Erin Marie Daly
Erin Marie Daly is a San Francisco-based freelance journalist whose current project is a nonfiction book about prescription drug and heroin addiction. She also runs the Oxy Watchdog blog, which provides up-to-date news and information about the opiate addiction epidemic. A graduate of NYU and UC Berkeley, Erin is a former senior reporter for the national legal newswire Law360, and has written hundreds of articles on product liability issues in the health care industry, particularly relating to pharmaceutical companies. She also has an active freelance career, including a recent multimedia report on opiate abuse, published in collaboration with the Center for Investigative Reporting, which was awarded the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2012 by the Society for Professional Journalists. Painkiller addiction became a subject of interest to Erin in the course of her day job, but her fascination with it took a personal turn when her youngest brother, Pat, became addicted to OxyContin. He died of a heroin overdose in February 2009 at age 20. Erin's book combines the story of her brother’s death and its aftermath with the stories of others whose lives have been affected by this phenomenon. The book will be published next year by Counterpoint Press.
