[Fox] Opioids have killed more Americans than gun violence
and ended more lives around the world than the Vietnam War.
The suffering has come in waves.
In the late 1800s,
opioids were used to treat everything from toothaches to tuberculosis.
And by the 1990s,
they were once again being widely prescribed
for all different forms of pain management.
Then came OxyContin
and with it, a body count born of a corporate greed
so insidious,
so diabolical, that it set the stage for a drug epidemic
unlike anything the world has ever seen.
[Fox] It began innocently enough.
A harmless-looking flower in far-off Asia,
known in ancient communities for its healing properties.
Over time, though, poppy and its opiate derivatives
have left a deep mark of addiction and suffering.
You can drop into any community in America
and see the havoc that these drugs have wrought,
but the Rust Belt and Appalachian states have been particularly hard hit:
Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia.
It's understood that in business, you have to balance supply and demand,
but the opioid crisis is a crisis born by oversupply,
which created a seemingly unending demand.
So, as I start this journey,
the question for me is, "How did we get here?
Who's to blame?"
[man, distorted] This section of town, skid row, basically.
Huge prostitution, heroin trafficking
all through the night throughout here.
If the weather's warm, the girls will be out walking, waving,
and it's usually for heroin.
So they sell their bodies and then take their cash--
Absolutely.
You know, nonviolent crime--
Eighty percent of that crime is driven by drug users
that are-- have, you know, an addiction problem.
It would never used to be like that.
[Fox] What happened?
You talk to a user, and it's nine times out of ten, their answer is,
"I got injured.
I was prescribed all these opioids, pill form.
When I ran out, I needed more, so I turned to heroin."
So then, once heroin hits the streets here,
it's affected every demographic:
rich people, poor people, it doesn't matter.
It's affecting everybody.
So, the pill crisis really turned into a heroin crisis.
Yes, yes. That is what's led to where we're at now, was the pills.
[Fox] The pill, the centerpiece of this epidemic,
is OxyContin,
a hyper-potent, extended-release painkiller
that, through unrelenting lobbying, blew through the medical industry
and onto the streets.
There, in the hands of non-professionals,
it began taking an unprecedented toll.
Oxy's potency, its very design, ensured it.
OxyContin is different
than some of the older, classic opioid pain prescription medications.
OxyContin is pure oxycodone.
They bind to opioid receptors that are in these reward parts of the brain.
They produce the rush, the high, the cloud-like feeling.
Oxycodone is extremely potent
and very rapid.
The faster they get in the brain
and stimulate the opioid receptors and elevate dopamine,
the more addictive they are.
Taking oxycodone daily is like taking heroin daily.
There is really no difference.
[Fox] Someone dies of an opioid overdose every 11 minutes,
but even surviving, living through an opioid addiction,
takes an incredible toll.
[man] This is my house.
When I look at the dead trees, 'cause it's wintertime--
but I... remember it with flowers everywhere and...
I also remember them repossessing my car out of that back garage.
I was general manager of a car dealership.
I embezzled a whole lot of money,
buying drugs with it.
Being consumed with just getting the next fix.
My family lived there, and, uh...
I went away and served some time,
and they lost the home.
There was a self-esteem issue for me personally
that I always had because of being an overweight kid.
I was the guy that carried my weight around my waist.
This is at probably 400 pounds.
I thought that I needed to look a certain way,
so I went and I had the gastric bypass surgery.
I had quite a few complications with my surgery,
and I was prescribed oxycodone, OxyContin.
My kids and I, and my wife,
we were like that family where people would say,
"Man, I wish we were like them."
And I remember my son, he was 16. He found out I was getting arrested.
He says, "Why did you steal it? I'd have gave you anything I had.
I just want you. I don't care about all the other stuff."
And I could see how his heart was broken. That...
the guy he looked up to was not who he thought he was, you know?
Before you ever came to opioids, you weren't a big drug user?
I wasn't. I was that guy
that thought that people that used drugs were weak-minded,
and I was very opinionated about that.
[Fox] Moral outrage over opioid use has a long history.
During the 19th century, morphine was isolated from opium
and used to treat everything from battlefield injuries to joint pain
to menstrual cramps.
But when addiction rates spiraled out of control,
doctors were encouraged to prescribe
what was considered a new, less addictive opioid:
heroin.
And heroin, like the opioid crisis of today,
soon found its way to the streets.
The history of opioids in the country is interesting
because it seems to repeat itself.
