Why read Pain Killer?

Book cover of Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America's Opioid Epidemic

Book description

Soon to be a major Netflix series

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…

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Topics

The opioid crisis

Genres

True crime

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Why read it?

1 author picked Pain Killer as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Eric Eyre

Author

Meier’s takedown of Purdue Pharma was ahead of its time. First published in 2003, Pain Killer was updated and re-published in 2018, Meier’s book is a hard-hitting account of the early causes of the opioid crisis. He shows how Purdue tried to hide information about OxyContin’s widespread abuse and the painkiller’s addictive nature. He also spotlights the Justice Department’s repeated failures to combat the drug epidemic. Meier is a former reporter at The New York Times. At one point, the Times’ editors yanked Meier off the opioid beat in response to complaints by Purdue Pharma lawyers. The complaints,…

From Eric's list on The best books about the opioid crisis written by journalists.