A New York Times Critics’ Top Ten Book of the Year * 2021 Edgar Award Winner Best Fact Crime * A Lit Hub Best Book of The Year From a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter at the Charleston Gazette-Mail, a “powerful,” (The New York Times) urgent, and heartbreaking account of the corporate greed that pumped millions of pain pills into small Appalachian towns, decimating communities. In a … Appalachian towns, decimating communities.
In a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, 12 million opioid pain pills were distributed in just three years to a town with a population of 382 people. One woman, after losing her brother to overdose, was desperate for justice. Debbie Preece’s fight for accountability for her brother’s death took her well beyond the Sav-Rite Pharmacy in coal country, ultimately leading to three of the biggest drug wholesalers in the country. She was joined by a crusading lawyer and by local journalist, Eric Eyre, who uncovered a massive opioid pill-dumping scandal that shook the foundation of America’s largest drug companies–and won him a Pulitzer Prize.
Part Erin Brockovich, part Spotlight, Death in Mud Lick details the clandestine meetings with whistleblowers; a court fight to unseal filings that the drug distributors tried to keep hidden, a push to secure the DEA pill-shipment data, and the fallout after Eyre’s local paper, the Gazette-Mail, the smallest newspaper ever to win a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, broke the story.
Eyre follows the opioid shipments into individual counties, pharmacies, and homes in West Virginia and explains how thousands of Appalachians got hooked on prescription drugs–resulting in the highest overdose rates in the country. But despite the tragedy, there is also hope as citizens banded together to create positive change–and won.
“A product of one reporter’s sustained outrage [and] a searing spotlight on the scope and human cost of corruption and negligence” (The Washington Post) Eric Eyre’s intimate portrayal of a national public health crisis illuminates the shocking pattern of corporate greed and its repercussions for the citizens of West Virginia–and the nation–to this day.
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As a resident and nurse in a small town in central West Virginia I have seen first hand the ravages of this epidemic on my state and its people. I knew it was bad but my God I never even began to fathom the numbers revealed in this book. I was angry before reading Death In Mud Lick but now I am livid and devastated.
The people we trusted to take care of us and work in our best interests were killing us by the hundreds.
In a state with a total population of 1.8 million…
“Over six years, from 2006 to 2012, [pharmaceutical] distributors delivered 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to the state while 1,728 West Virginians fatally overdosed on those two painkillers.”
This detailing of the thorough, documented investigation of the massive drug infestation of West Virginia coal-mining country perpetrated by legitimate drug companies and distributors was most disturbing. And even more disturbing is the fact that this crime is still happening in small and large towns across America, affecting both our working class and military in mass numbers. The drugging is still happening, the dying has not stopped, and the drug companies are hauling away our grocery money by the trainload. Thank you, Eric Eyre, for shushing out these details and sharing them with us all. Without people like you on our side, we would be blind and in the pit. Well, I guess we are blind and in the pit, but thanks to you we know who to blame…
I will admit this was one of those books I requested that looked interesting but when I received it I almost regretted it. I don’t need to read another tragedy. We are in a pandemic already!
But I don’t shirk my responsibilities and I sat down and read. I was soon immersed in the twisted history of how every safeguard failed to alert and stop the massive inflow of opioids into small towns, resulting in record overdose deaths. I looked forward to picking it up every day.
Everybody was making money–the pharmacies, doctors, patients, distributors, manufacturers. And nobody had the power to stop them.~ from Death in Mud Lick by Eric Eyre
This is one more story about people’s lives sacrificed for money and governing authorities complicity in cover-ups. It is also the story of how a small town newspaper and one reporter prevailed to disclose the papertrail detailing responsibility.
Eyre does an amazing job marrying the personal side of the crisis and the struggle of the newspaper to keep afloat with his documentation of events. During the time of his investigation, Eyre was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. It didn’t stop him.
Today a Facebook friend shared a quip about shutting down the national media and watching 80% of the world’s problems go away. Another Facebook friend responded, “It’s your right to stay ignorant.”
I am with that second friend. The media–particularly newspapers still employing investigative reporters–are essential to a democratic society. We may not like what we are reading, we may find the news disheartening and frightening, but our alternative is ignorance.
I received a free ebook from the publisher on a Goodreads giveaway. My review is fair and unbiased.
All you need to know is that “drug distributors had saturated America with
76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pills from 2006-2012.” Worth reading to discover what the author Eric Eyre overcame to bring this horrific story to light.