Pain Killer

Paperback / ISBN-13: 9781529356168

Price: £10.99

ON SALE: 29th October 2020

Genre: Biography & True Stories

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NOW A MAJOR NETFLIX SERIES STARRING UZO ADUBA AND MATTHEW BRODERICK

‘This is the book that started it all. Barry Meier is a heroic reporter and Pain Killer is a muckraking classic’
Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain



Every catastrophe has a beginning. For the opioid crisis in America, the seed was a drug called OxyContin.

First hailed as a miracle drug for severe pain in the early 1990s, OxyContin went on to ignite a plague of addiction and death across America, fuelled by the aggressive marketing of its maker, Purdue Pharma and the billionaire Sackler brothers who owned the company.

Investigative journalist Barry Meier was the first to write about the elusive Sackler family, their role in this catastrophic epidemic and the army of local doctors, law enforcement and worried parents that tried to bring them down.

Reviews

Groundbreaking . . . Pain Killer is the shocking account of the origins of today's opioid epidemic, the creators of this plague, and the way to help stop it
Sam Quinones, author of <i>Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic</i>
Fascinating
New York Times
Prescient . . . a landmark work of investigative journalism
David A. Kessler, author of <i>The End of Overeating</i>
Powerful . . . [a] page-turning exposé
Salon