Beth Macy's latest Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company That Addicted America has been reviewed by the Washington Post.❝ Drug overdoses killed a record 72,000 Americans last year — more than the peak annual totals from HIV, guns or automobile crashes. Compared with those long-familiar plagues, the explosion in drug addiction and overdose deaths in the United States still feels new enough to startle us: After all, it was belatedly declared a national emergency only last year. As a journalist, I recall writing a commentary almost a decade ago about the rapid increase in overdose deaths from prescription pain pills, including in rural states like West Virginia and New Mexico. As a physician, I’ve been the recipient of conflicting messages about the optimal use of opioids. I remember a national campaign in the 1990s aimed at persuading doctors to prescribe them more readily to people suffering from chronic pain, followed in recent years by strict new guidelines, black-box warnings, prescription-monitoring databases and other measures aimed at stemming the overprescribing of those same drugs. [WashingtonPost.com]
 | BETH MACY is a journalist & author several books, including the acclaimed bestseller Factory Man. Watch her discuss "Thinking Global, Writing Local" below, and learn more about booking Beth for your next event today. |
