America’s opioid addiction crisis

Opioid overdoses killed more people in the US in 2017 than were killed during the whole of the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, prescriptions are on the rise in Britain too. Simon Wilson reports.

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Humans have been drawn to the poppy for centuries, but it's a fatal attraction
(Image credit: Credit: Daniel Ptacek / Alamy Stock Photo)

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.