We always seem to be looking for an opioid
that will kill pain
and not have any of the addictive risk,
and heroin was supposed to be that.
[Fox] And just like before, the federal government stepped in,
this time passing the Harrison Act of 1914,
which restricted heroin and other opioids.
But in the 1970s and '80s,
the medical community once again turned to opioids to manage pain.
It goes back to the hospice movement,
which really starts in the '70s.
There was this overwhelming feeling that cancer pain had been
horrendously undertreated in the United States for many years,
and so there was this movement to more aggressively prescribe opioids
for terminally ill cancer patients.
In the 1980s, there were a group of influential academics
who pushed that further and started advocating the use of strong opioids
to treat more ordinary kinds of pain.
[Fox] Purdue Pharma is a private company
whose main source of revenue used to be a morphine pill for cancer patients,
known as MS Contin.
And when the patent on that pill was running out,
they needed to find a new product to take to market.
OxyContin was introduced in 1996,
and they marketed it heavily to doctors.
Doctors, for a long time, were really scared of using these drugs.
They had a real serious fear about patients getting addicted,
so Purdue had to change the perception
of how opioids were going to be used.
[Fox] The best way to do this, the way to absolutely ensure it,
was to weaponize the prescription pad,
which Purdue did astoundingly well
through lobbying and direct sales to doctors.
They simply convinced doctors to vouch for
and subsequently prescribe OxyContin.
Oxy did the rest.
It's not acceptable to say,
"I don't believe in using strong pain medications for chronic pain."
We need to stop saying this.
Being a pharmaceutical rep was considered, like, the top echelon.
Like, that was really a plum job if you could get it.
What made it such a plum job?
It paid very well, bonuses.
Um, it was considered prestigious.
Years before, you had to have a science background,
but Purdue felt that they could train you
in the medicines that you would be representing.
It was two weeks, and we went to the home office.
And they tell you how great the product is,
and people who maybe had so much pain that they couldn't function,
and now they're able to lead a relatively normal life.
Once I tried OxyContin, I realized that there is hope.
I've been able to work. I've gotten my life back.
So you go out, all excited about you're gonna help
the doctors help their patients.
And then it's like hitting a... [clears throat] ...brick wall.
You know, the pushback.
What was the pushback?
Concerns about addiction,
about it being "too strong."
So they were-- It was already on the kind of--
Like, weren't people's Spidey senses up about OxyContin at that point?
Well, the perception is, or was,
that, yeah, OxyContin is for terminal patients, okay?
Severe pain.
But part of our job was to work with the doctor
to get them to understand it was for moderate...
to severe chronic pain.
And were doctors receptive to that?
That was part of my job,
to get them to...
open their mind to considering that as an option.
They don't wear out, they go on working.
They do not have serious medical side effects,
and so these drugs, which, I repeat, are our best, strongest pain medications,
should be used much more than they are for patients in pain.
The rate of addiction amongst pain patients
who are treated by doctors
is much less than one percent.
OxyContin was aggressively marketed to doctors.
They chose the doctors by analyzing data
that was supposed to show which doctors had the most chronic pain patients,
but just as likely showed which doctors
were more likely to prescribe pain medication
when it wasn't necessarily required.
[Glazek] When patients would complain
that they were becoming addicted to opioids,
Purdue's sales reps encouraged doctors to tell them
that they weren't really addicted. This was "pseudo-addiction."
All they were was dependent,
which is something they shouldn't be worried about.
Addiction implies you have no control,
but the sales reps wanted to tell the doctors
and wanted doctors to tell the patients that everything was under control.
We had a marketing piece
that addressed physical dependence
versus tolerance
versus drug addiction
versus pseudo-addiction.
What is pseudo-addiction?
Well, that's where a patient exhibits drug-seeking behaviors
that are similar to an addict,
but perhaps the problem is that their pain is undertreated.
And so, if you gave them a higher dose
and their pain was managed sufficiently, then those behaviors would cease.
Wow.
So this was a way to say to doctors,
"I know it seems like your patients are addicted,
but actually consider that it might be pseudo-addiction."
And the cure to pseudo-addiction was prescribing more.
Higher dosing strength.
Because the indication was for Q12, which means every 12 hours.
So if the patient took OxyContin at eight o'clock in the morning,
supposed to take another at eight o'clock at night.
And they emphasized that to make sure that you...
make the doctors understand that the indication is for every 12 hours.
So it's not to necessarily have them take it more often
but increase the dosing strength.
