A comprehensive portrait of the uniquely American epidemic–devastating in its findings and damning in its conclusions

The opioid epidemic continues to be described as ‘one of the best mistakes of contemporary medicine.’ But contacting it a mistake is a nice rewriting of the annals of greed, problem, and indifference that forced the US into consuming more than 80 percent of the world’s opioid painkillers.

Journeying through lives and communities wrecked from the epidemic, Chris McGreal discloses not only about American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Functions how Big Pharma hooked People in america on powerfully addictive medicines, but the corrupting of drugs and public institutions that allow opioid makers get away with it.

The starting place for McGreal’s deeply reported investigation may be the miners promised that opioid painkillers would restore their wrecked bodies, but who became targets of ‘medication dealers in white coats.’

Several heroic physicians warned of impending disaster. But American Overdose exposes the effective forces these were up against, like the pharmaceutical industry’s coopting of the Food and Medication Administration and Congress in the drive to drive painkillers–resulting in the resurgence of heroin cartels in the American heartland. McGreal tells the story, in conditions both broad and intimate, of individuals hit by a catastrophe they hardly ever saw coming. Years in the producing, its ruinous consequences will extend years in to the future.