Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic

Eric Eyre

Mar 2020 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

A New York Times Critics’ Top Ten Book of the Year * 2021 Edgar Award Winner Best Fact Crime * A Lit Hub Best Book of The Year

From a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter at the Charleston Gazette-Mail, a “powerful,” (The New York Times) urgent, and heartbreaking account of the corporate greed that pumped millions of pain pills into small Appalachian towns, decimating communities.

In a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, 12 million opioid pain pills were distributed in just three years to a town with a population of 382 people. One woman, after losing her brother to overdose, was desperate for justice. Debbie Preece’s fight for accountability for her brother’s death took her well beyond the Sav-Rite Pharmacy in coal country, ultimately leading to three of the biggest drug wholesalers in the country. She was joined by a crusading lawyer and by local journalist, Eric Eyre, who uncovered a massive opioid pill-dumping scandal that shook the foundation of America’s largest drug companies—and won him a Pulitzer Prize.

Part Erin Brockovich, part Spotlight, Death in Mud Lick details the clandestine meetings with whistleblowers; a court fight to unseal filings that the drug distributors tried to keep hidden, a push to secure the DEA pill-shipment data, and the fallout after Eyre’s local paper, the Gazette-Mail, the smallest newspaper ever to win a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, broke the story.

Eyre follows the opioid shipments into individual counties, pharmacies, and homes in West Virginia and explains how thousands of Appalachians got hooked on prescription drugs—resulting in the highest overdose rates in the country. But despite the tragedy, there is also hope as citizens banded together to create positive change—and won.

“A product of one reporter’s sustained outrage [and] a searing spotlight on the scope and human cost of corruption and negligence” (The Washington Post) Eric Eyre’s intimate portrayal of a national public health crisis illuminates the shocking pattern of corporate greed and its repercussions for the citizens of West Virginia—and the nation—to this day.

Ratings and reviews

This detailing of the thorough, documented investigation of the massive drug infestation of West Virginia coal-mining country perpetrated by legitimate drug companies and distributors was most disturbing. And even more disturbing is the fact that this crime is still happening in small and large towns across America, affecting both our working class and military in mass numbers. The drugging is still happening, the dying has not stopped, and the drug companies are hauling away our grocery money by the trainload. Thank you, Eric Eyre, for shushing out these details and sharing them with us all. Without people like you on our side, we would be blind and in the pit. Well, I guess we are blind and in the pit, but thanks to you we know who to blame...

Why didn't this story get more press? I'm an avid watcher of CBS and I barely remember when David Axelrod reported this. I was in turns devastated at the losses and angry that yet again "David" ran up against yet another "Goliath", and that the red tape was just too difficult to get there. The question I am left with is this book getting press because of the recent PurduePharma bankruptcy? And, right now, with all the "other issues" confronting the US, is there an epilogue to the epilogue out there somewhere? If you like nail-biting reporting, you'll be captivated by this book. High Recommended 5/5 {disclaimer:I received this book from an outside source. I voluntarily read and reviewed it]

Being from northern panhandle of Wv I have lost friends, family and known many who have died and knowing how much money politicians and others made off their deaths is sad. In the end the pills worked they took away the pain and everything else!!

About the author

Eric Eyre has been a newspaper reporter in West Virginia since 1998. In 2017, his investigation into massive shipments of opioids to the state’s southern coalfields was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia, with his wife and son.