The numbers are staggering. Kermit WV, population 382, legitimately received almost 9 million opioid pills in two years during the mid 2000s. Twenty miles away, Williamson, population 2900, received 20.8 million pills over the decade. Then there was Mount Gay, thirty miles east of Kermit, in receipt of 16.6 million pills for 1700 residents.

Drugs in the United States are delivered by distributors, who purchase them from the manufacturers, and then deliver them to hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies, the ordering entities. This makes the distributor both buyer and supplier. As distributors, they were required by the federal DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) to flag and report unusual ordering activity. This was not happening.

Sav-Rite, the only pharmacy in Kermit, processed roughly a prescription a minute, mostly for painkillers. That was more than a prescription a day, every day, for every resident in Kermit. Who was receiving these drugs? A look at the parking lot on any given day showed that many purchasers came from out of state.

Many of the prescriptions were written by Dr Donald Kiser. He had lost his West Virginia license for lying to the medical board after being charged with trading prescriptions for sex. It wasn't the charge that bothered the board; rather it was the fact that he lied about being charged. Dr Kiser moved across the state line to Ohio, and continued writing prescriptions for his patients back in West Virginia. There was even a weekly bus to take them to his clinic and home again.

In October 2005, 45 year old Bull Preece died from an oxycodone overdose. In the week before his death, Kiser had written prescriptions for Preece for 90 Valium, 60 oxycodone, and 30 Zestril, a blood pressure medication. In the six weeks before he died, Preece had also been prescribed 90 hydrocodone and 60 Xanax for anxiety at a clinic just outside Kermit, as well as another 120 hydrocodone and 90 Xanax by another doctor at the same clinic. All prescriptions had been filled by Sav-Rite.

In 2007, Preece's sister, a former addict who along with her police chief then husband had served time in a federal penitentiary for drug offences, launched a wrongful death suit against Dr Kiser and Sav-Rite with her lawyer Jim Cagle. What followed was over a decade of investigations and suits involving the DEA, a state attorney general who was suing drug distributor Cardinal Health, congressional investigations, and armies of lawyers as distributors tried to pay their way out of any responsibility.

Eric Eyre became part pf the investigation in 2013 after a tip about millions of dollars the attorney-general's wife's lobbying firm had received from Cardinal. Eyre was working for an independent newspaper the Charleston Gazette-Mail at the time, and started writing a series of articles exposing the political corruption, and the machinations of the companies, including efforts to shut down and bankrupt his employer. Eyre's work would win him the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism: For courageous reporting, performed in the face of powerful opposition, to expose the flood of opioids flowing into depressed West Virginia counties with the highest overdose death rates in the country.

His work is a strong case for supporting the disappearing independent newspapers that care about and focus on local issues often ignored by the large papers and chains until they explode into headlines with stores like a decrease in American life expectancy due to the number of deaths from overdoses.

In two years time, one small town pharmacy sold 9 million opioid pills. The population of the town was 382 people. One woman, who lost her brother to an overdose, along with [a:Eric Eyre|19284962|Eric Eyre|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1583850227p2/19284962.jpg] and a crusading attorney took on the 3 largest distributor's of the drugs. Eyre uncovered a pill dumping scandal that reverberated through the entire U.S.

It is an eye opening piece of investigative journalism. From Big Pharma, to the drug distributor's , to the politicians and the DEA, there is more than enough shame and blame to cover them all.

I think the pharmaceutical industry has got so much money coming in with the lobbyists and the money that's generated from sales, that nobody wants to take on these people. It's a cartel. They're protected. And you can't--it's just too big Sargent Mike Smith, W.V. State Police.

GR's recommended this book to me because I have [b:Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty|43868109|Empire of Pain The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty|Patrick Radden Keefe|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1611952534l/43868109._SY75_.jpg|68254444] on my shelf. I am glad I picked it up and am now ready to move on to The Sackler Family and how this crisis all began. ( )

This book is based on the investigative reporting that Eyre won a Pulitzer for in 2017.

In this book, Eyre traces his and his newspaper's continued battle to get the shipping/delivery data for opioids and related anti-anxiety meds shipped by different distributors into the southern West Virginia coal counties. These counties have low population, but have been hit hard by the opioid epidemic.

He discusses known pharmacy pill mills, doctors, pill clinics, discredited doctors that move over the state line. These are mom and pop pharmacies, not chains. He discusses the numbers of dead, and gives a few examples, largely from one family.

A lot of this book is names and lawyers and court dates. Government officials (the WV attorney general and his distributor lobbyist wife; DEA officials), judges, rulings, FOIA filings. And this goes on for years--meanwhile his paper nearly goes under, he is diagnoses with Parkinson's, and people keep dying. A WV lawsuit wins millions, but the small rural counties aren't seeing it--the money is going to the more urban and populated counties.

The most frustrating thing--and this is not the author's fault--is the end result is the NUMBERS get released. So far, that's it. The information that the distributors and the DEA (there is something up there) fought so hard to keep secret is out. And it is horrifying. And it leads to lawsuits by local jurisdictions all over the country. And it will be more years before there is more to this story. ( )

Great book about the opioid crisis and the reporting that goes into covering it. Finishing it up, I was amazed by the work of Eyre and the rest of the people he worked with. I also ended up fucking furious at the distribution companies, DEA, and pharmaceutical companies that let this happen and profited off of it. ( )

Newspaper journalists were my heroes as a girl. My ten-year-old girlfriend and I spent hours planning to turn a falling down chicken coup into an office where we would write and publish our own newspaper. I was on the school newspaper in high school. I follow a number of journalists on social media who are my heroes, and now I have one more to add to my list.

You reminded me of how much a community depends on its newspaper to tell the truth and follow through finding the truth even if it's a little scary.~from Death in Mud Lick by Eric Eyre

Charleston Gazette-Mail reporter Eric Eyre won a Pulitzer Prize for his investigation into the massive opioid shipments to West Virginia. That story is presented in the book Death in Mud Lick.

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. ( )