Extraordinary NYT reporting out of rural Virginia on early days of opioid epidemic

The New York Times reported earlier this week from Pennington Gap, Virginia (population 1,781), under the headline "A Nun, a Doctor and a Lawyer — and Deep Regret Over the Nation’s Handling of Opioids."  Here's the lede from Barry Meier's story:

Years before there was an opioid epidemic in America, Sister Beth Davies knew it was coming. 

In the late 1990s, patient after patient addicted to a new prescription painkiller called OxyContin began walking into the substance abuse clinic she ran in this worn Appalachian town. A local physician, Dr. Art Van Zee, sensed the gathering storm, too, as teenagers overdosed on the drug. His wife, Sue Ella Kobak, a lawyer, saw the danger signs in a growing wave of robberies and other crimes that all had links to OxyContin. 

The Catholic nun, the doctor and the lawyer were among the first in the country to sound an alarm about the misuse of prescription opioids, the beginnings of a cycle of addiction that would kill 400,000 people in the ensuing two decades as it spread to illegal opioids like heroin and counterfeit versions of fentanyl. They led a burst of local activism against Purdue Pharma, OxyContin’s maker, that the company ultimately crushed.

The entire story is well worth a read, not least because of the inspiring activism of these three.