by Beth Macy
showed definitively that the problem was: According to Roanoke County police data: “Interoffice Memorandum,” compiled by Brittni Money at author’s request, May 3, 2017, with 513 heroin arrests between 2010 and March 2017, most in Southwest County (Cave Spring/Hidden Valley area), and 81 heroin overdoses between 2014 and early 2017, 19 of them fatal.
The school board declined to support the program: Author interview, Nancy Hans, April 25, 2017.
drug-prevention forum put on at: Prevention council forum at Cave Spring High School, Feb. 21, 2017.
A come-to-Jesus ensued: Author interviews, Dr. John Burton, March 20, 2017, and Kuehl.
“She was such a good kid”: Track coach Tommy Maguire, exchange with Patricia Mehrmann, prevention council forum at Cave Spring High School, Feb. 21, 2017.
The latest research on substance use disorder: John Kelly, “Reasons for Optimism: Recovery Science,” Association of Health Journalists Conference, Orlando, FL, April 2017, slide 14.
10 percent of the addicted population manages: Address by then–drug czar Michael Botticelli, Poynter Institute’s “Covering the Opioid Crisis,” Washington, D.C., Sept. 26, 2016. There are about 23 million Americans diagnosed with diabetes, according to 2017 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures—roughly the same as those with some form of substance use disorder (22 million); author interview, Dr. John Kelly, Nov. 6, 2017.
“It’s like, dear God”: Author interview, Patricia Mehrmann, May 17, 2017. Tess’s admission to the Nevada center also recounted in interviews with Terrence Engles and Jamie Waldrop.
If Tess could remain sober for a year: Michael L. Dennis, Mark A. Foss, Christy K. Scott, “An Eight-Year Perspective on the Relationship Between the Duration of Abstinence and Other Aspects of Recovery,” Evaluation Review, December 2007.
when making a Facebook workout video: Joey’s Facebook workout video, with Emma Hurley, April 25, 2013: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10106610813798632&id=68137950&comment_id=10106705958198492¬if_t=comment_mention¬if_id=1494943625490149.
“ball of fire”: Author interview, Emma Hurley, May 15, 2007.
“I already know”: Author interview, Charles Cullen, May 11, 2017.
uninsured Joey applied to the hospital-run clinic: Danny Gilbert said he used the website goodrx.com with each prescription to figure out which pharmacy in town had the best prices that week; author interview, Oct. 27, 2017. After Joey’s death, Carilion Clinic wrote off more than $10,000 of her bills as charity care.
those who have serious psychiatric problems: Author interview, Hartman, Aug. 8, 2017.
Jamie worried, too: Author interviews with Jamie Waldrop, Hartman, Hurley, Cullen, and Danny and Wendy Gilbert, April and May 2017.
“asinine to tell a drug addict you’ve got to be clean”: Author interview: Danny Gilbert, April 11, 2017. Account of Joey’s death and cause of death: Author interview, Danny, Wendy, Britney, and Skyler Gilbert, Sept. 22, 2017.
“She fought hard against the demon of addiction”: Obituary for Jordan Racquel (Joey) Gilbert, Roanoke Times, March 29, 2017.
“If she fails, she is on her own”: Author interview, Mehrmann, May 15, 2017.
Sweet T: Mother’s Day text exchange between Tess and Mehrmann, May 14, 2017.
Chapter Twelve. “Brother, Wrong or Right”
Interviews: Rosemary Hopkins, Andrew Bassford, Cheri Hartman, Ronnie Jones, Anthony West, Dr. Andrew Kolodny, Lauren Cummings, Pastor Brad Hill, Mark Schroeder, Christine Madeleine Lee, Bryan Stevenson, Thomas Jones III, Robert Pack, Don Wolthuis, Sherwin Jacobs, Kristi Fernandez, Beth Schmidt, Richard Ausness, Chip Jones
“lull all pain and anger and bring forgetfulness”: The Odyssey of Homer, translated by S. H. Butcher and Andrew Lang (New York: Macmillan, 1906), 47.
soul was “being rubbed down with silk”: From Druin Burch’s Taking the Medicine: A Short History of Medicine’s Beautiful Idea, and Our Difficulty Swallowing It (London: Random House UK, 2010), 16. A worthwhile examination of the morphine molecule’s pull in literature, art, and film offers several other examples: Lecture by Susan L. Mizruchi, “Opioids: The Literary, Experiential Point of View,” Boston Athenaeum, June 13, 2017, available at https://vimeo.com/221754272.
“trying to get rid of the lowlifes”: Author interview, Rosemary Hopkins, Sept. 23, 2016.
