American Cartel
Inside the Battle to Bring Down the Opioid Industry
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4.3 • 17 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this brilliant account, Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporters Higham and Horwitz (Finding Chandra: A True Washington Murder Mystery) convey how America's largest drug distribution companies facilitated the opioid epidemic. To frame their complex narrative, the authors focus on two individuals: Joseph Rannazzisi, who led the DEA unit responsible for policing the pharmaceutical industry, and Paul T. Farrell Jr., a West Virginia small-town lawyer. The efforts of Rannazzisi, who was outraged that companies required to question suspicious orders of opioids didn't, and his team to pursue criminal inquiries were often stymied by higher-ups at the Department of Justice, who settled cases with fines that the defendants could well afford. The industry's lobbying culminated in legislation that weakened the DEA's enforcement abilities easily passing Congress without dissent. Farrell, aware of the toll opioids took on his impoverished community and the corporations' culpability, spearheaded lawsuits across the country that sought a measure of justice. 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.
