The recent Pulitzer Prize winner, Eric Eyre, received an award for his investigative journalism on drug crimes in West Virginia. With Part 1 and Part 2, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reports on a series of overdoses due to OxyContain.
Eyre reports information such as, “out-of-state drug companies shipped nearly 9 million highly addictive…hydrocodone pills over two years to a single pharmacy in the Mingo County town,” and, “Mingo County has the fourth-highest prescription opioid death rate of any county in the United States,” (Eyre 2016). With a simple statistics, he is able to start building his case.
His trail follows interviews with family members of drug overdoses, information from the DEA, and utilizing legal information using the Freedom of Information Act.
Eyre was able to uncover the reason behind many drug overdoses in Mingo County of West Virginia using investigative journalism techniques.
Sources:
- http://www.wvgazettemail.com/news-health/20161217/drug-firms-poured-780m-painkillers-into-wv-amid-rise-of-overdoses
- http://www.wvgazettemail.com/news-health/20161218/suspicious-drug-order-rules-never-enforced-by-state