![]() ![]() ![]() When asked whether she has thought of leaving Roanoke, she said no. While we talked, she roamed her neighborhood with her dog, Mavis. We spoke with Macy by phone-about the opioid crisis but also about her precarious upbringing in small-town Ohio, her efforts to tell underdog stories, and her alarm at the decline of the news business, which she watched firsthand as a reporter for the Roanoke Times from 1989 to 2014. Many will likely stay the course-attempting to incarcerate the problem away-but Raising Lazarus provides an alternative road map for more compassionate and effective ways to use those funds. The book comes at a crucial moment: This year, funds from blockbuster opioid-related legal settlements are beginning to flow to local governments, which will have to decide how to use the money. ![]() Macy’s new book, Raising Lazarus, tackles the issue of how to treat the epidemic, making a passionate case for seeing addiction not as a moral weakness or a criminal problem but as an illness that’s treatable with medications like methadone and buprenorphine. Roanoke-based journalist Beth Macy is one of the best-known chroniclers of America’s opioid epidemic-first through her 2018 book, Dopesick, then with its adaptation into a Hulu TV series last fall. ![]()
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