By Courtney Hessler, The Herald-Dispatch
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Opioid distributors spent a full day of a trial in Charleston with a complex and thorough cross-examination of an epidemiologist in an attempt to disprove prescription opioids being a gateway to heroin abuse.
Katherine Keyes, an epidemiologist whose career at Columbia University has focused on opioid use disorder, testified last week the supply and oversupply of prescription pain pills is directly related to heroin abuse and the opioid crisis.
But McKesson attorney Timothy Hester pointed Monday to a report that said 99.8% of heroin users had a history of abusing more than just prescription opioids, the most common being tobacco and alcohol.
Hester spent hours cross-examining Keyes attempting to disprove her findings in an attempt to impeach her testimony as false, but the epidemiologist did not back down in her answers…