This webinar occurred on September, 30, 2021

Event Information

The Least of Us deepens the story of our nation’s opioid epidemic, including now the spread of mass supplies of synthetic drugs (fentanyl and meth). It also delves into the neuroscience of addiction, concluding we live in a soup of legal substances and services whose addictiveness is ever-refined by consumer-product corporations.

This webinar will cover:

1. How the opioid epidemic of pills/heroin has morphed into an epidemic of synthetic drugs (fentanyl and meth).
2. How the new way of making meth in Mexico is causing schizophrenia and homelessness across America.
3. How neuroscience has discovered that we all have the potential be addicts, and that we are surrounded by goods and services, legal and illegal, that are fine-tuned to addict us.
4. Mr. Quinones' point that “in a time when drug traffickers act like corporations and corporations like traffickers, our best defense, perhaps our only defense, lies in bolstering community.”

Educational Objectives

Upon completion of this educational activity, participants should be able to:

• Illustrate how the latest emerging drug threats of fentanyl and meth have heightened the drug epidemic’s deleterious effects.
• Recognize how neuroscience contributes to addiction.
• Explain community recovery efforts to improve overdose prevention and reversal interventions to save lives and help the vulnerable.

Target Audience

This activity is designed to educate commission members, practitioners, medical regulatory staff, and the public.

Speaker Biography

Sam Quinones is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist and author of four books of narrative nonfiction. Sam is formerly a reporter with the L.A. Times, where he worked for 10 years (2004-2014).  He is a veteran reporter on immigration, gangs and drug trafficking along the border. His latest book is The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth. 

In The Least of Us (November 2021), Quinones chronicles the emergence of a drug-trafficking world producing massive supplies of dope cheaper and deadlier than ever, marketing to the population of addicts created by the nation's opioid epidemic, as the backdrop to tales of Americans’ quiet attempts to recover community through simple acts of helping the vulnerable.

The Least of Us follows his landmark Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic (Bloomsbury, 2015), which ignited awareness of the epidemic that has cost the United States hundreds of thousands of lives, and become the deadliest drug scourge in the nation’s history.

Dreamland won a National Book Critics Circle award for the Best Nonfiction Book of 2015.

It was also selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by Amazon.com, Slate.com, the Daily Beast, Buzzfeed, Seattle Times, Boston Globe, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Entertainment Weekly, Audible, and in the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg Business by Nobel economics laureate, Prof. Angus Deaton, of Princeton University.

In 2019, Dreamland was selected as one the Best 10 True-Crime Books of all time based on lists, surveys, and ratings of more than 90 million Goodread readers.

Continuing Medical Education

Accreditation Statement

This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of the Federation of State Medical Boards and the Washington Medical Commission. The Federation of State Medical Boards is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

Credit Designation Statement

The Federation of State Medical Boards designates this enduring internet activity for a maximum of 1.0 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Course Director

Alden Roberts, MD
Washington Medical Commission

Commercial Support

This learning activity is not funded by any commercial entity. 
However, the Washington Medical Commission gratefully acknowledges the unrestricted educational grant from the FSMB Foundation in the amount of $10,000 to support this activity.

Disclosure of Commercial Interest

As an organization accredited by the ACCME, the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) requires that the content of CME activities and related materials provide balance, independence, objectivity, and scientific rigor. Planning must be free of the influence or control of a commercial entity and promote improvements or quality in healthcare. All persons in the position to control the content of an education activity are required to disclose all relevant financial relationships in any amount occurring within the past 12 months with any entity producing, marketing, re-selling, or distributing health care goods or services consumed by, or used on patients.

Faculty and Staff Disclosures

The ACCME defines “relevant financial relationships” as financial relationships in any amount occurring within the past 12 months that create a conflict of interest. The FSMB has implemented a mechanism to identify and resolve all conflicts of interest prior to the activity. The intent of this policy is to identify potential conflicts of interest so participants can form their own judgments with full disclosure of the facts. Participants will be asked to evaluate whether the speaker’s outside interests reflect a possible bias in the planning or presentation of the activity. 

Mr. Sam Quinones has the following relevant financial relationships to disclose:

• Speaker’s Bureau: Speaking Fees (self) / Guest Lecturer (various educational institutions)
• Ownership Interest (stocks, stock options, or other ownership interest): Publishing Royalties (Bloomsbury)

The course director and planners at the Federation of State Medical Boards and the Washington Medical Commission have no relevant financial interests to disclose.

Disclosure of Unlabeled Uses

This educational activity may contain discussion of published and/or investigational uses of agents that are not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. For additional information about approved uses, including approved indications, contraindications, and warnings, please refer to the prescribing information for each product, or consult the Physicians’ Desk Reference.

Mr. Sam Quinones intends to reference the following unlabeled/unapproved uses of drugs or products in his presentation: OxyContin®, Fentanyl, Heroin, Meth, Cocaine

No additional persons in control of content reported intent to reference unlabeled/unapproved uses of drugs or products.