Death in Mud Lick

'DEATH IN MUD LICK' Pulitzer-winning writer takes on Big Pharma in new book

BY NICK EUSTIS - PITTSBURGH CURRENT CONTRIBUTING WRITER INFO@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM

West Virginia was as ravaged by the opioid epidemic as it was by extractive industry, ranking first in the nation in drug overdose deaths. Opioids wrecked huge swaths of Appala- chia, including Western Penn- sylvania, as drugs flooded the region. Both here in Allegheny County and all through West Virginia, drug overdose deaths peaked in 2017 and though the numbers have dropped a bit, they remain considerably higher than the time before opioids hit the region like a bag of wet cement.

Even as I prepared to call veteran journalist Eric Eyre, I wondered if the Current should cover another book about opi- oids in Appalachia. Minutes af- ter Eyre and I got off the phone, an email notification dinged. The toxicology report had just been released for the death of a 1-year old child in Sharpsburg -- it showed a mix of heroin and fentanyl were the cause of death.

Eyre's book, 'Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Ep- idemic' (Scribner, 2020), goes right to the heart of how things like a 1-year old accidentally overdosing can even happen.

As a reporter for the Charles- ton Gazette, the paper of record for West Virginia, Eyre covered much of the opioid epidemic in real time, through deaths and investigations, legal battles and cover-ups. His comprehensive, fearless, and deeply humane coverage won him the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. "You can't escape it. It's everywhere around you," Eyre said of his hometown which wears ugly scars from the crisis and continues to suffer. "Today, I saw an obituary. A friend of my wife's -- her son overdosed. He had lived in Lon- don and Chicago and New York and LA, but didn't get addicted to opioids until he came back to West Virginia. There's always a story you hear, everywhere you go."

Eyre covered the state gov- ernment beat, which meant he covered everything from the legislature and the governor's office, to the state agencies, one of which is the Attorney Gener- al's office. It was in that capac- ity that he crossed paths with the legal battles going on with opioids in his state.

Eyre writes, "As the addic- tion crisis spread across the country, some health advocates sounded the alarm, but indus- try lobbyists snuffed out pol- icymakers' efforts to stop the scourge. They found politicians willing to do their bidding. The regulators -- the DEA, the pharmacy board -- failed to do their jobs. Pablo Escobar and El Chapo couldn't have set things up any better."

In clean, detailed language, Eyre takes the reader through his efforts to uncover records held by the AG's office and the DEA, and the court battles undertaken on behalf of the Charleston Gazette and Wash- ington Post, so that they could report accurately and com- prehensively on the epidemic. There are the lawsuits. There are Congressional hearings. There are cozy relationships between elected officials, enforcement agencies and large corporations. There is a lot of sleeping at the switch.

He also tells personal stories that bring the book to life. Eyre describes the tiny coal town of Kermit (population 382), home to Sav-Rite Pharmacy, one of

the nation's top sellers of hy- drocodone, where they served hot buttered popcorn and other snacks to crowds waiting for their scripts to be filled. You didn't have to be a next-level in- vestigator to see that something