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American Cartel: Inside the Battle to Bring Down the Opioid Industry
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40/99
Critics
55/99
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Scholars
46/99
Rating
34/99
Volume
62/99
Rating
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About This Book
The definitive investigation and exposé of how some of the nation's largest corporations created and fueled the opioid crisis—from the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters who first uncovered the dimensions of the deluge of pain pills that ravaged the country and the complicity of a near-omnipotent drug cartel. AMERICAN CARTEL is an unflinching and deeply documented dive into the culpability of the drug companies behind the staggering death toll of the opioid epidemic. It follows a small band of DEA agents led by Joseph Rannazzisi, a tough-talking New Yorker who had spent a storied thirty years bringing down bad guys; along with a band of lawyers, including West Virginia native Paul Farrell Jr., who fought to hold the drug industry to account in the face of the worst man-made drug epidemic in American history. It is the story of underdogs prevailing over corporate greed and political cowardice, persevering in the face of predicted failure, and how they found some semblance of justice for the families of the dead during the most complex civil litigation ever seen. The investigators and lawyers discovered hundreds of thousands of confidential corporate emails and memos during courtroom combat with legions of white-shoe law firms defending the opioid industry. One breathtaking disclosure after another—from emails that mocked addicts to invoices chronicling the rise of pill mills—showed the indifference of big business to the epidemic's toll. The narrative approach echoes such work as A Civil Action and The Insider, moving dramatically between corporate boardrooms, courthouses, lobbying firms, DEA field offices, and Capitol Hill while capturing the human toll of the epidemic on America's streets. AMERICAN CARTEL is the story of those who were on the front lines of the fight to stop the human carnage. Along the way, they suffer a string of defeats, some of their careers destroyed by the very same government officials who swore to uphold the law before they begin to prevail over some of the most powerful corporate and political influences in the nation.
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Reviews
"A meticulous examination of how unscrupulous drug manufacturers, aided by thousands of pharmacies and doctors, produced and concealed a public health crisis...The authors could have offered a little more attention to the voices of epidemic victims—for that, see Beth Macy's potent duo, Dopesick and Raising Lazarus—but they effectively acknowledge the suffering that hundreds of thousands have endured, creating an unforgettable portrait of unthinkable corporate greed and malfeasance...A stunning depiction of corruption in the drug industry and those who confronted it."
"Higham and Horwitz paint a highly disturbing picture that makes clear that companies ostensibly in the business of supplying needed pain medications acted instead like a cartel that wrought more pain and death than the syndicates smuggling cocaine and heroin into the country...This is a must-read for voters and political leaders alike."
"While the book starts slow and requires an immense amount of focus to become familiar with the various parties and events, it picks up as it progresses and most of the key individuals and corporations are introduced...The last half reads like a thriller, though if it were fiction, the 'bad guys' would seem comically drawn and unrealistic...The actions these drug companies and distributors engaged in seem so over the top that it's hard to fathom that they and the scores of people working for them actually behaved so abominably...American Cartel is a must read that demonstrates the continued importance of high-quality investigative journalism in today's world and how greed allowed a national emergency to sweep the country unchecked."
"In part because the end of the story has yet to be written, the book is less satisfying than it could be...In addition, the writing often bogs down in a morass of detail...Too often, Higham and Horwitz transcribe courtroom exchanges word for word for page after page instead of stepping back and explaining why one particular exchange might be pivotal...You won't come out of the book with a clear sense of where things stand or why, or which of the industry's arguments has mattered most in the eyes of the law...But you will come away with a renewed appreciation for all that money can buy, as well as another realization that is also as obvious as it is shocking: No one is ever going to say they're sorry."
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