Nan Goldin and thousands of Americans like her are coming after the Sacklers.

“We have to bring down the Sackler family!” she yells in a protest rally in New York. “They should be in jail next to El Chapo.”

Goldin, a noted photographer, was addicted to Oxycontin, an opioid painkiller that’s twice the strength of morphine.

This little pill – backed by aggressive marketing to doctors and consumers - made the Sackler family its $13 billion fortune. It also tripped an emergency that kills 900 Americans each week and grips two million more in addiction.

Oxycontin was supposed to ease pain for the terminally ill. But via their private company Purdue Pharma, the Sacklers flogged it for everything from stress to crook backs.

“I can’t explain how happy I am today. I mean, it’s just wonderful,” gushed a construction worker in a 1999 Oxycontin ad.

Purdue and the Sacklers now face a welter of lawsuits alleging they knew how addictive Oxycontin would be. It could be the biggest class action ever.

“We’re going to get a tobacco-sized verdict against Purdue Pharma,” says ex-Oxycontin addict Patrick Kennedy, son of the late Senator Edward Kennedy and nephew of JFK.

Purdue, abetted by doctors and pharmacies, showered one West Virginian county’s 20,000 people with 12 million Oxycontin pills – that’s 600 apiece.

“That drug just about wiped out this county,” says local sheriff Martin West. The sheriff estimates more than a fifth of his county is now addicted to opioids, heroin, ice or alcohol.

Rocky Kuhn was a champion boxer as a boy. Later, he was addicted to opiates like so many of his old schoolmates.

“My graduating class – probably a third of ‘em are dead already,” he tells reporter Conor Duffy. “And I’m just 33 years old. We didn’t have a chance. Nobody had a chance.”

All too late, authorities restricted Oxycontin – which became a gateway to more lethal but cheaper drugs. Pill addicts first turned to heroin and now to fentanyl, a lethal synthetic opioid 40 times stronger than heroin.

The opioid epidemic may have just crested in America’s east, but not in the laid-back west coast. San Francisco has long tolerated an open drug culture, but city streets now brim with heroin and fentanyl addicts – 80 per cent of whom started on opioid pills.

“There are more injecting drug users in San Francisco – about 25,000 - than there are high school students – 16,000,” says a furious city attorney Dennis Herrera, who is behind one of the mega writs against Purdue and the Sacklers.

“This is a major, major problem that is happening right here in one of the richest cities in the country – and despite our efforts, we’re being overwhelmed.”

While Herrera does battle in the courts, it’s up to drug harm reduction workers like Paul Harkin to confront the epidemic in the city streets.

“We’re seeing more fentanyl enter cuts in the drugs – and overdose deaths this year are gonna be up,” he says, as he hands out clean needles.

One of his clients is George, who went from pills to injecting fentanyl-laced heroin. His self-described “King Kong” habit might soon kill him, but he seems more worried about younger addicts. 

“It’s like fuck man, I hate to see people out here so young and they have no get-back,” he says.

“It’s like there’s no return. It’s a point of no return.”

GFX:  foreign correspondent

FEMALE POLICE OFFICER: “What did he take?”

FEMALE: “I don’t know… I don’t know sorry”.

00:00

Episode teaser.
Covington PD vestcam video, Overdose call to house

FEMALE POLICE OFFICER: “Okay let me get my gloves on.  I’m going to hit him with Narcan, okay?  What’s his name baby?”

CONOR DUFFY:  It’s a deadly addiction claiming more lives than car crashes or even gun violence.

00:06

Peach Tree PD vestcam video – overdose call to carpark

VESTCAM VIDEO: “Where’s 108?”

[sound of running]

00:17

AUTOMATED MESSAGE: “Tear open package and remove pads.  It is now safe to touch the patient.  Start CPR”.

CONOR DUFFY: More than 900 Americans from

00:24

Police drag man from car

all walks of life now die each week from opioid drug overdoses.  It’s a national crisis triggered by pain killer pills.

POLICE OFFICER: He's not breathing.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: “What I want the American people to know,

00:31

Trump press conference

the Federal Government is aggressively fighting the opioid epidemic on all fronts”.

00:46

Oxycontin bottle at tablets/Cop vest cam – treating inert body

CONOR DUFFY: Two million Americans are now addicted to prescription or illicit opioids – four times the number of twenty years ago – and a brand called Oxycontin led the way.

