This Is Ohio
The Overdose Crisis and the Front Lines of a New America
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- USD 12.99
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- USD 12.99
Descripción editorial
Winner of the 2019-2020 Malott Prize for Recording Community Activism
Winner of the 2020 Richard Frisbie Award for Adult Nonfiction from the Society of Midland Authors
For readers of Dopesick and Dreamland, journalist Jack Shuler explores the current addiction crisis as a human rights problem fostered by poverty and inadequate health care in this “insightful look at how the issues in Ohio affect the rest of the country” (Cosmopolitan, A Best Nonfiction Book of the Year).
Tainted drug supplies, inadequate civic responses, and prevailing negative opinions about people who use drugs, the poor, and those struggling with mental health issues lead to thousands of preventable deaths each year while politicians are slow to adopt effective policies. Putting themselves at great personal risk (and often breaking the law to do so), the brave men and women profiled in This Is Ohio are mounting a grassroots effort to combat ineffective and often incorrect ideas about addiction and instead focus on saving lives through commonsense harm reduction policies.
Opioids are the current face of addiction, but as Shuler shows, the crisis in our midst is one that has long been fostered by income inequality, the loss of manufacturing jobs across the Rust Belt, and lack of access to health care. What is playing out in Ohio today isn’t only about opioids, but rather a decades–long economic and sociological shift in small towns all across the United States. It’s also about a larger culture of stigma at the heart of how we talk about addiction. What happens in Ohio will have ramifications felt across the nation and for decades to come.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Shuler (The Thirteenth Turn) offers a harrowing look at the opioid epidemic in the Rust Belt community of Licking County, Ohio. Writing with great empathy, he documents the daily lives of opioid addicts, as well as the work of community activists struggling to reduce overdose deaths and limit the spread of hepatitis and other ill effects of drug abuse through harm reduction initiatives. Shuler categorizes the opioid epidemic as a human rights problem, describes the "war on drugs" as a grievous mistake, and focuses more on identifying the systemic causes of addiction including income inequality, unemployment, and inadequate medical care than exposing the role of overprescribing doctors and pharmaceutical companies. Despite the grim nature of the topic, he offers a dash of hope and inspiration in profiles of grassroots efforts to repair the social fabric of Licking County, and in his own willingness to get involved by taking addicts to meetings, visiting homeless camps, and learning how to administer anti-overdose medication. This impressively researched and deeply felt account does a devastating job of personalizing the failures of U.S. drug policy.