Hi, I'm Alyssa Malano, and this is Sorry Not Sorry. So, The United States is in the midst of an opioid crisis driven largely by the greed and deceptive marketing practices of large industrial corporations.

However, it might shock most of us to know that the U.S. along with Britain and other Western nations triggered an opioid crisis in China that lasted for more than a century.

In his book, Smoke and Ashes, Opium's Hidden Histories, renowned writer Amatov Gosh explores the history of the

opium trade and its relationship to the present-day opioid crisis.

Even just sitting here right now, I can feel in the right side of my spine right now.

I'm having a really bad spasm. But it feels just like it like you're taking,

stretching and it's going to break any moment. Every day brings another story about the depth of this country's opioid crisis,

overdoses up, emergency services overwhelmed, another family bearing a loved one.

The opium was for a series of conflicts fought over the lucrative drug trade in mainland China during the 19th century.

Despite having greater numbers, China would struggle against the technologically superior British who

were determined to protect their colonial interests.

The Supreme Court putting the bankruptcy reorganization of Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, on hold.

That's after the Biden administration objected to a part of this deal that protected the Sackler family that controls the company from liability.

Hello, I'm Amipad Ghosh. I'm a writer, mainly of fiction. I've written many novels, but of late I've also been writing a lot about the climate crisis, the environmental crisis, and issues of that kind.

So sorry, not sorry, those are my interests.

Amatov, thank you so much for doing the podcast welcome to sorry not sorry would you just start by telling our listeners a bit about you in the work that you do in In the first place, thank you so much for having me on. It's a real pleasure. I've watched you on the screen many times and it's amazing to be talking in this way. I'm a writer of fiction mainly. I've been writing novels for over 35 years.

Many of my novels are historical novels, so I've always had to do a lot of research for them.

Many of my novels have environmental themes,

and that in turn has made me engage very strongly in the last 10 years

with issues of the environment of climate change and more generally speaking about the planetary

catastrophe that we are now living through because it is really a

multi-dimensional crisis you know including biodiversity loss and a great many of

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