00:53

Sheriff's west

SHERIFF WEST: “That drug just about wiped this county out.  It was so powerful”.

01:13

Alley shot, addicts in row

DENNIS HERRERA: “There are more injection drug users in San Francisco,

01:18

Herrera

than there are high school students”.

01:23

Night time alley, San Francisco

CONOR DUFFY: [night street walk] “The scale of it is absolutely huge.  It’s block after block after block

01:24

Duffy to camera on street
GFX:  reporter
Conor Duffy

of people of all ages, races and gender in various stages of addiction. Some looking like they’re right near the end of their journey, others just starting out to go down the same dangerous road, and I have to say it’s really confronting seeing so much of this.

PROTESTORS CHANT: Shame on Sacklers…

01:33

Ext. The Met
GFX:  Opioid America

01:52

New York protest against Sackler family outside Met

Shame on Sacklers…

01:57

CONOR DUFFY: On the streets of New York, protestors are clear on who to blame for the opioid crisis. 

02:03

EXT. Museum/gallery walls at night.
Video clips projected onto various walls.

The Sackler family are American Establishment.  They built a $13 billion dollar fortune upon their private company Purdue Pharma.  Purdue created Oxycontin, a highly addictive prescription painkiller.  It’s an opioid, double the strength of morphine.

02:12

SACKLER name on Washington DC museum

PROTESTORS CHANT: “People die.  Sacklers' lie!”

CONOR DUFFY: The Sacklers are big philanthropists, donating millions to America’s prestigious museums and galleries.

02:34

Goldin at protest. Super:
Nan Goldin
Protest Leader

NAN GOLDIN: “I was addicted to Oxycontin.  They were trying to say that it was for peace of mind and social calm. I took it for those reasons and I ended up locked in my room for three years”.

CONOR DUFFY: Renowned photographer, Nan Goldin,

02:45

Protest outside Met. Goldin at protest

leads a campaign to shame these grand institutions into rejecting the Sackler dollars.

NAN GOLDIN: “We’re here to call out the Sackler family who’ve become synonymous with the opioid crisis. 

03:01

We’re here to call out all the museums who allow the Sackler name to line their halls, tarnish their wings, who honour the family who made billions off the bodies of hundreds of thousands”.

03:13

Ext. Guggenheim Museum

Music

03:26

Int. Guggenheim Museum. Protest. Thousands of prescriptions float down through atrium

CONOR DUFFY:  Inside the Sackler funded Guggenheim Museum, a reminder of a boast by Purdue President Richard Sackler that Oxycontin would generate a blizzard of prescriptions and billions in profits.

03:30

Goldin holds prescription bottle

NAN GOLDIN: [at protest] “And the Sacklers continue to profit off the bodies of 400,000 people”.

03:46

Protest street march night from Guggenheim to NY Met

CONOR DUFFY: The elusive Sacklers never speak to the media.  But now, across America, the victims are coming for the family in a fight back that could become the biggest class action in US history.

03:53

Goldin

NAN GOLDIN: “We have to bring down the Sackler family. They should be in gaol, next to El Chapo”.

04:13

Drone shot tracking over forests/ Appalachian Mountain roads

Music

04:21

Train/Lumber trucks/Welch GVs

CONOR DUFFY: Deep in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia rise the town of Welch.  Capital of McDowell County, one of the poorest in the country. 

04:38

Man and child walking/GVs Welch

McDowell leads the nation in per capita overdose deaths.  About 20 percent of the community is addicted to pills, heroin, alcohol or ice.  The abuse is largely hidden behind crumbling facades.

04:53

Sheriff West driving around the city

SHERIFF WEST:  “There’s a burnt out building there… used to be a school building.  McDowell County was a thriving county at one time, early '50s and late '60s and even in the '70s when I graduated from high school in 1973.  Anyone could get a job anywhere that you wanted to with the mining industry”.

CONOR DUFFY:  Martin West is County Sheriff. 

05:18

Conor in car with Sheriff

This former miner witnessed the decline of the local coal industry and downward spiral.

05:47

SHERIFF WEST: “The County has probably torn down hundreds of houses that have become dilapidated and people have moved out and left, went to other states and other counties”.

05:58

Conor and Sheriff exit car and walk to abandoned houses

Music

06:09

CONOR DUFFY: A part time missionary who served in Haiti, he's now trying to save his own community.

