Death in Mud Lick

"How did they get away with it for so long — the corrupt drug manufacturers, distributors, pharmacies and physicians who flooded the most vulnerable communities in America with highly addictive pain pills, raking in billions of dollars even as thousands died from overdoses? Read Death in Mud Lick and understand. It is a stunning story, and Eric Eyre tells it with compassion, grit, deep knowledge and the 'sustained outrage' (as he puts it) that is the rocket fuel of great journalism."
—Dan Fagin, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Toms River

"Death in Mud Lick is simultaneously a gripping account of the corporate interests who started the opioid epidemic and a vivid illustration of the power of scrappy, relentless, investigative journalism.  Eric Eyre is not just a great West Virginian; he’s a national treasure."
—Keith Humphreys, former White House drug policy adviser to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama

"Eric Eyre represents the absolute best of newspaper reporting: He’s dogged, fair, and as scrappy as the mountains he calls home. His book, Death in Mud Lick, is a riveting, intimate look at the corporate greed, regulatory failure and lobbying shenanigans that led to pill mills complete with “courtesy snacks” and cash registers so full they wouldn’t close. In the most opioid-ravaged place in America, Eyre makes you see the opioid crisis anew."
—Beth Macy, author of Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America

"I thought I knew about the roots of the opioid crisis in rural Appalachia. Then, I read this book with my mouth agape. The larger-than-life characters, the vivid scenes, so many deaths, and so much money made from an alliance of local crooks and global corporations. With searing storytelling and deep investigative reporting, Eric Eyre has written an indispensable book that you won't be able to put down."
—Anna Sale, host of the podcast Death, Sex & Money and author of Let's Talk About Hard Things

"In his newspaper work, Eric Eyre performed a historic public service, with his pioneering coverage of America's opioid disaster. In this book, he converts that achievement into a riveting drama of crime, collusion, coverup — and then unveiling, by a reporter and a news organization that refused to give up. Death in Mud Lick attaches names, stories, and vivid characters to the major public-health story of our times."
—James Fallows, author of Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America

Eric Eyre blows the lid off the corporate malfeasance and institutional greed that created the greatest public health crisis in a generation. Death in Mud Lick raises the curtain on the players, tactics, and corruption that continues to rip our communities apart. A uniquely American tale and heartbreaking account that will leave every reader certain on how we got into this nightmare otherwise known as the opioid crisis."
—Ryan Hampton, nationally recognized recovery activist and author of American Fix: Inside the Opioid Addiction Crisis — and How to End It

"At a time when real journalism is under attack, Death in Mud Lick stands as a clenched fist of rebuke. Eyre and the scrappy Charleston Gazette-Mail exposed the hellacious mendacity and moral criminality of America’s biggest businesses and richest executives, and the hack politicians and lobbyists who enabled them to exploit some the most vulnerable people in this country and then leave them to die. Eyre’s book is a thrilling recounting of how it all went down in the tradition of Call Northside 777 and Spotlight."
—Brian Alexander, author of Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town

Autorentext
Eric Eyre has been a newspaper reporter in West Virginia since 1998. In 2017, his investigation into massive shipments of opioids to the state's southern coalfields was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia, with his wife and son.

Klappentext
A New York Times Critics’ Top Ten Book of the Year * 2021 Edgar Award Winner Best Fact Crime * A Lit Hub Best Book of The Year

From a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter from the smallest newspaper ever to win the prize in the investigative reporting category, an urgent, riveting, and heartbreaking investigation into the corporate greed that pumped millions of pain pills into small Appalachian towns, decimating communities.

Death in Mud Lick is the story of a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, that distributed 12 million opioid pain pills in three years to a town with a population of 382 people—and of one woman, desperate for justice, after losing her brother to overdose. Debbie Preece’s fight for accountability for her brother’s death took her well beyond the Sav-Rite Pharmacy in coal country, ultimately leading to three of the biggest drug wholesalers in the country. She was joined by a crusading lawyer and by local journalist, Eric Eyre, who uncovered a massive opioid pill-dumping scandal that shook the foundation of America’s largest drug companies—and won him a Pulitzer Prize.

Part Erin Brockovich, part Spotlight, Death in Mud Lick details the clandestine meetings with whistleblowers; a court fight to unseal filings that the drug distributors tried to keep hidden, a push to secure the DEA pill-shipment data, and the fallout after Eyre’s local paper, the Gazette-Mail, the smallest newspaper ever to win a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, broke the story.

Eyre follows the opioid shipments into individual counties, pharmacies, and homes in West Virginia and explains how thousands of Appalachians got hooked on prescription drugs—resulting in the highest overdose rates in the country. But despite the tragedy, there is also hope as citizens banded together to create positive change—and won. A work of deep reporting and personal conviction, Eric Eyre’s intimate portrayal of a national public health crisis illuminates the shocking pattern of corporate greed and its repercussions for the citizens of West Virginia—and the nation—to this day.

Leseprobe
1. A Death in Mud Lick 1 A Death in Mud Lick
At sunup, Debbie Preece drove north on the two-lane blacktop that traced the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River, hurtling onto a rutted gravel road that tunneled deep into the woods. She stopped with a jolt at the rust-bitten trailer in Mud Lick. The coroner had already picked up her brother’s body and transported it to the morgue for autopsy. Debbie insisted that someone show her where William “Bull” Preece had spent his last hours. She was directed to a back bedroom, vacant save for a dresser and a torn mattress set atop a box spring. The sheriff’s deputies had already removed the blood-spattered clothes and swept up the residue of crushed pills.

It was the first Monday in October 2005, five years since Bull had fallen from a ladder and injured his back at Penn Coal mine and secured that first prescription for pain pills, which led to another and another. Bull kept finding doctors to prescribe OxyContin and Lortab. He had been taking painkillers for …

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