WTAE | BY SALLY WIGGIN | 1.24.17
PITTSBURGH — “This is the first epidemic that really began not with drug dealers on the street and mafias or drug gangs, but with doctors. That’s why it’s nationwide.”
“I think we need to have as many options as possible to address this very, very troubling trend of increased opioid deaths every year. We’re about to hear it’s gotten even worse,” said Rep. Matthew Baker, R-Bradford, majority chairman of the committee.
Author and journalist Sam Quinones, who wrote the book “Dreamland,” sat down with WTAE’s Sally Wiggin to answer the question of how Pennsylvania found itself so deep in the opioid epidemic.
Quinones explains how prescription opioids fueled the current epidemic and how cartels followed the trail of painkillers to Western Pennsylvania.