“more boxes that have to be checked”: Author interview, Andrew Bassford, April 10, 2017.
An annual $35 billion lie: Michael Corkery, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, and David Segal, “Addiction, Inc.: Marketing Wizards and Urine-Testing Millionaires: Inside the Lucrative Business of America’s Opioid Crisis,” New York Times, Dec. 27, 2017.
“we don’t have good data”: Author interview, Dr. John Kelly, Jan. 2, 2018.
“killing people for that myth to be out there”: Author interview, Cheri Hartman, Jan. 16, 2018.
statewide corrections behemoth that returns: Author interview, Anthony West, chief operations officer, Virginia CARES, July 14, 2017.
likens the war on drugs to a system: Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2010). Alexander’s thesis was further delineated by a 2017 book by scholar John F. Pfaff, in which he argues that the incarceration spike was fueled more by elected local prosecutors, the vast majority of them white men who operate behind a veil of secrecy and aggressively forge plea deals in 95 percent of cases: Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration—and How to Achieve Mass Reform (New York: Basic Books, 2017).
shift in public spending from health and welfare programs: “Fact Sheet: Trends in U.S. Corrections, U.S. State and Federal Prison Population, 1925–2015,” Sentencing Project: http://sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Trends-in-US-Corrections.pdf; Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (New York: Spiegel & Grau), 2014, introduction.
one in three black men was destined to end up: Marc Mauer, Sentencing Project, “Addressing Racial Disparities in Incarceration,” Prison Journal, 2011. The Washington Post elucidated those statistics (and found them to be somewhat outdated by 2015) in Glenn Kessler, “The Stale Statistic That One in Three Black Males Will End Up in Jail,” June 16, 2015. In the Washington, D.C., area where Jones hailed from, the statistic was three out of four, according to Alexander, The New Jim Crow, 6–7, citing 2000 corrections data.
recidivism rate of 75 percent: Matthew R. Durose, Alexia D. Cooper, and Howard N. Snyder, “Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 30 States in 2005: Patterns from 2005 to 2010,” U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, April 2014. Among prisoners released in 2005 and tracked for five years: 32 percent had drug-related offenses, and of those, 77 percent reoffended within that five-year period, compared with 57 percent of all offenders released who reoffended, and 75 percent of drug traffickers reoffended: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rprts05p0510.pdf.
statistically less likely to use or to deal: Blacks are far more likely to be arrested for selling or possessing drugs than whites, even though whites use drugs at the same rate, and whites are also more likely to sell drugs: Analysis of National Survey on Drug Use and Health data by Jonathan Rothwell, Brookings Institution, outlined in Christopher Ingraham, “White People Are More Likely to Deal Drugs But Black People Are More Likely to Get Arrested For It,” Washington Post, Sept. 30, 2014.
(Three-quarters of federal drug offenders are black): https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/dofp12.pdf. State rates: http://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/drug-war-statistics.
“racial stereotyping actually seems to be having”: Author interview, Dr. Andrew Kolodny, Jan. 6, 2016.
young whites were dying of overdose: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, “Drug Poisoning Mortality, United States, 1999–2015,” Jan. 19, 2016, and Allan Smith, “There’s a Disturbing Theory About Why America’s Overdose Epidemic Is Primarily Affecting White People,” Business Insider, Jan. 25, 2016.
Winchester was launchi
ng the region’s first drug court: Author interviews, Lauren Cummings, July 3 and July 17, 2017.
Winchester was becoming a magnet: Ibid.; Matthew Umstead, “P&G Still Looking for Workers for New W.Va. Plant,” Herald-Mail Media, Dec. 8, 2016; and staff report, “Governor Announces Amazon’s E-Commerce Facility and 1,000 New Jobs in Frederick,” Winchester Star, March 28, 2017.
Sunday services at the downtown mall: Author interview, Pastor Brad Hill, July 14, 2017.
“That’s usually when they commit new crimes”: Author interview with Ronnie Jones’s probation officer, name withheld because she said she wasn’t authorized to speak, June 30, 2016. Of the 5.2 million people across the United States who owed child support in 2010, 662,000 were incarcerated, according to federal data from the Office of Child Support Enforcement.
holdover from a 1996 federal ban: States that still have full bans preventing felons from getting food stamps are Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina, and West Virginia, according to Teresa Wiltz, “States Ease Access to Welfare and Food Stamps for Convicted Drug Felons,” PBS NewsHour, Aug. 9, 2016; Yale study: Helen Dodson, “Ban on Food Stamps Leads to Hunger, HIV Risk Among Former Drug Felons,” YaleNews, March 25, 2013.
