forms when put under the tongue. 
   
   The patent says that the faster the treatment dissolves, the less risk there is for diversion. 
   
   Sackler is the past president of Purdue; his father was one of three brothers who founded the company. The family has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to museums and schools and hospitals around the world, but has increasingly come under scrutiny amid the opioid crisis. 
   
   In addition to the more than 1,000 lawsuits against Purdue from cities, state, counties, and tribes — most of which have been consolidated in an Ohio federal court — a case brought by Massachusetts recently named the Sackler family as defendants. 
   
   Meanwhile, Congress has requested from Purdue a copy of a deposition from Sackler that was taken as part of a lawsuit brought by Kentucky against Purdue. The case was settled in 2015, but it is believed to be the only time a member of the Sackler family has been questioned under oath about the marketing of OxyContin and what the company knew about the addictive properties of the pain reliever. 
   
   In a lawsuit in Kentucky, STAT has also sought to obtain a copy of the deposition. 
   
   The description in the patent warns that people who are addicted to drugs sometimes commit crimes to feed their habit, which is why it says improved forms of medication-assisted treatment are needed. Some of the lawsuits against Purdue and the other opioid companies have cited the public safety and law enforcement costs associated with addiction. 
   
   The description of the patent says the form of buprenorphine could also be used to treat pain in people or animals. 
   
   Purdue declined to comment on the patent. 
   
   Separately, Purdue has been trying to show it is taking steps to address the addiction crisis. It has backed safer prescribing efforts and donated money to the National Sheriffs’ Association to purchase naloxone and train law enforcement on its use. This week, it contributed $3.4 million to a company working on a low-cost naloxone nasal spray. ||||| Julia Roberts plays the mother of an opioid-addicted son (Lucas Hedges) in "Ben Is Back." (Photo: MARK SCHAFER/ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS) 
   
   TORONTO – Julia Roberts gets choked up just talking about it. 
   
   We’re a day away from the debut of her new film, “Ben Is Back,” at the Toronto International Film Festival, in which she plays Holly, the mother of a 19-year-old opioid-addicted son (Lucas Hedges) who returns from rehab unexpectedly on Christmas Eve. 
   
   “It was pretty intense when we were shooting it,” says Roberts, 50, who learned in her research that a parent like Holly struggles with standing firm on just one treatment strategy. “There’s never ‘I’m doing it right.’ Because doing things out of love and hope and belief might be right for an hour, that day or that week, but so quickly the correct thing to be doing could be saying, ‘You’re not welcome in this house.’ " 
   
   "Ben Is Back" (in theaters Dec. 7) – a film that could send Roberts back to the Oscars this year, thanks to her tour de force performance – is both timely and gutting: About 2 million people in America are addicted to opioids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 
   
   Guest column: The opioid crisis hits home. Mine. 
   
   Addiction is no stranger to the Roberts family: Earlier this year Eric Roberts, 62, Julia's elder brother, revealed a decades-long history of drug abuse. But the connection to "Ben Is Back" ends there for Roberts. "The position of the mother in this film is very different from a sister, a niece," she says. "So for me, it was delving into all the mother relationships in these kinds of scenarios that I could find.” 
   
   In the film, Ben becomes addicted to prescribed drugs after a snowboarding accident. Roberts, who has twins Hazel and Phinnaeus, 13, and son, Henry, 11, with husband Danny Moder, 49, is watchful of how children are prescribed in her community. 
   
   "A lot of my friends who have older teenage kids – older than my teenagers – you get concussions and people get hurt. Kids are playing soccer and things happen," she says, wearing a pair of caramel-framed glasses, her hair pulled into a mussed side braid. "And fortunately the stories that I’ve heard have very much surrounded doctors that say, ‘It’s going to be a bummer, but here’s an aspirin. Suck it up. I’m not going to prescribe anything else for this teenager.' ” 
   
   More: Opioid epidemic requires a new perspective on addiction treatment and new solutions 
   
   In the Roberts-Moder household, those often-fraught teen years are being confronted as a family unit. 
   
   “Fortunately, the five of us are super-close and at dinner, which we have just about every night the five of us are together, it becomes part of the family conversation: ‘Do you know what this is?’ ‘Have you ever heard about this?’ ‘Well, have you ever done that?’ " she says. "It’s about figuring it out together." 
   
   More: FDA declares youth vaping an epidemic, announces investigation, new enforcement 
   
   That includes vaping, something Roberts calls "a hideous monster in culture now. ... Honestly, I didn’t realize what a thing it was until my oldest son had a swim test at a high school in a neighboring town. I went into the gym to get some water and there was a sign that said: ‘No skateboarding. No loud music. No vaping.’ Like, a permanent sign! And I was like, 'What?' " 
   
   Amazon's "Homecoming" marks Julia Roberts' first leading role in television. (Photo: Hilary B Gayle/SMPSP, ) 
   
   So what does she say to her kids? 
   
   "As a parent, I have to put my sort of personal disgust of something aside and be able to have a conversation … as opposed to: ‘Why would anyone do that? It’s disgusting!' " 
   
   This weekend Roberts is on double duty in Toronto, where she's also unveiling her first TV series, the upcoming Amazon psychological thriller “Homecoming” (streaming Nov. 2). Based on the popular podcast and directed by “Mr. Robot" creator Sam Esmail, the 10-episode series finds her as a psychologist working with veterans struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, unaware that darker motivations are at play. 
   
   The Oscar winner, who executive-produced the series, acknowledges she's learning as she wades into this era of peak TV. 
   
   “The first day I came into the production office I said: 'I don’t understand any of these emails I’m getting. I don’t know what anything means!' ” Roberts laughs. "So I got a quick study in the language of television." 
   
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target: – Irony alert: A billionaire accused of worsening the opioid crisis just won a patent for a drug to treat opioid addiction, Stat News reports. Richard Sackler, whose family owns OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma, is one of six inventors behind a new medication that could help people get off drugs including opioids. It would be a new kind of buprenorphine—a gentle opiate that curbs drug cravings—which is already FDA-approved in film-strip or tablet form and now would come in wafers disintegrating quickly under the tongue, per the Financial Times. The best-selling version of buprenorphine, Suboxone, made $877 million in US sales for the British pharmaceutical company Indivior. The patent application says the new drug would help ease crime caused by addicts, but doesn't mention the thousand-plus lawsuits filed against Purdue Pharma for allegedly spurring the opioid epidemic. "It's reprehensible what Purdue Pharma has done to our public health," says the director of an addiction treatment center in Staten Island, New York. He adds that Sackler's family "shouldn't be allowed to peddle any more synthetic opiates—and that includes opioid substitutes." The Sacklers, known mostly for philanthropy before the opioid epidemic, deny fueling a crisis that killed 42,000 people in 2016. In related news, Julia Roberts is starring in the new film Ben Is Back about a mother dealing with an opioid-addicted son who comes home for Christmas, per USA Today.