“except broken bodies”: Author interview, Kobak.
executives might be able to intimidate the people: Author interview, Sister Beth Davies, Aug. 10, 2016. “Beth, my hands are tied,” she remembered her former student telling her, apologetically.
Sister Beth had stood up to a crowd: Greg Edwards, “Plant Moves to Clean Up Spill,” Roanoke Times, Oct. 31, 1996.
That event pitted company miners: Author interview via email, Sister Beth Davies, Feb. 3, 2017.
“She was absolutely the most fearless”: Author interview, Tony Lawson, Jan. 30, 2017.
“Greed makes people violent”: “A Connecticut Yankee Meets Ol’ King Coal,” excerpted from John G. Deedy, The New Nuns: Serving Where the Spirit Leads (Chicago: Fides/Claretian, 1982), in Salt, September 1982.
all the mining-company executives who’d flown in: Author interview, Davies, Sept. 22, 2016.
she was wearing the same gray sweatpants: Hammack, “Lee County Is the Epicenter of Abuse.”
CHAPTER THREE. MESSAGE BOARD MEMORIAL
Interviews: Dr. Steve Huff, Ed Bisch, David Courtwright, Eric Wish, Nancy D. Campbell, Lee Nuss, Barbara Van Rooyan, Dr. Art Van Zee, Dr. Steve Gelfand, Richard Ausness, Laurence Hammack, Barry Meier, Lisa Nina McCauley Green, Lt. Richard Stallard, Randy Ramseyer, John Brownlee
New York Times reporter Barry Meier and a colleague: Francis X. Clines with Barry Meier, “Cancer Painkillers Pose New Abuse Threat,” New York Times, Feb. 9, 2001.
The news was disseminating, finally: Paul Tough, “The Alchemy of OxyContin,” New York Times Magazine, July 29, 2001. The extent of the spread of the drug was also chronicled early on by Seamus McGraw, “The Most Dangerous Drug to Hit Small-Town America Since Crack Cocaine?,” Spin, July 2001.
“pharming”: Author interview, Dr. Steve Huff, Sept. 27, 2017.
his son was dead from it: Author interview, Ed Bisch, Jan. 26, 2017.
“After the old-time addicts died out”: Author interview, David Courtwright, July 21, 2016.
hipster counterculture: Courtwright, Dark Paradise: A History of Opiate Addiction in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 148–52.
Progressive doctors championed the carefully restricted use: Courtwright, “Preventing and Treating Narcotic Addiction—A Century of Federal Drug Control,” New England Journal of Medicine, Nov. 26, 2015.
“sour, puritanical shits”: Burroughs to Allen Ginsberg, April 25, 1955: Oliver Harris, ed., The Letters of William S. Burroughs, 1945–1959 (New York: Penguin, 1994), 273.
they returned to spread-out social networks: Lee N. Robins et al., “Vietnam Veterans Three Years After Vietnam: How Our Study Changed Our View of Heroin,” American Journal on Addictions, May 2010: 203–211; author interview, Eric Wish, April 22, 2016.
the veterans who continued to struggle with addiction: Author interview, historian Nancy D. Campbell, Aug. 9, 2017.
“In the early 1990s, probably ninety percent”: Author interview, Courtwright.
bluntest moniker he could think of: After some heated exchanges with Purdue that ended with the company giving him a $10,000 “grant” for equipment to facilitate drug-awareness presentations, Bisch was persuaded to change the name to OxyAbuseKills.com, a decision he later regretted. “I was duped,” Bisch told me.
the drug’s sales in 2001 hit $1 billion: Barry Meier and Melody Petersen, “Sales of Painkiller Grew Rapidly, But Success Brought a High Cost,” New York Times, March 5, 2001.
Nuss, too, had lost an eighteen-year-old son: Author interviews, Lee Nuss, Jan. 23 and March 3, 2017.
only to have an unidentified woman: Author interview, Nuss, Jan. 23, 2017, and Doris Bloodsworth, “Crowd Protests Drug Maker,” Orlando Sentinel, Nov. 20, 2003.
