Pain Killer ― An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America's Opioid Epidemic

The origin story of the opioid epidemic: a searing account of this country's greatest health crisis that implicates OxyContin's maker and the U.S. government from a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter.

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 that 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.

Originally published in 2003 and hailed since as groundbreaking, Meier--in this thoroughly updated edition--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 hundreds 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.

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. His reporting at the Times has 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 is the author of A World of Hurt and Missing Man. He lives in New York with his wife and their daughter.