About this item
The origin story of the opioid epidemic: From a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter comes an inside story of corporate greed and government negligence. Between 1999 and 2017, an estimated 250,000 Americans died from overdoses involving prescription painkillers, a plague ignited by Purdue Pharma's aggressive marketing of OxyContin. Families, working class and wealthy, have been torn apart, businesses destroyed, and public officials pushed to the brink. In Pain Killer, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Barry Meier exposes the roots of the most pressing health epidemic of the twenty-first century. Powerful narcotic painkillers, or opioids, were once used as drugs of last resort for pain sufferers. Purdue turned OxyContin into a billion-dollar blockbuster by launching an unprecedented marketing campaign claiming that the drug's long-acting formulation made it safer to use than traditional painkillers for many types of pain.
About the Author
Journalist, New York Times. Author, Missing Man, The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran. Pain Killer. A World of Hurt, Fixing Pain Medicine's Biggest Mistake (e-book) .
