they are reaching out to him. and he is trying to set up a meeting next week. so they heard us today. that s great. and i hope you get that meeting. certainly people from purdue pharma have gotten to have meetings at the justice department. while i have you, ed, tell us about eddie. what was he like? eddie was a normal kid. a high school senior. just signed up for chef s school and went to a high school party. him and his friends. messing around and, you know, there was a deadly new pill flooding the market. flooding my neighborhood by a pill mill doctor called richard paolino who wound up getting 30 years in prison. i was at the first congressional hearing that year in 2001 where it came out that purdue pharma knew exactly how many pills he was prescribing and didn t say anything to authorities.
The war on drugs in the United States has been a failure that has ruined lives, filled prisons and cost a fortune. It started during the Nixon administration with the idea that, because drugs are bad for people, they should be difficult to obtain. As a result, it became a war on supply.
As first lady during the crack epidemic, Nancy Reagan tried to change this approach in the 1980s. But her “Just Say No” campaign to reduce demand received limited support.
Over the objections of the supply-focused bureaucracy, she told a United Nations audience on Oct. 25, 1988: “If we cannot stem the American demand for drugs, then there will be little hope of preventing foreign drug producers from fulfilling that demand. We will not get anywhere if we place a heavier burden of action on foreign governments than on America’s own mayors, judges and legislators. You see, the cocaine cartel does not begin in Medellín, Colombia. It begins in the streets of New York, Miami, Los Angeles and ev
He Lost His Son to an Overdose. Now Heâs Taking On the âTop Drug Cop.â
One activist is asking the Biden administration to remember the failures that led to the opioid epidemic as it chooses the next head of the F.D.A.
By Beth Macy
Ms. Macy is the author of âDopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America
.â
Feb. 23, 2021
Ed Bisch, whose 18-year-old son, Eddie, died of an OxyContin-related overdose in 2001.Credit.Hannah Yoon for The New York Times
In 1995, 12-year-old Eddie Bisch was on a family fishing trip in the Florida Keys when his father, Ed Bisch, splurged and rented a boat on Islamorada. The mahi-mahi were everywhere; when Eddie snagged one it jumped so crazily on his line, he screamed. That memorable Florida fishing trip would be their last.