But that also keeps in with the idea that you build a tolerance to opioids,
so you need more to achieve the same effect
over, you know, over a period of time.
It seems like one of the really hard things for doctors
must be not being able to get inside their patient's body
and actually feel the pain. You... do you know what I mean?
Like, if you're only diagnosing based on asking,
"Is this treating your pain?"
And you're dealing with assessing addiction...
Well, it's completely subjective,
and that's where the dilemma is for doctors
because they have to, to a certain extent, take a leap of faith
and believe what the patient is telling them.
And so, there's other signs that they may look for
that might indicate that someone is not necessarily on the up and up,
you know, for wanting...
um, you know, the medication or... needing it,
but it's completely subjective.
What Purdue was incredibly focused on was prescribing the highest possible doses
to patients who would also take it for many years.
You got that patient on your drug for life.
That justifies an enormous customer acquisition cost.
[Fox] Purdue's aggressive marketing campaign paid off.
Profits hit a billion within the first four years
and grew to three billion over the next decade.
Other pharmaceutical companies sold their own opioid painkillers
to great success,
and by 2012,
there were so many prescriptions written,
they would have covered four out of every five Americans.
And while the US leads in opioid consumption,
other parts of the world are suffering as well.
[Bock] For three months straight, I had 120 pills a month.
-[Fox] Three months. -Yeah.
-And... -Wow. That's a long prescription.
For a while, I was taking one every six hours like you're supposed to.
And then I was taking six every one hour
instead of one every six hours.
After 90 days, I went to the doctor, and he said,
"You don't need them anymore." I said, "I absolutely do need them."
But there was a doctor, a local doctor that's in jail now that--
Somebody said, "You should go there. You can get pills there."
So I took my dad with me, just for company.
The doctor had a-- He had a cowboy hat on and no shoes,
-and he was walking around in his socks. -Oh, that's a tip-off.
When I was in the waiting room, there was...
It was full of, like, 25, 30-year-old people
that were sleeping in chairs and nodding off,
and my dad said to me, "Where do you have me?"
We went into the office, and I pulled out all my records.
He didn't even look at them. He says, "Well, what would you like?"
And I said, "I dunno. What do you give?"
And he gave me a list of things that he wrote:
um, OxyContin, Opanas, and Xanax.
And he said, "How about your father?"
So, as an addict, I said, "Give him the same thing."
And he's Ronald Senior. I'm Ronald Junior.
So, it was very easy to get the prescriptions filled,
and I sell his, and it pays for mine.
[Fox] Pill mills and shady pain clinics
brought a flood of prescription painkillers
into the market,
serving as fronts for corrupt doctors
while providing the supply to both patients and street dealers.
Nationwide, 76 billion pills were released.
That's enough to give every American 36 pills a year.
And these pills were easily diverted to the black market,
where they were sold for a premium.
Do you remember the first time you came across Oxy?
[man, distorted] About 14 years ago, when I got shot in the face.
Almost died.
They prescribed Oxy as a painkiller?
Yeah. I took it once, and I didn't like the feeling.
Never did it again. But, uh... I bumped into some people
that basically wanted to buy them off of me.
[Fox] How much do those cost to buy on the street?
Different people got different prices, you know?
Like, I could get 'em from 15 a pill to 20 a pill.
-[Fox] How much do you sell them for? -Thirty bucks each.
Wow. So, you're doubling your money.
And how long does that last for someone who's a regular user?
How… They do one a day?
No. They usually buy about 20 in one shot.
By nine, ten o'clock at night, they calling me for another 20.
[Fox] By the mid-2010s, the medical establishment
had finally reversed its habit of overprescribing,
and the legal sources for pills began to disappear,
causing black-market demand to skyrocket.
The prices became so inflated
that people couldn't afford their addiction
or the pills were too scarce to find.
[Bock] A doctor that I used to go to got arrested.
When I was buying them on the streets because of that fact,
they became extremely expensive,
and, um, it got to a point where I actually stole money
from my employer.
In the long run, that's what the embezzlement charges--
It's what-- I was taking the money and buying pills with them.
I remember talking to somebody that said,
"Why don't you just buy heroin? It's so much cheaper."
So I said, "What is heroin?" I, honestly...
I was the most naive drug addict.
I'm like, "What is heroin?"
"It's the same thing. It's just a different version."
And I remember asking the person that was there to shoot me up.
Did you know in that moment, like, this is a crossroads?
Once I did it, absolutely.
Once I had that feeling, it was over.