Purdue’s marketing of OxyContin had been “appropriate”: Bloodsworth, “Group to Target OxyContin Maker in Orlando Rally,” Orlando Sentinel, Nov. 17, 2003.
“At the time, I knew very little about the drug”: Author interview, Barbara Van Rooyan, Jan. 16, 2017. The right-wing radio host made national headlines in 2003 after checking himself into rehab for an addiction to OxyContin, publicly admitting that he had tried to kick his painkiller habit twice before: Jerry Adler, “In the Grip of a Deeper Pain,” Newsweek, Oct. 20, 2003.
Sue Ella admired the way her mild-mannered husband was stifling: Author interview, Sue Ella Kobak, March 4, 2017.
Wright had signed off on a 1995-filed NDA review and “Care should be taken”: “Medical Officer Review,” NDA #20-553, 14, written by Curtis Wright, Team Medical Review Officer. The 68 percent figure, also included in the NDA, comes from the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Pilot Drug Evaluation Staff, “Pharmacology Review,” submitted Dec. 28, 1994, NDA #20-553, 6.
“the biggest form of drug abuse today”: Chris Mullikin testimony, outlined in transcript of FDA’s “Anesthetic and Life Support Drugs” Advisory Committee hearing, Jan. 30, 2002, Gaithersburg, MD. Online at http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/02/transcripts/3820t1.htm.
a decade later Portenoy conceded: Thomas Catan and Evan Perez, “A Pain-Drug Champion Has Second Thoughts,” Wall Street Journal, Dec. 12, 2012. “Did I teach about pain management, specifically about opioid therapy, in a way that reflects misinformation? Well, against the standards of 2012, I guess I did,” Portenoy told the reporters.
Van Zee pressed on, raising similar concerns: Barry Meier, Pain Killer: A “Wonder” Drug’s Trail of Addiction and Death (New York: Rodale Press, 2003), 185–91; author interviews, Dr. Art Van Zee, Sept. 23, 2016, and Feb. 11, 2017.
an ethical quandary a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter: John Fauber, “E-mails Point to ‘Troubling’ Relationship Between Drug Firms, Regulators,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Oct. 6, 2013.
The same Journal Sentinel reporter, John Fauber: Fauber and Ellen Gabler, “Doctors with Links to Drug Companies Influence Treatment Guidelines,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Dec. 18, 2012.
results of that investigation would end up: Paul D. Thacker, “Senators Hatch and Wyden: Do Your Jobs and Release the Sealed Opioids Report,” STAT, June 27, 2016.
“nothing’s come of it”: Author interview, Dr. Steve Gelfand, Feb. 9, 2017.
(That initial application would be rejected): John O’Brien, “Blumenthal Calls Out FDA Over OxyContin Petition,” Legal NewsLine, July 31, 2007. Rejection of it: Harriet Ryan, “Purdue Pharma Issues Statement on OxyContin Report; L.A. Times Responds,” Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2016.
“I’m a stubborn Dutchwoman”: Author interview, Van Rooyan.
Among RAPP’s first courtroom targets: Karen White v. Purdue Pharma, Circuit Court for the Tenth Judicial Circuit Court, Polk County, FL, Civil Division, 2003.
White claimed in her legal filing: Ibid.
the company bragged in a press release: Laurence Hammack, “OxyContin Settlement a Reversal of Fortune,” Roanoke Times, May 12, 2007.
“Personal injury lawyers” and the firm’s legal bills: Meier, Pain Killer, 232–33.
Purdue still had 285 lawsuits pending: “Former Drug Firm Worker Says He Was Fired for Being a Whistle-Blower,” Record-Journal (Meriden, CT), Aug. 25, 2003, quoting spokesman Timothy Bannon; Julie Fishman-Lapin, “Fired Former Employee Withdraws Lawsuit Against OxyContin Manufacturer,” Stamford Advocate, March 9, 2004.