(Virginia is one of twenty-six states): Eli Hager, “Six States Where Felons Can’t Get Food Stamps,” Marshall Project, Feb. 4, 2016. Six states still have full bans—Alaska, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Virginia’s partial-ban restrictions are listed here: https://vacode.org/2016/63.2/II/5/63.2-505.2/.
were given reduced sentences: Author interview, Christine Madeleine Lee, Mark Schroeder’s federal public defender, July 5, 2016. Ann E. Marimow, “One of Scalia’s Final Opinions Will Shorten Some Federal Prison Sentences,” Washington Post, June 24, 2016, referring to Johnson v. United States, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D.C., June 2015. A 2013 Yale School of Medicine study found that 91 percent of people recently released from prison didn’t have reliable access to food: https://news.yale.edu/2013/03/25/ban-food-stamps-leads-hunger-hiv-risk-among-former-drug-felons.
“designed for you to come back”: Author interview, Mark Schroeder, July 17, 2017.
felon-friendlier cities like Seattle?: People in Seattle’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program are 60 percent less likely to commit further crimes, according to an independent review conducted by the University of Washington, http://leadkingcounty.org/lead-evaluation/who, and Sarah Jarvis, “Innovative LEAD Program for Drug Criminals Expands to Seattle’s East Precinct,” Seattle Times, Aug. 4, 2016.
“If we reduced our prison population”: Author interview, Bryan Stevenson, July 14, 2017.
Portugal, which decriminalized all drugs: Drug-related pathologies including sexually transmitted diseases and deaths due to drug usage have also decreased dramatically, attributable to increased treatments made possible by decriminalization and money diverted from criminal justice to treatment, according to Glenn Greenwald, “Drug Decriminalisation in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies,” Cato Institute (white paper), April 2, 2009.
drug addicts were funneled into treatment instead: Portugal’s shift toward a health-centered approach to drugs was even more responsible than decriminalization for drug-rate reductions, Christopher Ingraham, “Why Hardly Anyone Dies from a Drug Overdose in Portugal,” Washington Post, using data from George Murkin’s “Drug Decriminalisation in Portugal: Setting the Record Straight,” published in “Transform: Getting Drugs Under Control,” June 11, 2014, available here: http://www.tdpf.org.uk/blog/drug-decriminalisation-portugal-setting-record-straight.
Ronnie was obstinate to a fault: Author interview, Thomas Jones III, Aug. 6, 2016.
Their family was not without connections: Alex Prewitt, “Petey Jones, Immortalized in ‘Remember the Titans,’ Still Works at T.C. Williams High School,” Washington Post, Oct. 13, 2014; and author interviews, Ronnie and Thomas Jones III.
his maternal grandfather, Thomas “Pete” Jones Sr.: Author interviews, Ronnie and Thomas Jones III, and http://www.alexandriaafricanamericanhalloffame.org/?p=41.
2001, a time when prosecutors: Pfaff, Locked In, 22.
politically safer and economically cheaper: Pfaff, Locked In, and Pfaff, “The Never-Ending ‘Willie Horton Effect’ Is Keeping Prisons Too Full for America’s Good,” Los Angeles Times, May 14, 2017.
everyone involved views the problem too rigidly: Author interview, Robert Pack, May 23, 2017.
recording with the rap band Little Brother: Brandon Soderberg, “Little Brother’s Retirement Party,” Village Voice, April 27, 2010. Thomas Jones III goes by the rapper name Big Pooh and went on to have a solo career under that name. He now writes music and manages rap artists.
“Real Love”: From the 2011 Big Pooh album, Dirty Pretty Things, reprinted with permission of Thomas Jones III.
Jurisdictions across the country increasingly inhibit: Alexes Harris, A Pound of Flesh: Monetary Sanctions as Punishment for the Poor (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2016).
quest to put him behind bars for many years and possibly even for life: Had Jones gone to trial, his maximum sentence could have been 360 months, or thirty years, to life imprisonment: Author interview, Don Wolthuis, Nov. 2, 2017.
Jacobs, the fired first attorney: Author interview, Harrisonburg defense attorney Sherwin Jacobs, July 18, 2017.
the women not only cooperated for less time: Keith Marshall letter to author via CorrLinks, federal prison monitored email, July 8, 2017.
“His biggest thing was, he felt entitled”: Author interview, Alicia Catney, Nov. 26, 2016.
“What I’d been imagining was actually much worse”: Author interview, Kristi Fernandez, Aug. 17, 2016.
