Pain Killer

Part thriller, part medical detective story, this is the origin story of the opioid crisis in America and a rollicking insight into the ways of big pharma and the greed of business that fuelled a national tragedy.

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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.