The Opioid Epidemic and How It's Affecting the Heartland

Last December, I heard an NPR segment featuring Author and Journalist Sam Quinones discussing his new book, The Least of Us. Sam was talking about the new drugs, such as fentanyl, wreaking havoc in America, and I was immediately taken with a subject I was sorely unfamiliar with.

A month later, I had devoured Sam's first book, Dream Land, a superb reporting of how the opioid epidemic started (from a small town in Mexico to the boardrooms of Big Pharma to main streets in towns across the country) and exploded in the Heartland of America. I then immediately read The Least of Us, a compelling follow up to Dream Land that somehow takes a positive turn in such horrible scenarios bringing to life the stories of everyday people fighting the good fight and trying to make a difference in an epidemic that seems to be endless.

"As I was writing this book and searching for what I thought it was about, I began to read the Bible, and I came upon this idea that perhaps what this epidemic was teaching us was something that perhaps as a society or a culture we'd gotten away from, which was that we need to attend to the most vulnerable, that we are only as strong as the least of us. You know, we're only as strong as that addict eating from the trash. And that seemed a powerful idea because I believe the root of the opioid epidemic and this - really, it's an addiction epidemic - is really our own isolation." - Sam Quinones in a Oct. 27, 2021, interview with NPR

Sam's angle of his latest book - that we are only as strong as the least of us - is incredibly powerful when you think about how communities should fight an addiction epidemic that is destroying so many peoples' lives. As a long-time independent journalist and a former LA Times reporter, Sam knows how to weave a story. His reporting on the history of the opioid epidemic and the horrifying results of fentanyl running through our country is extremely important to figuring out the solutions to fight it.

When I randomly emailed Sam on a December afternoon in 2021 to let him know how much his books stuck with me, he immediately wrote me back. We then talked on the phone for an hour, and I asked him to consider visiting Little Rock to talk to our community about his insights into fighting the epidemic. Almost a year later, Sam is in town and speaking as part of the 2022 Six Bridges Book Festival , hosted by the Central Arkansas Library System. His appearance is being underwritten by the Arkansas Municipal League due to the vision of Executive Director Mark Hayes.

The moment I told Mark that Sam needed to come to Little Rock, he was on board to do whatever he needed to help make it happen. In 2020, Mark and his wife, Alison, lost their son, Wells, to the opioid epidemic. He was 23 when they found him lying on their bathroom floor and knew he wasn't coming back from this latest overdose.

"The pandemic has been a double-down for those who want help and really want to try to get well, but can't get to appointments. Depression levels have driven many of them back into usage and overdoses," he says. "We are literally losing a generation of kids and young adults; kids that came to our house dozens of times or we've gone to football games and basketball games with their parents and all of a sudden, they are either dead or gone to rehab." - Mark Hayes in a Aug. 29, 2021, article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Just this past week, some friends lost their thriving college senior to an accidental overdose. When we heard the terrible news, we sat shocked, heartbroken and scared to death for our own teens. Mark's story, along with so many, many others, are the types of stories that Sam reports and shares so that we can learn from them and do better as a society. Many things about this epidemic are out of our control, but some things aren't. The Least of Us helps us see a way out by coming together as a community and taking a stand against an often hidden monster.

"And that is why, amid all this very sinister stuff that I'm writing about, fentanyl and methamphetamine, I believe that the book I was trying to write was a hopeful one, in fact. The stories that most inspired me and excited me, even, were these stories about people doing small stuff, you know? It's just daily work - not caring if they're not, you know, saving the world. They're saving one person's world. They're helping out in one small way. They're figuring out how to make the community a little bit easier to live in. And it really was a hopeful thing to see amid all the other junk that's going on." - Sam Quinones in a Oct. 27, 2021, interview with NPR

We can't fix what happens in far-away labs in China or Mexican cartel buildings or in the hallways of greedy Big Pharma companies, but we CAN fix what's right in front of us. Sam's book sheds light on stories of humanity and people taking care of each other. And the power in those stories is truly overwhelming.

Sam will be speaking at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 25 at the Ron Robinson Theater in Little Rock. He is among an incredible lineup of authors from all over the country. I invite you to join me and hear from Sam. Our community needs each of us to pay attention to this epidemic, sit in the messiness of it and help each other overcome it.