"[T]he new drug that Sackler secured a patent for, is itself opiate based, and really only works to slightly lessen the symptoms of withdrawal so a person can more easily wean themselves off the drug."

Heroin was originally marketed as a "cure" for morphine addiction, if that provides a little more context to this. This approach as been tried and failed with methadone too. All switching someone to a different opioid does is shift a person's addiction from one drug to another but I suspect that is the point here. They can't sell their pain killers as easily as before with recent restrictions so they will repackage them and sell them as a "cure" for pain killer addiction.