We’re delighted to welcome back Pulitzer Prize winners Barry Meier and Marty Baron to discuss Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic, Meier’s landmark book that first chronicled the saga of OxyContin and how its reckless promotion by a company owned by one of America’s wealthiest families — the Sacklers — unleashed the greatest public health crisis of the 21st century, the opioid epidemic.
In a new paperback edition tied to the August 2023 release of the Netflix dramatic series, Painkiller, starring Matthew Broderick, Uzo Aduba, and Taylor Kitsch, Meier brings the saga of OxyContin and the Sackler family full circle. It contains stunning new revelations about what Purdue Pharma, the Sackler’s company, knew about the abuse of OxyContin even while hailing it as a “wonder drug” that was safer than other opioids. Meier also details how government officials charged with protecting the public failed to seize the chance to alter the trajectory of a crisis that is devastating thousands of lives.
Barry Meier was a member of the New York Times reporting team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. He is also a Pulitzer finalist and a two-time winner of the George Polk Award.
During a 28-year-long career at The Times, his work concentrated on the intersection of business, medicine, and the public’s health. He exposed the dangers of various drugs and medical products, including a defective heart device and a generation of flawed artificial hips and was the first journalist to shed a national spotlight on the abuse of OxyContin.
He lives in New York with his wife and their daughter.
Martin (Marty) Baron retired at the end of February 2021, after eight years as executive editor of The Washington Post. News staffs under his leadership at the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and the Miami Herald have won 18 Pulitzer Prizes. The Academy Award-winning movie Spotlight was based on the Globe‘s investigation into the Catholic Church’s concealment of clergy sex abuse.