As the opiate epidemic takes the forefront of our national consciousness, the West Virginia University David C. Hardesty Jr. Festival of Ideas is hosting the author of “Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic.”

Sam Quinones will tell how he tracked two major instances of drug marketing as a pharmaceutical corporation flogged its legal new opiate prescription painkiller as non-addictive and as immigrants retailed black-tar heroin like pizza in the U.S., riding a wave of addiction to prescription pills from coast to coast. Quinones will speak in conversation with John Temple, associate professor in the Reed College of Media and author of “American Pain.”

The event will be held March 1 at 7:30 p.m. in the Fukushima Auditorium in the WVU Health Sciences Center. It is free and open to the public with a book signing to follow.

Quinones is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist who spent a decade reporting for the Los Angeles Times and has written two other nonfiction books, “True Tales From Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino and the Bronx” and “Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration.”

“Dreamland” was selected as one of the Best books of 2015 by Amazon.com, Slate.com, the Daily Beast, Buzzfeed, Seattle Times, Boston Globe, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Entertainment Weekly, Audible, and in the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg Business.

Temple is the author of the Edgar Award-nominated “American Pain,” the gripping story of the king of the Florida pill mills that led the way in disbursing massive amounts of oxycodone to drug addicts posing as patients.

The David C. Hardesty Jr. Festival of Ideas was created in 1995 by former�WVU�president David C. Hardesty Jr. and is produced by�University Events. It was inspired by events he organized as�WVU’s student body president in the 1960s. Today, the lecture series spans the academic year and engages a diverse group of newsmakers, public figures, thought leaders and�WVU’s own superstars.

-WVU-

dm/2/22/16

CONTACT: Alexandra McConnell-Trivelli, University Events
304-293-8024,�amcconn1@mail.wvu.edu

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