I never wanted to cross that line...
till I actually shot it in my veins,
and I didn't care at that point.
[man] Most people who abuse
semi-synthetic drugs, such as heroin and fentanyl,
start with prescription painkillers.
And the transition from prescription painkillers to heroin
very often is done purely due to financial reasons.
A 30 mg tablet of oxycodone
can sell for roughly $30 per pill.
If you've developed a tolerance where you're taking ten a day,
conservatively, that's a $300-a-day habit.
Once that money dries up, people will make the transition to heroin,
which can be purchased for as little as $7 a bag.
We're so used to these headlines screaming about heroin overdoses
that I think sometimes we forget to ask
how a regular, suburban American comes across heroin to begin with.
While Big Pharma mastered selling opioids to the masses,
heroin sales and marketing was going through its own radical transformation
from urban to suburban drug.
Today, most likely, the heroin user is somebody from the middle class,
or at least from an area that does not look like
a typical place where you'd find heroin users,
the suburbs, fairly well-to-do areas.
While violent gangs controlled the trade in most of America's big cities,
one enterprising drug network from Mexico was developing a radical business plan:
to develop, grow, and serve a heroin market
where there had never been one before.
[Fox] That untapped market was the suburbs,
where overprescribed patients who could no longer afford their Oxy habits
were now in need of a cheaper fix.
The interesting thing about the Xalisco Boys from Xalisco, Nayarit,
is not that they're the only heroin traffickers from Mexico.
It is that they are the first ones
to figure out and then systematically exploit
the coming market for heroin.
They're using this system that resembled pizza delivery.
And they meet the addict at whatever, a Burger King parking lot.
You don't have to go down to the projects or some seedy motel anymore.
What does the market really demand as an addict? Convenience.
The Xalisco Boys' sales approach didn't just stop with customer service.
Their actual product was higher quality and more potent
because of the way they sold it.
Owning all the points along the business chain,
from production to distribution, all the way to retail,
was vertical integration at its best.
And as a result, they're able to control the product
all the way through the process.
So instead of traffickers and dealers having to pad their profit margins
by diluting the product that they sell,
they're able to rely on a steady salary
and sell a product that's reliable and high quality to the consumer.
[Quinones] They expanded throughout the western United States,
up until 1998, then took it over the Mississippi River
for the first time to Columbus, Ohio.
This enormous, new market, growing market for the first time,
of opiate addicts, due largely to the very, very aggressive promotion
of pain pills by pain specialists and pharmaceutical companies.
It's very... impossible to talk about the spread of heroin
uh... without talking about pain pills.
They are kind of two sides to the same story.
[Fox] The collision of the heroin and Oxy markets
continues to devastate huge swathes of the country to this day.
And when you add into this mess fentanyl,
a synthetic opioid 50 times more potent than heroin,
there's a level of carnage
that the medical establishment can't service
and the law enforcement community can't prevent.
Fentanyl has already left
hundreds of thousands of bodies in its wake.
Fentanyl has numerous legitimate uses
as a surgical anesthetic and has been ever since the 1970s.
However, we have seen a lot of criminal organizations
get into the manufacture of it.
It's cut in low-quality heroin.
[in Spanish] I'm a drug cook...
here in Sinaloa.
I make synthetic chiva,
China white with opium gum.
Fentanyl, it's a powder, but it's mixed with gasoline.
Fentanyl, if it comes into contact with fire,
it could cause an explosion or a fire.
We have gotten a little high. We felt dizzy.
We always try to have a little milk while we cook
to get rid of the high.
A kilo of fentanyl is stirred with heroin,
to make more product, more volume.
[glass clinks]
[indistinct chatter in distance]
One kilo of fentanyl yields ten kilos.
We make ten kilos of China white.
♪ They were burning chiva ♪
♪ I heard from reporters ♪
♪ When they saw the patrols They ran with the jars ♪
♪ With the drugs, they escaped ♪
♪ They threw a bone at the dog ♪
♪ They got lost in the forest ♪
♪ They cross a stream ♪
♪ With the traces of heroin ♪
♪ And small packs of money ♪
♪ The police reported ♪
♪ They escaped ♪
[man] You have to move it around so it doesn't burn, like this.
[interviewer] What do you think about the fact that...
there are people dying with this product you are selling.
[Jorge] For example, if a family member tried it, I'd feel bad.
But, if he likes it, that would be his business.
But yes, it feels ugly that there are addicted people
with overdoses
because there have been many overdoses from fentanyl consumption.
