Each month, 24 people die from prescription drug overdoses in Utah, a statistic that makes us 4th in the nation for drug poisoning deaths. Here and across the country, opioid addiction is a problem that effects people from all walks of life. The journalist Sam Quinones calls it an epidemic, and Wednesday, he joins us to explain how we came to this crisis. We’ll talk about how opioids work on the brain, how they were developed, and how Quinones says they’ve been relentlessly marketed to patients.

Sam Quinones is a journalist, former LA Times reporter and author of three books. His latest is called Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic [Indiebound|Amazon|Audible]

On Thursday, September 29, Sam Quinones will deliver the keynote address at the Utah Heroin and Opioid Summit 2016. The event is free at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Salt Lake City and begins at 8;45 a.m.

At 10:30 at the Sheraton, Doug Fabrizio will host a panel discussion as part of the summit.