Pain Killer

The origin story of the opioid epidemic by Barry Meier, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter, first published in 2003, now substantially updated and revised with damning new reporting implicating not only Purdue Pharmaceuticals, owned by the closely-guarded Sackler family, but also the FDA, who had the information necessary to slow the sale of Oxycontin in 2006.

Between 1999 and 2017, an estimated 300,000 Americans had died from opioid-related overdoses, many of them involving prescription painkillers. This opioid plague, ignited by the aggressive marketing of Oxycontin, has been classified as the greatest health crisis of the 21st century. Now, in this revised and expanded edition, Meier, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter, brings this extraordinary saga full circle by revealing new and shocking information about what OxyContin's maker--and the FDA--really knew about its dangers.