[interviewer] Do you think that, one day, the problem of drug use will end?
[Jorge] I don't think that it'll end.
As long as there are buyers, it will never end.
This came out, and this is what we do.
[Fox] Mixing heroin and fentanyl, whether at the cook level or at the street level,
means striking a delicate balance between making a profit
and not killing your customers.
This dealer starts with heroin and a laxative,
which, together, cost him about $750.
This is where you make the money: fentanyl.
[Fox] He adds $100 worth of fentanyl,
about a gram, increasing the mixture's potency,
and he'll sell the final product for $2,600,
leaving him with over 1,700 in profit.
[Fox] It must be a hard balance
to make it strong enough that people like it, but not so strong
that it hurts them and they don't come back.
Yeah, you just gotta measure it out, and then you get it right.
Wanna make sure it ain't too strong.
Do you use? How do you know what is too strong?
You know, I give a few people a batch. If they come back, they want it.
Right.
[woman] He says this shit is the best. We're going to test that theory.
I'm gonna smoke a little of it.
Mmm. No. He wasn't lying.
He was not lying.
He was not lying. You usually-- Yeah, this is... This is good.
I had surgery when I was 18.
I was getting 250 Vicodin, like, a month.
No one told me,
"Hey, look, you wanna take these, and you gotta be real careful."
You know, or even just talk to my parents. Even just pull my mom to the side and say,
"Hey, look, watch her on these pills."
[Tiara murmurs]
I was left to my own devices at 18.
The best drug dealer I've ever had was my pharmacist.
[Tiara sighs]
Yeah.
No one chooses to pick up a substance that's gonna ultimately end their life.
That's what these...
pieces of shit dealers wait for.
They wait for the moment you catch the needle
'cause they know the moment you hit that needle, you are theirs.
It's a wrap.
They can do whatever they want to you, however they want to you,
and you will be back.
You don't know anyone who's been hurt?
Wow.
You're lucky.
It seems like every conversation I have around here
is with... someone who's lost a family member
or a friend or someone they went to high school with or...
I mean, I know of a few, but not anyone I was close to, so...
it is what it is.
You think it would make a difference if someone you were close to, you lost?
If they were buying it, they have the problem, you know.
I'm just the supplier.
So as long as profits come in, I'm gonna keep making it.
Standing in that kitchen,
staring at this kid in a mask spouting evil,
it's so easy to say
that people like him are the root of this epidemic
and leave it at that.
But the reality is that he's just a middleman,
and on the other side of him, the real causal factor here
is unregulated capitalism
and the Big Pharma companies that took advantage of it
to create an epidemic that's ravaging our cities.
This problem spans all of our political and economic lives.
The cities that are shouldering the burden
are doing so across, not just law enforcement,
but hospitals, jails, the foster care system.
All of that is an enormous burden on our government,
and that's part of the reason that they're suing
the manufacturers and distributors of these drugs.
We dropped our bottles here today,
prescribed by the Sackler family and filled by Purdue.
[Fox] Currently, there are about 2,000 cities, counties, and states
seeking damages from Big Pharma.
Oklahoma agreed to a $270 million settlement from Purdue
for damages in their state alone.
This is a profound moment
in the history of the pharmaceutical industry.
I think it's time to start talking about holding these companies accountable
and holding their executives accountable
for the crisis they helped create.
How has your view on it changed since you left?
Oh, it's changed a lot.
I think the company has a lot of responsibility for...
what's gone on.
Um...
I think they misrepresented to their salespeople.
I mean, I found out things like,
the... we had marketing materials, Partners Without Pain
and, um, the American Pain Society,
and we had publications that we were allowed
to bring to the doctors' offices to give out.
And there were articles in there
talking about how, you know, using a long-acting opioid
over a short-acting one for, you know, for chronic pain.
Um...
And then come to find out that these were all
organizations that were sponsored by Purdue,
which we didn't know at the time.
I was giving out these materials. I didn't know that it was...
Purdue that was funding them.
So, it's information that was basically being provided
by Purdue but with this other name on it?
Right. To make it look like it was an outside, you know,
American Pain Society-- to make it look like an organization
that was independent and that didn't have ties with Purdue.
So this was a completely objective viewpoint,
where they... It was all funded by the company.
[Fox] When people look at the scale of the problem,
it's clearly overwhelming.
It feels like there's gotta be somebody to blame.
Look, the pharmaceutical companies wanna make money.
It's America. It's fair to make money.
