A review by am_berg
Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America by Beth Macy

2.0

I didn’t actually finish this book—I kept trying to get through the last 60 pages or so, but I got too frustrated with how Macy seems to believe individual drug dealers are equally as culpable as pharmaceutical companies for fueling opioid addiction and overdose. She (wrongly, I believe) views opioid addiction as a criminal problem rather than a public health concern, much to the detriment of her narrative about one of the dealers central to the book. She also makes tiresome, specious claims that welfare programs “incentivize” people to “stay sick” without providing any evidence, let alone any compassionate understanding for the lack of resources available to people suffering from “diseases of despair.” There is a lot of material to consider with this spike in opioid overdose deaths: the role of War on Drugs scaremongering in casting drug users and dealers as evil, pharmaceutical companies prioritizing profit over patient wellbeing, the impact limiting medication access has on those with chronic pain and disabilities... I just wish someone other than Macy had written this book.