Fountaindale Public Library

Raising Lazarus, hope, justice, and the future of America's overdose crisis, Beth Macy

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 302-355) and index

illustrationsplates

index present

non fiction

Raising Lazarus

bibliography

1288140355

Beth Macy

hope, justice, and the future of America's overdose crisis

Well into the third decade of America's overdose crisis, pharmaceutical companies have yet to answer for the harms they've created. As pending court battles against opioid makers, distributors, and retailers drag on, addiction rates have soared to record-breaking levels during the COVID pandemic. Meanwhile, there is scant consensus between law enforcement and medical leaders, nor an understanding of how to truly scale the programs that are out there, working at the ragged edge of capacity and actually saving lives. Distill this massive, unprecedented national health crisis down to its character-driven emotional core as only she can, Beth Macy takes us into the country's hardest-hit places to witness the devastating personal costs that one-third of America's families are now being forced to shoulder. Here we meet the ordinary people fighting for the least of us with the fewest resources, from harm reductionists risking arrest to bring lifesaving care to the homeless and addicted, to the activists and bereaved families pushing to hold Purdue and the Sackler family accountable. These heroes come from all walks of life; what they have in common is an up-close-and-personal understanding of addiction that refuses to stigmatie - and therefore abandon - people who use drugs, as Big Pharma execs and many politicians are all too ready to. Like the treatment innovators she profiles, Beth Macy meets the opioid crisis where it is - not where we think it should be or wish it was

adult