Journalist Sam Quinones set to speak in Post Falls in wake of books on U.S. drug epidemics

Journalist and author Sam Quinones is scheduled as the keynote speaker 10:30 a.m. Thursday in Post Falls for Panhandle Health District’s Substance Use Summit.

The free, all-day summit will be held at the Red Lion Templin’s on the River, with sessions by health care professionals, clinicians, law enforcement, first responders and community experts on drug prevention.

Quinones is a critically acclaimed storyteller and former L.A. Times reporter. In 2021, he released the book “The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth.”

The author’s website describes the book as deepening the story of the nation’s opioid epidemic to include the spread of mass supplies of synthetic drugs, such as fentanyl and meth.

For the book, Quinones sought unnoticed stories of Americans involved in community repair, such as a man who secretly kept a community center open for kids and a woman who adopts an infant and cares for the child’s bedridden mother put in a vegetative state by drug overdose.

The Least of Us also delves into the neuroscience of addiction, and it follows Quinones’ 2015 release, “Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic.”

“After years of interviews, research, and writing, finally, that’s what this national saga has left me with,” Quinones wrote. “That the lessons of neuroscience, the epidemic, and the pandemic are really the same: That we are strongest in community, as weak as our most vulnerable, and the least of us lie within us all.”

Experts say fentanyl is the deadliest drug ever to be sold on U.S. streets. Quinones also broke the story of Mexican traffickers’ method of making methamphetamine in catastrophic supplies, “now accompanied by waves of psychosis resembling schizophrenia, mental illness, homelessness and tent encampments across America,” his website says.

In January 2022, The Least of Us was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award for Best Nonfiction Book of 2021.

Additionally, the Panhandle summit will include a public health and safety overview of drugs in Idaho; treating substance use disorder and opioid use disorder in criminal justice settings; screening, brief intervention and referral to treatment; and a presentation titled “Be Where Your Feet Are – Building Your Own Resiliency.”

There will also be a documentary screening of “Call Me: Stories From North Idaho.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between April 2020 and April 2021, an estimated 100,306 drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States, an increase of 28.5% from the 78,056 deaths that occurred during the prior year.

The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare reports that in 2021 there were over 5,000 emergency department visits related to nonfatal drug overdose in Idaho.

“Our goal is to address this crisis by providing intervention and prevention education to health care professionals and first responders at the summit,” said Kim Young, Panhandle’s health services division administrator.

Quinones plans to sign books at the event, and copies of The Least of Us will be provided courtesy of the Panhandle district to registered guests. For more information and to register by a deadline of Wednesday night, visit Eventbrite. Lunch and refreshments are provided, and there are professional education credits available to attendees.

The event is open to the public, but the information is geared to health care providers and first responders.