06:16

“People wouldn’t think that this is America”.

SHERIFF WEST: “No.  Honestly, it’s like being in Haiti.  It’s been pretty bad”.

06:22

“You couldn’t find a job, and people turned to drugs and alcohol because they were overwhelmed with the depression and the mental anguish that they were suffering. 

06:32

It’s just like the pharmaceutical company, a billion dollar industry, they find

06:46

Sheriff West interview

depressed areas and they know lots of people there got problems and then they introduce them to this and that – pills and drugs of any type.  And that’s what they do”.

06:51

Corporate video – Partners Against Pain
GFX on video: This program is brought to you by Purdue.

SALESMAN: “Patients in pain often have problems finding effective relief”.

07:02

CONOR DUFFY: “Purdue aggressively exploited this ready-made market with its new high potency pain killer, Oxycontin – even giving out free starter packs.

07:10

GFX on video: Your doctor might prescribe an opioid medication.  Less than 1% of patients become addicted.

SALESMAN: “Less than 1% of patients taking opioids actually become addicted”.

07:22

Corporate video – Partners Against Pain continues

CONOR DUFFY: What was an end of life medication, was at the Sacklers' direction, dispensed for everything from emotional distress to bad backs.

07:27

WOMAN PATIENT: “This medication does not turn you into a zombie.  It has turned me into an active person again”.

07:38

MALE PATIENT: “I got my life back.  Now I can enjoy every day that I live.  I can really enjoy myself”.

07:46

Welch GVs

Music

07:53

Rocky stands outside gas station

ROCKY KUHN: “I am kind of ashamed of it but

08:11

Rocky interview

I’m honest enough to say, yeah I’ve been down the beaten path before.

08:03

I’m trying to clean up and I have been for a minute now.  Just trying to do better and stay that way”.

08:08

Rocky walks across road

CONOR DUFFY: A month out of rehab and Rocky Kuhn is determined to break the grip of addiction that’s devastated his family.

ROCKY KUHN: “My mother,

08:18

Rocky interview

of all people, my mum, she did it.  She battled it.  She was a… a lot of the doctors they’ve been getting arrested for writing prescriptions and my mum’s doctor was one. 

08:30

Rocky on skateboard

My mum died.  She died in a car wreck but addiction was her best friend.  Me personally, I didn’t do drugs.  My mum died, my life fell to pieces and I jumped headfirst into all of them”.

08:45

CONOR DUFFY:  Rocky grew up in a neighbouring county.  It wasn’t just at home, but at school too, that he was mourning the casualties of Oxycontin addiction.

09:06

Rocky interview

ROCKY KUHN: “In my graduating class, probably a third of them are dead already.  I’m just 33 years old. 

09:19

Rocky on skateboard

There’s no sense in it.  It’s all drugs.  It’s fed into the community that’s just… we didn’t have a chance.  None of them, nobody had a chance.  It’s just addiction is a real thing”.

09:25

Rocky into gym

09:39

Rocky boxing at gym

“I started when I was 12. I had five state championships, Tri-State Golden Gloves Championship”.

09:44

CONOR DUFFY: Rocky’s dad, a local schoolteacher, put together this boxing gym to get people off the street and away from poverty and drugs.  Redemption in the ring.

09:58

ROCKY KUHN: “This is my world. I love this place. I love boxing.  It’s a way of talking.  It’s one way of getting to know somebody. When you throw hands with them, and you earn respect.  Other places that I used to living, I find the trouble. 

10:11

Rocky interview at gym

And at least here, I’m on my skateboard or I’m in the gym or I’m working out, you know, and it’s something more productive than street life”.

10:37

Town of War from Sheriff's car

CONOR DUFFY: Just down the road in the town of War, is one source of McDowell County’s misery.

10:55

Sheriff talking with man in car. War town GVs

SHERIFF WEST: “We had a drug bust up here about a couple of weeks ago, we arrested about eight and every time we get out like this and go up and down the different areas of the county, people will come up to me and want to give me a drug tip”.

CONOR DUFFY: But the biggest dealers were legal

11:07

McDowell pharmacy exterior/Duffy and Sheriff walk to pharmacy

Pharmacies like this one, dispensing massive quantities of what derisively became known as Hillbilly Heroin – in total, 12 million pills were dumped in a county of only 20,000 people – pushed by compliant doctors and pharmacists.

