The story told in Empire of Pain is not just about the opioid painkiller OxyContin and its devastating effects on millions of pain sufferers. That story has been told several times by very competent writers. Instead, Patrick Radden Keefe traces the lives of the Emperors of Pain—the Sackler family—from their beginnings in America right up…
While there have been several books written on the influences and factors that brought America to its current struggles with opioids, the 2021 book by Patrick Radden Keefe is arguably the most thorough. His book, published in April, is titled Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty. Mr. Keefe reaches back to…
Sam Quinones is the author of the book Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic, published in 2015. In my humble opinion, without Sam’s book, we would not have consolidated our confront of our opioid epidemic and the architects of that disaster, the Sackler family, as soon as we have. Sam has published a…
I’m in the middle of reading Unsettled: How the Purdue Pharma Bankruptcy Failed the Victims of the American Overdose Crisis. The words above from Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address give me chills. They are engraved on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial. Lincoln was envisioning an ideal world, one that is far removed from this one…
Somehow, it seems totally wrong that the companies we trust with our health are driven by their need to show profits. All but one of the major pharmaceutical companies are owned by shareholders who want to receive dividends. The companies’ reputations rise and fall by their profitability. Right away, without any further examination, this skews…
I’ll tell you something that frustrates me on the subject of getting well. And that is the idea that ONE THERAPY alone is all that’s needed to enable a person to get well. I believe that it CAN happen that way, when that therapy happens to hit a very specific nail right on the head….
First I got mad. That picture above is kind of what my mind looked like. Then I wrote this post. So you’re seeing marijuana stores in your state these days? Ever wonder why? It probably has a lot to do with how much money was spent in your state to get laws passed that benefit…
Although the concept has been around for a couple of decades, I suspect that not many people are familiar with a Vehicle Mileage Tax or VMT. After reading an article on this topic in The Epoch Times, I decided to look into it a little more. Here’s the article I read: Senate Infrastructure Bill Gives…
Is commercialization a good thing or bad thing? How does commercialization affect our lives? I believe it depends on how intimately a commercialized activity impacts our health and happiness. I was just checking out the definition of commercialization because I’m writing about the effects of commercialization of the marijuana industry on Colorado. If you look at…
I have twice been asked today if the news about Purdue Pharma requesting bankruptcy protection is a good thing. As in, does this mean they are suffering the impact of intense scrutiny and lawsuits. It’s a legitimate question. The problem is that my experience studying and following the activities of this company indicate that this…