Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America

by Beth Macy

For people who have not ventured recently into rural America, the jaw-dropping and visible decline of work comes as a shocker, an outgrowth of the nation’s widening political and cultural divide. Before the 2016 election of Donald Trump, that disconnect was maintained by a national media that paid little attention to rural, predominantly white places like St. Charles or Bassett, where the country’s much-hailed economic recovery had definitely not trickled down. At the same time, it had never been within the purview of local papers like the Martinsville Bulletin to investigate what was happening with international trade in Washington or New York, much less the latest push by Big Pharma or global drug cartels. And regional newspapers like my own Roanoke Times had drastically shrunk their coverage to a mainly urban and suburban core, ignoring the increasingly distressed communities in our hinterlands just when reporting on those places was needed the most. Those of us living highly curated and time-strapped lives in cities across America—predominantly mixing virtually and physically with people whose views echoed our own—had no idea how politically and economically splintered our nation had become. And also how much poorer and sicker and work-starved the already struggling parts of the nation truly were—because we didn’t follow that story. We may feel more connected by our cellphones and computers, but in reality we are more divided than ever before.