In one week in October 2016: Regional overdoses and naloxone attributed to a fentanyl-laced batch in Joe Beck, “Heroin Deaths, Overdoses Increase,” Northern Virginia Daily, Nov. 3, 2016.
“‘I might lose three of my customers, but in the long run’”: Dealers purposely hot-pack fentanyl-laced heroin, according to naloxone trainer Beth Schmidt, who lost her twenty-three-year-old son, Sean, to a fentanyl overdose in 2013 near Baltimore; author interview, Schmidt, May 19, 2017.
studies showing that long-term opioids: Marion Lee et al., “A Comprehensive Review of Opioid-Induced Hyperalgesia,” Pain Physician, March-April 2011, available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21412369.
more lawsuits were being filed against Purdue: Everett mayor Ray Stephanson sued Purdue Pharma for gross negligence, claiming the company turned a blind eye to pills being funneled into its streets: Stephanie Gosk and David Douglas, “OxyContin Maker Purdue Pharma Hit With Unprecedented Lawsuit by Washington City,” NBC News, March 9, 2017. Ohio attorney general Mike DeWine sued for the state of Ohio to make Purdue and other companies pay for the consequences of the crisis: Alana Semuels, “Are Pharmaceutical Companies to Blame for the Opioid Epidemic?,” Atlantic, June 2, 2017. Cabell County, West Virginia, sued ten wholesale drug distributors, not Purdue, for flooding the state with painkillers, including forty million doses sold from 2007 to 2012: Keegan Hamilton, “Opioid Overload,” VICE News, March 10, 2017. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Connecticut began a new criminal probe into Purdue’s marketing of OxyContin, according to Nate Raymond, “Opioid Drugmaker Purdue Pharma Faces U.S. Investigation,” Reuters, Oct. 25, 2017.
“The cigarette companies finally caved”: Author interviews, Richard Ausness, Jan. 27 and July 22, 2017.
Haddox punctuated his talk with slides: Author interview, Chip Jones, Richmond Academy of Medicine marketing director, July 25, 2017.
“What’s getting lost here is the prevalence of chronic pain”: Coverage of Haddox’s November 2015 lecture as reported in Lisa Crutchfield, “Opioid Abuse: No Quick Fix,” Ramifications (Richmond Academy of Medicine), Winter 2016.
Chapter Thirteen. Outcasts and Inroads
Interviews: Nancy D. Campbell, Tonia Moxley, Caroline Jean Acker, Teresa Gardn
er Tyson, Craig Adams, Dr. Art Van Zee, Wendy Welch, Dr. Sue Cantrell, Sarah Melton, Tammy Bise, Dr. Marc Fishman, Bryan Stevenson, Lori Gates-Addison, Giles Sartin, Don Burke, Robert Pack, Tim Allen, Dr. Jessie Gaeta, Neil Smith, David Avruch, Judge Michael Moore, Bob Garett, Robert Pack, Sue Ella Kobak, Dr. Steve Loyd, Ginger Mumpower, Robin Roth, Janine Underwood, Nancy Hans, Danny Gilbert, Wendy Gilbert, Skyler Gilbert, Britney Chitwood Gilbert, Patricia Mehrmann
“treat it with hope”: Nancy D. Campbell, J. P. Olsen, and Luke Walden, The Narcotic Farm: The Rise and Fall of America’s First Prison for Drug Addicts (New York: Abrams, 2008), 190.
Lawrence Kolb Sr. published a set of: Campbell, Discovering Addiction: The Science and Politics of Substance Abuse Research (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), and author interview, Campbell, Aug. 9, 2017.
due to an ethics scandal over: In 1975, Senator Ted Kennedy led Senate hearings on human experimentation that included harmful LSD and morphine research done on patients, some of it funded by the CIA: Campbell, Olsen, and Walden, The Narcotic Farm, 166–80.
“Perhaps the day”: Ibid., 28.
the CDC to announce voluntary prescribing guidelines: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/rr/rr6501e1.htm.
Why did the American Medical Association: Joyce Frieden, “Remove Pain as 5th Vital Sign, AMA Urged,” MedPage Today, June 13, 2016.
why do surgeons still prescribe so many: Sally Satel, “Taking On the Scourge of Opioids,” National Affairs, Summer 2017: 9; Mark C. Bicket et al., “Prescription Opioid Analgesics Commonly Unused After Surgery: A Systematic Review,” JAMA Surgery, Nov. 1, 2017: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstract/2644905.
legitimate pain stabilized by the drugs: Bob Tedeschi, “A ‘Civil War’ over Painkillers Rips Apart the Medical Community—and Leaves Patients in Fear,” STAT, Jan. 17, 2017.
