Opinion: Reviving an old book to tell a new story about OxyContin, Purdue, and the Sackler family
I had to write the same book twice, 15 years apart, to tell the real story about what Purdue Pharma knew about the addictive potential of OxyContin.
Authors try to avoid writing the same book twice. I couldn’t.
My book “Pain Killer” first came out in 2003. It was the first one to tell the story of OxyContin; its maker, Purdue Pharma; and the company’s wealthy and secretive owners, the Sackler family. The book appeared at the dawn of the opioid epidemic and the sun quickly set on it. A year after publication, it went out of print.
To say I was disappointed is an understatement. I thought “Pain Killer” told an important story about the chaos unleashed when the
