SOON TO BE A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES. The origin of the opioid epidemic from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who first broke the story: A searing account of this country's greatest health crisis that implicates OxyContin's maker and the U.S. government

Between 1999 and 2017, an estimated 250,000 Americans died from overdoses involving prescription painkillers, a plague ignited by the aggressive marketing of OxyContin by its maker, Purdue Pharma.
 
Purdue, owned by a wealthy and secretive family--the Sacklers--knew early on that teenagers and others were abusing its billion dollar "wonder" drug. But Justice Department officials balked a decade ago when it came to meting out justice, allowing an opioid crisis to evolve into a catastrophe. Meier reveals new and shocking information about how long the drug maker knew about OxyContin's abuse, even as it marketed it aggressively, and the way government officials passed up opportunities to protect tens of thousands of lives.
 
Equal parts crime thriller, medical detective story, and business exposé, Pain Killer is the origin story of the opioid crisis, a hard-hitting look at how a supposed wonder drug became the gateway drug to a national tragedy.
 
 
Contributor Bio(s)
 
Barry Meier was the first journalist to shed a national spotlight on the abuse of OxyContin. He was a member of the New York Times reporting team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Meier is also a two-time winner of the George Polk Award. For three decades, his reporting at the Times concentrated on the intersection of business, medicine and the public's health. During his career, he has exposed the dangers of various drugs and medical products, including a defective heart device and a generation of flawed artificial hips. Meier, who retired in 2018 from the Times, is the author of Missing Man, the American Spy who Vanished in Iran and Spooked, the Trump Dossier, Black Cube and the Rise of Private Spies. He lives in New York with his wife.