Our guest is Eric Eyre, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter from the smallest newspaper ever to win that prize for investigative reporting. His new book, based on the work that won him that prize, details his investigation into the corporate greed that pumped millions of pain pills into small Appalachian towns at the outset of America's opioid crisis. "Death in Mud Lick" tells the riveting and shameful story of a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, which distributed 12 million opioid pills in three years to a town of 382 people. As was noted of this book at the website NewYorker.com: "At the Gazette-Mail, Eyre's career has been the stuff of quiet legend.... Eyre [through his reporting] served his community in a time of need. With his new book, he took the death of a coal miner, William (Bull) Preece, found dead in a trailer in Mud Lick amid a residue of crushed pills, and told the how and the why. His reporting led to restrictions on prescriptions, greater tracking, more transparency. He shamed an industry and saved lives. Working at a small newspaper, Eyre made a big difference."
"A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic"
