Drug Companies

Why a town called Kermit with only 382 residents prescribed 12 million pills in 3 years.

In Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies that Delivered the Opioid Epidemic, journalist Eric Eyre set out to expose the mysteries, tragedies, and government corruption behind the opioid crisis in West Virginia.

Eric joins us to share stories from the investigative research that took him to counties at the heart of the opioid crisis—small rural counties with the highest overdose rates in the United States.  We discuss the  importance of strong independent journalism, and community journalism in particular. Eric also shares the  concept of sustained outrage and how even tiny actions can make a huge impact.

About Eric Eyre

For more than 20 years, Eric Eyre was a reporter for the Charleston Gazette-Mail.  His series of investigations into massive shipments of opioids to West Virginia’s southern coalfields was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2017, and led to his book, Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic.