The Opioid Epidemic
A review of this book presents a few factlets worth noting:
“Eyre begins with the story of a single pharmacy in Kermit, W.Va., population 382. In just two years in the mid-aughts, the Sav-Rite distributed nearly nine million opioid pain pills to its customers. People drove hundreds of miles to get there, passing dozens of other pharmacies on the way. Lines were so long that the pharmacy’s owner sold popcorn and hot dogs to people in the drive-through lane.”
"Eyre calls the addiction crisis “a man-made disaster fueled by corporate greed and corruption.” Cardinal [a drug distributor]“saturated the state with hydrocodone and oxycodone — a combined 240 million pills between 2007 and 2012. That amounted to 130 pain pills for every resident.” He writes: “The coal barons no longer ruled Appalachia. Now it was the painkiller profiteers.”
Deaths of Despair
Right now we are preoccupied with the deaths and illnesses resulting from COVID-19, but the impact of despair should not be overlooked. It has been linked to the dramatic rise in drug overdoses, suicides and deaths caused by alcoholism. "In 2018, more than 158,000 Americans died from these causes, up from 65,000 in 1995, with increases that are similar for men and women." Among poor whites the historical patterns in longevity have been slowed or reversed. "From 2013 to 2017, life expectancy fell for white Americans, and from 2014 to 2017, it fell for all Americans, a setback that had not been seen since the influenza pandemic a century earlier." The current one won't help.
Deaths of Newspapers
The author of Death in Mud Lick, won a Pulitzer Prize for the articles about the opioid epidemic in the Charleston Gazette. It was a family-owned newspaper for over 100 years and although it is not 'dead', it went bankrupt and was bought out and is now The Charleston Gazette-Mail. Supposedly, the unofficial motto of the paper is being kept - "sustained outrage over basic injustices" - and will still be an operating principle. We'll see.
Sources:
The review of Mud Lick is found in, "How Painkiller Pushers Took Over Coal Country, "by Dwight Garner, New York Times, April 6, 2020.
"Deaths of Despair" is a phrase coined by Anne Case and Angus Deacon back in 2015 and it is now in the title of their book: Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism.
There has been so much written about Deaths of Despair and the Death of Newspapers, you don't need much assistance from me. They even have their own Wikipedia categories: See "Diseases of Despair" and "Decline of Newspapers".
For a good article about despair see: "There's Something Terribly Wrong: Americans Are Dying Young at Alarming Rates," Joel Achenbach, Washington Post, Nov. 26, 2019
For dying newspapers see: "A Hedge Fund's 'Mercenary' Strategy: Buy Newspapers, Slash Jobs, Sell the Buildings," Jonathan O'Connell and Emma Brown, Washington Post, Feb. 11, 2019.
The Canadian Angle:
North of the border, people are also dying of despair and many of our local newspapers are deader than the parrot in the Monty Python sketch.
The first instance I found of the phrase "Deaths of Despair" is in this headline which appeared on The Canadian Press website back in the summer of 2016: "Deaths of Despair: Overdoses, Drinking, Suicides Hit Whites," by Mike Stobbe on June 3. (As a very caustic aside, some people who are non-white, of indeterminate gender, or in the higher income levels, have suggested that the culling of a cohort of poor white males is not a bad thing!)
The most recent issue of "Canada's National Magazine," Maclean's (May 2020) has a full page ad which begins with a question in very large type: "HAS THE PRESCRIPTION OPIOID CRISIS AFFECTED YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW? And, locally, if you search for information about class actions and opioids in Canada, you will find Siskinds. The cover of that issue of Maclean's consists of the headline, in very large type, "HOW DOES THIS END?, which is referring to the CORONAVIRUS, but it could refer to the other crises as well.
I do not recall when our local paper, the London Free Press, died. I do recall that the publisher of the Davidson Leader out in Saskatchewan had an essay contest, the prize of which was the Davidson Leader, and the entry fee was $1 (and that would be a Canadian $ which is now worth about 12 cents.)
The "News Deserts" are not just in Saskatchewan. For more on that subject see: For the U.S., the University of North Carolina. For Canada see: Ryerson University.
The problem of the loss of local news was recognized in Canada a few years ago and a large sum was promised: See: "Ottawa Bolsters Struggling Media With $600M in Tax Measures," The Canadian Press, November 21, 2018. There may now be more immediate concerns.
Factlet? You were expecting Factoid? For the important distinction see Factlet (1) - What's a Gee-Gee?
Bonus Material:
In one of the pieces there is quote about the dying papers: "There is a morbid joke in this business: Every time we print an obituary, we lose another subscriber."
Remember when a good local newspaper motto would have been: "The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."
This appears under the masthead of the Washington Post: "Democracy Dies in Darkness."
For a good article about despair see: "There's Something Terribly Wrong: Americans Are Dying Young at Alarming Rates," Joel Achenbach, Washington Post, Nov. 26, 2019
For dying newspapers see: "A Hedge Fund's 'Mercenary' Strategy: Buy Newspapers, Slash Jobs, Sell the Buildings," Jonathan O'Connell and Emma Brown, Washington Post, Feb. 11, 2019.
The Canadian Angle:
North of the border, people are also dying of despair and many of our local newspapers are deader than the parrot in the Monty Python sketch.
The first instance I found of the phrase "Deaths of Despair" is in this headline which appeared on The Canadian Press website back in the summer of 2016: "Deaths of Despair: Overdoses, Drinking, Suicides Hit Whites," by Mike Stobbe on June 3. (As a very caustic aside, some people who are non-white, of indeterminate gender, or in the higher income levels, have suggested that the culling of a cohort of poor white males is not a bad thing!)
The most recent issue of "Canada's National Magazine," Maclean's (May 2020) has a full page ad which begins with a question in very large type: "HAS THE PRESCRIPTION OPIOID CRISIS AFFECTED YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW? And, locally, if you search for information about class actions and opioids in Canada, you will find Siskinds. The cover of that issue of Maclean's consists of the headline, in very large type, "HOW DOES THIS END?, which is referring to the CORONAVIRUS, but it could refer to the other crises as well.
I do not recall when our local paper, the London Free Press, died. I do recall that the publisher of the Davidson Leader out in Saskatchewan had an essay contest, the prize of which was the Davidson Leader, and the entry fee was $1 (and that would be a Canadian $ which is now worth about 12 cents.)
The "News Deserts" are not just in Saskatchewan. For more on that subject see: For the U.S., the University of North Carolina. For Canada see: Ryerson University.
The problem of the loss of local news was recognized in Canada a few years ago and a large sum was promised: See: "Ottawa Bolsters Struggling Media With $600M in Tax Measures," The Canadian Press, November 21, 2018. There may now be more immediate concerns.
Factlet? You were expecting Factoid? For the important distinction see Factlet (1) - What's a Gee-Gee?
Bonus Material:
In one of the pieces there is quote about the dying papers: "There is a morbid joke in this business: Every time we print an obituary, we lose another subscriber."
Remember when a good local newspaper motto would have been: "The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."
This appears under the masthead of the Washington Post: "Democracy Dies in Darkness."
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