A Sackler heir has broken their silence in a tone-deaf interview with Vanity Fair, seeking public sympathy for what he and his relatives have endured while making almost no mention of the hundreds-of-thousands killed by opioids. David Sackler speaks out in the current issue of Vanity Fair about the 'vitriolic hyperbole' and 'endless castigation' his family has faced amid the ongoing opioid crisis. He then offers up an example in his quest for public sympathy, saying: 'I have three young kids. My four-year-old came home from nursery school and asked, "Why are my friends telling me that our family’s work is killing people?"' David and his relatives pocketed $4 billion from the sale of prescription medications between 2008 and 2016 through the family business, Purdue Pharma. More specifically, the profits they pocketed from the sale of opioids such as OxyContin, the tiny but powerful pill that is responsible for Sackler family's never-ending windfall of money and an unprecedented epidemic. An epidemic for which David refuses to accept any blame, decrying: 'The notion the Sacklers were in charge of the operation. That’s just so not true.' Scroll down for video Family values: David Sackler, whose father Richard is named as the man responsible for the rise of OxyContin in multiple lawsuits, has spoken to Vanity Fair (David's wife Joss on left, his dad Richard on right) David's wife Joss celebrated her husband for agreeing speak with Vanity Fair Death dealer: The Sackler family paid themselves $4,273,489,182 (above) in profits from opioid sales from 2008 and 2016 while over 235,000 Americans died of opioid overdoses The attorney generals of over 40 states who have filed lawsuits against Purdue Pharma and the family do not share David's belief, with one member in particular being singled out as the alleged architect behind the rise of OxyContin - David's father Richard Sackler. He served as president and chairman of Purdue Pharma at the same time OcyContin sales began to skyrocket. One lawsuit detailed how Richard bragged about the profits the company was set to reap from OxyContin from the start, telling guests at one party: 'The launch of OxyContin Tablets will be followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition. The prescription blizzard will be so deep, dense, and white.' The family is worth $13 billion according to Forbes, but as David bemoans no one will take their money any more, seeing the family as toxic ever since their controversial marketing and aggressive push on doctors to prescribe OxyContin was exposed those various lawsuits as well as a 2017 New Yorker piece. The deaths caused by the epidemic are an afterthought to David during the interview, where he makes almost no mention of those who have lost their lives in the crisis. Bethany Mclean, who sat down with David for the piece, notes that it is not until late in the interview that he acknowledges those who have been killed because of he drugs Purdue manufactures and markets. David manages to turn that too into an opportunity to declare his family's innocence and decry what he sees as a brutal and unforgiving mob who have unfairly targeted his family, specifically his father and that man's brethren. 'We have so much empathy. I’m sorry we didn’t start with that. We feel absolutely terrible,' says Sackler. His empathy does not extend far enough to end his remarks there however out of respect for the dead, with David adding: ' Facts will show we didn’t cause the crisis, but we want to help.' Brothers Jonathan, left, and Richard, right. Richard headed Purdue from 1999 to 2003 and oversaw much of the increasing sales of OxyContin as it was being advertised The late Mortimer Sackler with his widow, Dame Theresa Sackler who is among members of the family being sued Mortimer David Alfons Sackler, 47, with his wife, Jaqueline. Their Hamptons home has been featured in Vogue. Jacqueline is shown, right, with Ivanka Trump in 2007 David, who manages the family's investment fund, explains later in the interview: 'To argue that OxyContin started this is not in keeping with history.' The Sacklers allegedly pushed high doses of the painkiller Oxycontin while hoping to cash in on anti-overdose drug NARCAN accoridng to one of the many lawsuits filed against them, that one in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, That lawsuit claims that Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family knew that patients on higher dosages of Oxycontin for long periods were at an increased risk of serious side effects, including addiction, yet they continued to promote the high doses as they yielded the most profit. A copy of the filing obtained by DailyMail.com showed that from 2008 to 2016, the Sackler family added $4.2 billion to their already massive fortune in profits derived just from the sale of prescription opioids. Richard Sackler, a son of a founder of Purdue Pharma and its former president, wrote in a 2008 email to company officials to 'measure our performance by Rx's by strength, giving higher measures to higher strengths', according to the filing. Jonathan and Mortimer Sackler, were