Pulitzer Award on Opioid Abuse

Here is a series of articles related to our topic this week. Rather than add it to our readings, I thought we could comment here. Click on the author and Gazette-Mail link for access to the three articles. I'll post some thoughts below.  But you can do the same.

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING

Eric Eyre, The Charleston Gazette-Mail

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Mr. Eyre (pronounced AIR), 51, won the award for a series of articles about the opioid abuse epidemic in West Virginia. Mr. Eyre, the paper’s statehouse reporter, began his multipart series with these words: “Follow the pills and you’ll find the overdose deaths.” It took Mr. Eyre years to acquire the documents most important to his reporting, and he did it “in the face of powerful opposition,” according to the Pulitzer citation. A lawyer defending a drug wholesale company said that it was vital to protect crucial court records “from the intrusive journalistic nose of the Gazette-Mail.”

From the first article, it's about collusion of the nation's largest drug wholesalers flooding notorious “pill mill” pharmacies in West Virginia's smallest towns and poorest counties with hundreds of thousands of painkillers, according to court records the companies had sought to keep secret for more than a year. Moreover,

  West Virginia has the highest drug overdose death rate in the nation, and the deaths are climbing. Oxycodone and hydrocodone are the most widely abused prescription painkillers, and contribute to more overdose deaths in the state than any other drug.  West Virginia spends more than $430 million a year on problems caused by prescription drug abuse, according to the state's lawsuit.  

The series uncovered how small towns of 392 people were devastated from opioid overdoses.  Look at the data, read the series, and comment.