The ongoing murderous opioid plague began in rural America with the dispensing of “controlled” narcotic pharmaceuticals by physicians whose practice histories of prescribing excessive pain-relieving medicines were identified and made available via data mining by IMS Health and provided to Purdue Pharma of Delaware, makers of Ox圜ontin and other narcotic analgesics. Today in the US, it is vastly easier to become addicted than it is to obtain treatment. Estimates are that another 300,000 will overdose and die in the next five years. Some 300,000 persons have died of overdoses in the last 15 years, as these became the leading cause of death in people under age 50. Recent estimates are that approximately 2.6 million persons in the US are addicted to opioids in one form or another. Macy is a career journalist residing in Roanoke, Virginia. The depth of the crisis was most recently revealed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which reported that it took the lives of at least 72,000 people in the US last year. In just over 300 pages, Beth Macy, author of Factory Man and Truevine, paints a searing and heartbreaking portrait of the Appalachian victims of the current opioid epidemic in the United States. Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America, by Beth Macy, Little, Brown and Company, 2018, 384 pages.

Author beth macy