But it's also appropriate to make money in a moral fashion,
where you're actually, you know,
at least giving people an understanding of what you're selling them.
And I don't believe they did that in this case.
I'm guessing that their response, the pharma companies is,
"Sure, when it's misused,
but we include a label. We include instructions.
If people are misusing it, it's not on us."
Just like in the tobacco litigation,
when all the folks that ran the tobacco companies
went in front of Congress and they all put their hands up and said,
"Nothing wrong with our cigarettes. They're not overly addictive," all this,
they weren't really telling the truth.
When these drugs first came out on the market, they were sold as drugs
that were no more addictive than any other painkillers.
No more addictive than over-the-counter painkillers.
That's not accurate.
You cannot put out a product, um, and market it in a way
that is not truthful.
I can't imagine taking on Big Pharma
in terms of just the number of documents,
the overwhelming resources
that they can put towards their defense.
Our firm represents over 70 counties right now.
Whether it's a small county or a larger county,
approximately 70-plus percent of the criminal justice system of a county
is drug-related,
meaning that somebody has either sold a drug,
bought a drug, or committed a crime while they were on drugs
and have ended up in the criminal justice system.
That is a great toll on a county.
That seems like such an overwhelming system to try to assess,
but I'm guessing it goes straight to damages.
How do you calculate what you're asking for?
In each particular county, you have to have a forensic accountant
and go down their budgets
and pull out those things that are related.
What you'll see an overlap on is extra police to fight the drug problem.
You'll see it in the EMS and in the jail systems.
You'll see it with respect to the hospitals.
You'll see it with outreach programs.
The president's commission came out and said in 2016,
it was a $500 billion effect on our federal government.
That's a half a trillion dollars.
These damages are astronomical,
and in one year, the gross revenues
between all of the companies, manufacturers, and distributors
that we sue is $1.6 trillion.
So if you win this litigation,
where does the money go?
It goes to the counties
to use as they best see fit
to help with their problem because they know best.
[Bock] I remember when I got to the mission, I was so broken,
I never looked at anybody in the eye.
My head was always down.
You know, I see that happen every day.
I see guys walking in with no hope.
I think sometimes society thinks that the way to deal with these challenges
-is judgment, is shame, is... -Absolutely.
-...imprisonment. -And throw them away.
And you went through all of that.
Was it what finally made the difference?
Maybe going to rehab for 30 days is gonna fix everything for somebody,
but in my opinion, there's a lot of stuff behind an addiction,
more than just taking the pills. There's a reason behind why you started,
and I needed to really address that.
I got into counseling.
And it's only nine months clean. It's not nine years.
-Nine months is a long, hard-won victory. -Yeah.
And when I sit here,
living at the City Mission with not a whole lot of anything,
I'm richer now than I've been in a long time,
and I mean that.
I've a place to go every day. I've a place to be.
I have 60 guys that are fighting through a process,
in a program, trying to figure it out together.
-I'm Ron. I'm an addict. -[all] Hi, Ron.
I've been thinking the past couple of days 'cause of the holidays, you know, that...
sometimes, how much I miss my family and the mistakes I've made.
But, um... I'm really grateful for friends that...
are going through this journey with me,
that when they look at me, they don't look at me as the outcast,
but they look at me as brothers, you know?
And I'm not an aberration.
And I'm grateful for people
seeing something in me that I didn't see in myself
for a long time.
Not feeling ashamed anymore, you know?
Not feeling broken.
Not feeling like I'm something that could be tossed in a trash heap
and nobody would miss me.
I've kind of found out who I am,
you know, and who I wanna be.
Who are you?
I'm just Ron Bock, a guy that loves with all his whole heart.
You know, he's a forgiving man that made some bad choices
and bad decisions, but that's not who I am.
The opioid epidemic is unlike anything we've ever faced before.
It was the result of a terrible collision of circumstances.
First, you had the Purdue Pharma-Sackler family vision
of using Mad Men-era marketing techniques
for the sake of profit.
And then you have the public trust in doctors,
in believing that whatever is on the prescription pad
has to be safe
because it's doctor's orders.
Followed up with these terrifying innovations
in the heroin world
where, all of a sudden, in the suburbs,
where you could never get a hold of this drug before,
it's there to fill the vacuum of these pill mills.
We have to learn something from this.
It's a cautionary tale about what happens
when you legalize a drug without regulating it.
Greed takes over, and the people pay.
And we're gonna be paying for this one for a very long time.
[intense music playing]