Latest / Reasonably Happy with Paul Ollinger
Opioids: Greed, Death, and $$$$ with Barry Meier (Encore)
The new Netflix series Painkiller is based on a book my guest, Barry Meier wrote over 20 years ago. In Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America's Opioid Epidemic, Meier explores how Purdue Pharma’s drug OxyContin catalyzed a plague of addiction and death that has destroyed families and whole communities across the country.
Between 1999 and 2020, 564,000 Americans died from an opioid overdose. In 2020, the most recent year for which statistics are available, opioids killed 68,000. That's 188 per day and each one of these deaths represents a son or daughter, a brother or…
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