also copied in on the email, according to the new disclosures. Richard Sackler has always denied he was involved in the company's marketing activities. After making billions selling opoid Purdue Pharma even considered selling anti-overdose drug NARCAN. That filing showed a potential plan to study 'long-term script users' to 'better understand target end-patients' for NARCAN. The plan never went forward but appeared in a 2014 presentation to company officials, including a Sackler family member, which also stated that 'pain treatment and addiction are naturally linked' and that 'there is an opportunity to expand our offering to be an end-to-end pain provider.' The sackers were painted as a wealthy family getting richer while overdoses skyrocketed and the opioid epidemic swept the country. Ilene is Mortimer's oldest daughter. She is pictured in 1999 opening the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology A Purdue spokesman criticized the lawsuit and denied the claims, telling the New York Times: 'None of the documents cited by the attorney general support her fictional narrative that the company was only interested in promoting higher doses,' that spokesman, Robert Josephson, said. The complaint states that eight members of the Sackler family (Richard, Beverly, David, Ilene, Jonathan, Kathe, Mortimer and Theresa) 'paid their families billions of dollars from opioid sales.' The exact number is listed as $4,273,489,182, though it is noted that 'the list of payments if likely incomplete and not exhaustive.' It was not just the family who was profiting either, with board members taking home $600,000 annually for their work with the company according to the complaint. Members of the family that controls Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma are also defendants in a lawsuit brought by New York's Suffolk County. There is also a massive consolidated federal case playing out in Ohio. More than 1,000 government entities have sued Purdue, along with other drugmakers and distributors, claiming they are partly culpable for a drug overdose crisis that resulted in a record 72,000 deaths in 2017. The majority of those deaths were from legal or illicit opioids. The company documents at the heart of the Massachusetts claims also could be evidence in the Ohio lawsuits, which are being overseen by a federal judge. The allegations have already started to tarnish a name that is best known for its generosity to museums worldwide including New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has a Sackler wing, and London's Tate Modern. The Sackler name also is on a gallery at the Smithsonian, a wing of galleries at London's Royal Academy of Arts and a museum at Beijing's Peking University. Numbers: Adjusted drug overdose deaths as outlined in one chart that show's the extent of the opioid crisis In March, a group of protesters led by photographer Nan Goldin descended on the Sackler Wing at the Met to shame the family The family's best known and most generous donor, Arthur M. Sackler, died nearly a decade before OxyContin was released. In its lawsuit filed last year, the Massachusetts attorney general's office went after members of the Sackler family and Purdue, which is structured as a partnership and is not publicly traded. The company's flagship drug, OxyContin, was the first of a generation of drugs that used a narcotic painkiller in a time-release form. That meant each pill had a larger amount of drug in it than other versions and could get abusers a more intense high if they defeated the time-release process. The state is asserting that Richard Sackler, a son of a company founder and at the time a senior vice president for Purdue, as well as other family members pushed selling OxyContin even when they knew it could cause problems. Kathe Sackler, 70, lives in New York City and owns property in Connecticut with her wife When the drug was first sold in 1996, the filing said, Sackler told the sales force 'the launch of OxyContin Tablets will be followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition.' In 2007, the company and three current and former executives pleaded guilty to criminal charges that they deceived regulators, doctors and patients about the drug's addiction risks. The company agreed to fines of $634 million. The next year, according to the Massachusetts lawsuit, the company pressed ahead with a new version of the drug designed to be harder for abusers to crush. It did so without first conducting trials and despite a warning from the company's CEO that the new version 'will not stop patients from the simple act of taking too many pills.' Purdue had previously responded to the Massachusetts filing. 'In a rush to vilify a single manufacturer whose medicines represent less than 2 percent of opioid pain prescriptions rather than doing the hard work of trying to solve a complex public health crisis, the complaint distorts critical facts and cynically conflates prescription opioid medications with illegal heroin and fentanyl,' said the company. All rights reserved for this news site dailymail and under his responsibility