Bitter Pills To Swallow

Drug companies have a lot to answer for in regard to America’s opioid crisis.

- Russell Brown

News of America’s opioid epidemic inevitably reaches us in the form of numbers. Officially, there were nearly 50,000 opioid overdose deaths in 2017, from a total 72,000 fatal drug overdoses. One hundred and 75 Americans die of opioid overdoses on an average day – more than guns, more than cars, more than the Aids crisis at its worst. The two-decade epidemic will probably claim its millionth life within a couple of years.

Beth Macy takes a different approach in Dopesick – that of the local reporter, first for the Roanoke Times in Virginia, then covering the area for the