Brian Mann
Brian Mann is NPR's first national addiction correspondent. He also covers breaking news in the U.S. and around the world.
Mann began covering drug policy and the opioid crisis as part of a partnership between NPR and North Country Public Radio in New York. After joining NPR full time in 2020, Mann was one of the first national journalists to track the deadly spread of the synthetic opioid fentanyl, reporting from California and Washington state to West Virginia.
After losing his father and stepbrother to substance abuse, Mann's reporting breaks down the stigma surrounding addiction and creates a factual basis for the ongoing national discussion.
Mann has also served on NPR teams covering the Beijing Winter Olympics and the war in Ukraine.
During a career in public radio that began in the 1980s, Mann has won numerous regional and national Edward R. Murrow awards. He is author of a 2006 book about small town politics called Welcome to the Homeland, described by The Atlantic as "one of the best books to date on the putative-red-blue divide."
Mann grew up in Alaska and is now based in New York's Adirondack Mountains. His audio postcards, broadcast on NPR, describe his backcountry trips into wild places around the world.
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This was meant to be the year we answered a big question about the deadly opioid epidemic: Will drug companies that make and sell prescription pain medications be held liable? That clarity never came. -
We're learning more about profits earned by the Sackler family from the sale of Oxycontin. Before Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy, the family transferred billions into their personal accounts.
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Kristin Kimball's second book — published nearly two decades after she left New York City to start a farm upstate — explores the ways in which farming has shaped her life and marriage in middle age. -
Federal prosecutors are continuing their probe of the drug industry's role in the opioid epidemic, but it's unclear if the Justice Department will charge companies with criminal wrong-doing.
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The impeachment battle is playing out with remarkable intensity in a N.Y. congressional district. Republican Elise Stefanik has emerged as a big supporter of the president, but there's been backlash.
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Opioids Are Personal For One Former ProsecutorThe opioid epidemic is changing how many in criminal justice experience addiction and drug crime. We profile a former New York prosecutor who lost her sister and mother to prescription painkillers.
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Two Ohio counties reached a deal Monday with the drug industry valued at about $260 million. Local officials say the money from drug makers and distributors is desperately needed to fight the crisis.
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Three U.S. drug distributors and a manufacturer reached a last-minute deal with two Ohio counties Monday, avoiding what would have been the first trial in a federal case on the opioid crisis.
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Four defendants, including three big U.S. distributors, have struck a deal with Summit and Cuyahoga counties. It doesn't resolve thousands of other lawsuits filed against the firms across the U.S. -
While most Republican attorneys general embrace Purdue Pharma's structured bankruptcy plan, all but two Democratic attorneys general reject it. "This is a moral issue for them," one expert says.
