Pain Killer

Trade Paperback

An Empire of Deceit and the Origins of America's Opioid Epidemic, NOW A MAJOR NETFLIX SERIES

NOW A MAJOR NETFLIX SERIES STARRING UZO ADUBA AND MATTHEW BRODERICK

'This is the book that started it all. Barry Meier is a heroic reporter and Pain Killer is a muckraking classic'

Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain

Every catastrophe has a beginning. For the opioid crisis in America, the seed was a drug called OxyContin.

First hailed as a miracle drug for severe pain in the early 1990s, OxyContin went on to ignite a plague of addiction and death across America, fuelled by the aggressive marketing of its maker, Purdue Pharma and the billionaire Sackler brothers who owned the company.

Investigative journalist Barry Meier was the first to write about the elusive Sackler family, their role in this catastrophic epidemic and the army of local doctors, law enforcement and worried parents that tried to bring them down.