Death in Mud Lick by Eric
Eyre
It’s
the numbers that get you. Right there in the first sentence, “In
two years,
out-of-state drug companies shipped nearly 9 million opioid pain
pills to Kermit, West Virginia, a town with 382 people.” Of course
I had to read that again and then read it to my husband and then read
it again.
There
was more: Americans consume more than 80% of the world’s
supply of oxycodone and 99% of its hycrocodone.
Beginning
by focusing on one particular Sav-Rite pharmacy in Kermit, W. Va.,
the author examines the supply and demand for opioids that are
addicting and killing people. At one point the line of people from
neighboring states waiting to have their bogus prescriptions filled
meant the owner, Jim Wooley, provided popcorn, hot dogs, and
satellite trailers in the parking lot. If you had a legitimate
prescription for something “else” it was given to you in a
different colored bag so when you left the pharmacy, you would be
left alone. The pills became currency. You could buy your
groceries with them.
Because
of one particular death the author began digging into the supply
chain. It wasn’t just the pharmacists getting rich, someone had to
supply them with the pills and in a five year time, from 2007-2012
“one distributor alone distributed 119 million doses of highly
addictive drugs to West Virginia pharmacies, or about 80 pills for
every man, woman and child in the state.“ And this was just one of
five major distributors. Millions and millions of pills were
distributed to tiny little Appalachian towns
infecting
its citizens with destruction.
The
author was a bull dog with the information he was uncovering. He
wouldn’t take no for an answer, he looked and talked and found
loop holes to gather his information about the poisoning of America
while beating his head against the wall that corporate lawyers and
politicians surrounded themselves with. He told the world and the
world heard him.
Where,
you may ask, were the red flags, where was the DEA? Hiding. No one
would admit to knowing or noticing anything. But how long can you
hide behind the fact that “the drug distributors had saturated
American with 76 BILLION oxycodone and hydrocodone pills” in five
years. You may think the NRA has a strong lobby, well, folks, meet
the drug company lobby. In the end, numbers don’t lie and when
you can prove your numbers the facts couldn’t hide behind a lawyer
or politician any longer.
Please
don’t blame the people who became addicted and ultimately were
ruled by their addiction. Debbie Preese, the woman who first started
asking the questions and whose three brothers died of an overdose
told the author there is something IN those pills. Something so
addicting. “These people are making millions of dollars, and they
don’t care who dies.”
Eric
Eyre won a pulitzer prize for his work. This book is the story of his
investigation. His work isn’t over, you only have to look at your
own community, scratch the surface, but now we know where to
look. This is just about the scariest book I’ve ever read but
also one of the most important.
