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The opioid crisis is claiming upwards of 150 American lives every single day. This has gone from a crisis to a full-blown epidemic in a few short decades with virtually no sign of letting up anytime soon. And thanks to the paltry media coverage that rarely, if ever, digs beneath the surface, most Americans have no idea how bad things really are, who is responsible, and who cashed in off the death and destruction caused by opioid-based painkillers.
Mike Papantonio is one of the people who understands what is happening, and that’s because he’s among the lawyers who are working to hold the drug companies who caused the crisis accountable for their actions. He has told the opioid story countless times on his TV program, America’s Lawyer, he’s told the story at Mass Torts Made Perfect, and now he’s telling the story to the country in his latest novel Law and Addiction.
Law and Addiction is the third installment in his series of novels, following Law and Disorder and Law and Vengeance. The latest novel introduces us to a new character, Jake, a recent law school graduate who recently lost his brother to an opioid painkiller overdose. Jake helps process his grief by going after the opioid makers and
distributors and, with the help of some familiar characters from the first two novels, hopes to take down this criminal cartel.
Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Mike Papantonio and ask him about Law and Addiction:
Farron Cousins: How does this book mirror the real-world opioid crisis?
Mike Papantonio: Very often in fiction we’re able to capture the bigger story better than what a news story can do, and I think this book certainly does that. It mirrors the opioid crisis because the actual book is taken from the case that I’m handling. Day to day there would be events that would take place; there would be hearings that would take place; there
would be motions filed; and so it’s actually
a real-time reflection of what’s going on with the opioid crisis.
Sometimes it’s difficult to get the details and the backstory on an issue this big, and you certainly can’t get the backstory out of corporate media. What this book does is it goes and tells us backstories, but it tells by way of fictional characters.
Cousins: That’s similar to what you’ve done with the other two books as well. These were based on real cases that you had tried, so you had intimate knowledge about what the corporations were doing and that’s what you’ve used for all of these books so far.
Papantonio: If you look at Law and Disorder and Law and Vengeance, they were based and developed the same way as Law and
MIKE PAPANTONIO’S NEW NOVEL TACKLES OPIOID CRISIS IN
UNIQUE WAY
by Farron Cousins, The Ring of Fire Network
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