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Opioid Crisis in the US: Business & Addiction (Part 2)
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Opioid Crisis in the US: Business & Addiction (Part 2)

51 MIN · EN · STATUS: [ STREAMING ]
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Purdue Pharma's OxyContin windfall touched off a gold rush among pharmaceutical companies, and this DW documentary tracks what happened once dozens of competitors piled in, including Insys, which pushed fentanyl, fifty times stronger than heroin. Interviews and case files trace the tactics used to move product: strippers hired to seduce doctors, bribery, insurance fraud, and dose increases patients never agreed to. In Florida, so-called pill mills operated as legal drug hubs, and Chris George, who ran the largest network before serving eleven years in prison, describes on camera how the system worked and how it made him rich. The film then follows the crackdown that shut down pharmacies and pain clinics by the end of the 2010s, and the vacuum that followed. Members of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel explain how they studied the pharmaceutical companies' own playbook and adapted it to keep fentanyl flowing into American streets. The throughline is a business model that survived its legal collapse by going underground.