LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR
Griffin told Jon. “It doesn’t come
off as holier than thou, but speaks
to people’s circumstances, experiences, and just life in general, just
like regular hip hop.”
Elsewhere in the issue, Jillian
Berman tells the disturbing story
of how a drug company got Americans addicted to heroin. The rise
in heroin use over the past decade has run alongside a rise in
prescription opioids, which are
painkillers that are a “medical
cousin to heroin,” Jillian explains.
The difference is, opioids are legal when prescribed by a doctor.
Nearly four out of five people who
recently became addicted to heroin
used prescription painkillers first.
“We have now this incredibly
unusual public health crisis that’s
essentially caused by physicians,
caused by the health care industry,” Meldon Kahan, the medical
director of substance use services
at the Women’s College Hospital
in Toronto, tells Jillian.
In our Voices section, Mark Gongloff weighs in on a recent incident
that stirred public outrage: when
a Burger King employee handed an
elderly customer her receipt with a
profane insult written on it. Mark
HUFFINGTON
03.09.14
draws on his personal experience
in order to bring some much-needed perspective to the story.
“I worked in fast food for years,
and let me tell you: The customers there... can be the worst part
of a pretty terrible job, one that
It doesn’t come
off as holier than thou,
but speaks to people’s
circumstances, experiences,
and just life in general,
just like regular hip hop.”
involves grueling physical labor,
rock-bottom pay, miserable working conditions and the feeling like
you will never, ever get the smell
and feel of grease out of your hair,
face or clothing,” Mark writes.
Finally, as part of our continued focus on The Third Metric,
we look back — more than two
thousand years — at a man who
may have found the secret
to happiness.
ARIANNA