American Pain: How a Young Felon and His Ring of Doctors Unleashed America's Deadliest Drug Epidemic
by John Temple
View on GoodreadsJohn Temple's narrative of the Chris and Jeff George brothers' South Florida pill-mill operation — among the largest in the country — and its pipeline of oxycodone into Appalachia in the late 2000s.
Core ideas
- The pill-mill model exploited a specific Florida regulatory gap: doctors could dispense in-clinic without the prescription-monitoring infrastructure other states had — turning pain clinics into retail drug outlets.
- The supply-side story explains a piece of the opioid crisis the Sackler-focused books don't — Purdue made the drugs and the demand, but operations like American Pain industrialized the distribution to working-class addicts.
- The takedown is half cartel-style federal investigation, half public-health story — and the closure of pill mills is what pushed users toward heroin and then fentanyl.
Published2015
Pages320
ISBN9781493026661
ReadAug 2023
