America's poorest white town: abandoned by coal, swallowed by drugs

America's poorest white town: abandoned by coal, swallowed by drugs

Karen Jennings patted her heavily made up face, put on a sardonic smile and said she thought she looked good after all she’d been through.

“I was an alcoholic first. I got drunk and fell in the creek and broke my back. Then I got hooked on the painkillers,” the 59-year-old grandmother said.

Over the years, Jennings’ back healed but her addiction to powerful opioids remained. After the prescriptions dried up, she was drawn to the underground drug trade that defines eastern Kentucky today as coal, oil and timber once did.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/12/beattyville-kentucky-and-americas-poorest-towns