The True Cause of the Opioid Epidemic
January 3, 2020
(The Atlantic) – In 2015, Jennifer Silva, a professor of sociology and anthropology at Bucknell University, began interviewing people in the coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania. She was working on a project, which would become the book We’re Still Here, about how poor and working-class Americans were affected by the collapse of the coal industry—the major job provider in the region. She was curious how the regional decline might have shaped her subjects’ politics. But she quickly noticed a startling trend alongside the growing unemployment: Her subjects and their families were struggling with opioid abuse.