Reviews
AMERICAN OVERDOSE – By Chris McGreal
American Overdose
by Chris McGreal
Published by Faber
£12.99 paperback
IT’S 20 YEARS SINCE PRESCRIPTION OPIOID OVERDOSE DEATHS
FIRST SHOWED A SHARP RISE. Since then, an epidemic has taken
350,000 lives. Synthetic morphine use rocketed, especially after
OxyContin became available in 1996. (It is pure oxycodone,
which, like hydrocodone, stops the nervous system sending
signals to the brain). In 2007, Purdue Pharma was found guilty
of false safety and effectiveness claims for OxyContin. It wasn’t
until 2018 that Purdue finally ‘announced it would no longer
market the drug to physicians,’ says McGreal.
Throughout that period, the pharmaceutical giants bought
off law-makers, including the Food and Drug Administration in
Washington, which approves medications. No current staff
member was available to the author. Big Pharma also rigged
the medical debate about prescription opioids, manipulating
badly evidenced science, to say on the original label that 12-
hour, slow-release absorption ‘is believed to reduce the abuse
liability of the drug’.
One outlet for opioids with no questions asked was ‘American
Pain’, as though pain is different and worse in America, and in a
society which believes you can buy and sell any dream, no-one
should feel any pain.
Pills were poured into vulnerable places, particularly West
Virginia. In its coalmining areas, there had been industrial
injuries. Going into decline, the pain became more emotional.
People saw themselves as poor failures. In a national culture of
money and success, many in marginalised, shrinking old
communities felt inferior. Until they first tried opioids.
‘Not only did it take my pain away. I felt, wow, this is amazing’.
MEDIA SAVVY
‘In my day we
kidded ourselves
that growing the
coca plant gave
the farmers of
South America a
good living.’
COCAINE IS LIKE PORNOGRAPHY;
everyone wants to believe that
regardless of the misery and broken
lives which litter the production of
everybody else’s kicks, the source we
alone opt for is magically free of
exploitation, torture and death. In my
day we kidded ourselves that growing
the coca plant gave the farmers of
South America a good living, which was
20 | drinkanddrugsnews | February 2019
pathetically self-deluding
enough, but it’s always easier to lie to
ourselves about the plight of people in
faraway countries of which we know
nothing. Today, it would be an actual
moral cretin who could ignore the
human collateral which is left lying in
the wake of the ‘cheeky’ line of coke
which brings a sparkle to the eye of the
after-dinner educated.
Julie Burchill, Spectator , 5 January
One outlet for opioids
with no questions asked
was ‘American Pain’, as
though pain is different
and worse in America.
The double-
whammy is that
testimony came
from a doctor. ‘I
like my job’ (now
he was taking
Norco, a
hydrocodone), ‘I’m
not irritated by my
patients anymore’. He handed them 30,000 opioid prescriptions in
five years, and some died from overdoses. When the doctor, like
many others, was eventually jailed, fellow prisoners explained the
deadly scams he’d helped trigger: ‘Dealers shuttled busloads of
hard-up elderly people from out-of-state for prescriptions, then
paid a few hundred dollars for half the tablets.’
Pill mills, with manufacturers, bogus academic institutions
and distributors all complicit, meant that 9m doses were
delivered to one West Virginian pharmacy in two years. It was
in the town of Kermit, with its population of circa 400.
When, finally, some limits to prescribing came in, inevitably
heroin use leapt. At 15,000, it exceeded synthetic opioid deaths,
by 2014. Then fentanyl (synthetic heroin) took over, with 20,000
overdose deaths by 2016.
So the crisis, which has netted Purdue Pharma alone $40bn,
goes on. McGreal concludes that for the big drug producers,
and the agencies they colluded with everyone is to blame, so
no-one is to blame. Except the addicts.’
Review by Mark Reid
The news, and the skews, in the national media
SURELY IT’S TIME for government (with
hefty contributions from event
organisers and club owners) to fund
pill testing everywhere young people
gather – in city centres, clubs and at
festivals. Testing should be a normal
part of a party night out… It is
hypocritical to allow such a key service
as The Loop to be crowd-funded, when
the results of drug misinformation and
misuse often have to be dealt with by
the hard-pressed NHS.
Janet Street-Porter, Independent ,
4 January
ANYONE WITH HIS WITS ABOUT HIM
knows that there are far more crazy
people about than there used to be,
many of them with knives, and it isn’t
much of a stretch to connect this with
the fact that the police and the courts
have given up enforcing laws against
marijuana, which some idiots still say
is a ‘peaceful drug’… Amazing that, as
the evidence of its danger piles up, we
should even be thinking of legalising it
here, as the Billionaire Big Dope Lobby
wants.
Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday , 6 January
THE ASPIRATION TO BE HEALTHIER is a
form of self-gentrification. In all our
cities and small towns we can see the
consequences of addiction: to smack,
crack, spice, alcohol. We see it in our
hospitals and in the rough sleepers in
our shelters, and yet rehabs are closing
down or are entirely privatised. Those
who most need help are not able to
access it and are caught in downward
spirals of addiction and mental health
issues… This process of eliminating all
that is bad from one’s life in order to
feel better is just not possible for many
people in the way that it is spoken
about. We live in a social body, not
isolated temples of purity.
Suzanne Moore, Guardian , 8 January
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