Big Pharma versus Kentucky

"Oxycodone has wrecked our home, and I ain’t seen Daddy for years.

Our last goodbye, I was high, and Daddy was fighting back tears.

Down in the cave, ain’t nobody saved from fear it’ll be their last time.
Daddy once said, 'Son keep your head, cause life it can turn on a dime.
Son just look at mine.'” – "Oxycodone" by Jeni Hankins & Billy Kemp

Back in 2008, right before we were getting ready to finish our Jewell Ride Coal record, my Dad sent me an article about the opening of a methadone clinic for oxycontin addicts in Tazewell County, Virginia. After reading the article, we stopped production on the record, wrote the song “Oxycodone,” recorded it, and then put the song on Jewell Ridge Coal. The song helped us tell the whole story of life in the Appalachian mountains, today. Over the years, I’ve received more thank you messages about that song than any other, and, in particular, more messages from people in Southwest Virginia. 

Today Pacific Standard magazine published an article on the State of Kentucky versus Purdue Pharma, the purveyor of Oxycontin. It seems that Purdue is getting ready to pay the piper, but we all know that no money and no admission of devil-dealing, will bring back the communities and families destroyed by this drug. 

It’s an excellent long-form article about the voracious greed of big pharma and just how insidious they were in their false marketing of the drug to physicians: http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/how-the-american-opiate-epidemic-was-started-by-one-pharmaceutical-company

For the excellent article, “A Dark Addiction” by Nick Miroff, which inspired our song “Oxycodone” you can go here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/…/…/01/12/AR2008011201181.html

And to hear Oxycodone and any song from any Jeni & Billy record, you can visit our newly designed website: http://www.jeniandbilly.com/listen/s/oxycodone