SHERIFF WEST: [McDowell County Sheriff] “These are the

11:26

Sheriff interview. Super:
Martin West
McDowell. County Sheriff

small operations, they call them pill mills and they were closed down because of the situation.  We’ve had several of them within McDowell County and this is one of them. They’re wanting to make the money fast and see how much damage they can do is what my observation of them is”.

11:49

Duffy and Sheriff outside pharmacy/Town GVs

CONOR DUFFY:  Sheriff West is furious that it took 15 years before tighter controls were finally imposed on Oxycontin.

12:12

Sheriff's car/Sheriff drives

In 2007, Purdue was fined $880 million dollars for misleading doctors and patients on the drug’s addiction risks.  By then, it was too late.

12:22

SHERIFF WEST: “That drug just about wiped this county out it was so powerful.  And

12:37

Sheriff interview at police station

it was the talk of the town and the talk of the county, the talk of the state.  And every night on the news you’d hear of someone dying in the state or in other states because of Oxycontin.  And it was so addictive and they knew that, the pharmaceuticals knew that”.

12:43

Welch GVs

CONOR DUFFY: “Welch has been ground zero of America’s opioid crisis for about 2 decades now,

13:02

Duffy to camera on street

and while it’s slowly strangling the life out of towns and cities like this, it’s also spreading like wildfire right across the United States.  On the other side of the country, in one of the biggest, most vibrant and best prepared cities with a long history of harm reduction, they’re being swamped by the next wave of this crisis”.

13:11

San Francisco skyline

Music

13:35

Band playing on street

13:44

San Francisco GVs

CONOR DUFFY:  San Francisco.  Liberal.  Rich.  Tech capital of the world. 

13:51

Police car, ambulance, sirens

14:02

Man to camera, kissing crucifix/addicts on street

Despite decades of experience in progressive drug treatment, forged at the height of the AIDS crisis, the city’s buckling under the weight of addiction.

14:06

George wrapping tourniquet around arm and preparing to shoot up

Downtown injecting drug user numbers have tripled since the crisis first struck far off Appalachia.  Though harm reduction programs have kept the death toll lower than other cities.

14:21

GEORGE: [injecting] “Don’t try this at home”.

14:34

Addicts outside city hall

Music

14:37

DENNIS HERRERA: “There are more injection drug users in San Francisco -- about 25,000 -- than there are high school students – 16,000. 

14:45

Int. City Hall ceiling

Just a couple of blocks from here is probably the highest level of

14:58

Duffy and Herrera walk down staircase in City Hall

population that we see in street use in heroin and homelessness”.

15:03

City Hall architectural detail

CONOR DUFFY: Inside City Hall there’s growing fury at the Sackler family and their pharmaceutical company, Purdue.  City Attorney,

15:09

Duffy and Herrera walk in City Hall

Dennis Herrera makes a direct link between pills and heroin.

15:20

DENNIS HERRERA: [City Attorney of San Francisco]  “Absolutely.  I mean if you look at it,

15:26

Herrera interview. Super:
Dennis Herrera
City Attorney of San Francisco

four of five injectable drug users started on getting opioids, whether it be Oxycontin, prescription or non-prescription pill taking.  So there is a direct correlation between the two”.

CONOR DUFFY: “How much of a burden is this on your community trying to

15:28

deal with the mess of this opioid crisis?”

DENNIS HERRERA: “It’s incalculable. 

15:45

It’s hundreds of millions of dollars that the taxpayers of San Francisco are forced to expend, because of in some, at least to some degree, for problems created by others. In terms of effort, we have been a pioneer.  In terms of result, demonstrating the magnitude of the problem, we have been overwhelmed”.

15:50

Ext. City Hall. Addicts on street

CONOR DUFFY: “San Francisco has now joined 1600 other cities and counties in suing Purdue Pharma and eight Sackler family members who profit from the company.

DENNIS HERRERA: “It makes sense that we would use the full power of our legal arsenal

16:14

Herrera interview

to make sure that those responsible for creating this epidemic are held to account.  The family itself from Purdue gets about, I think it’s a billion dollars a year that inures to them in terms of payments that go to the family as a result of sales of Oxycontin”.

CONOR DUFFY: “That’s extraordinary!”

DENNIS HERRERA: “A lot of money”.

CONOR DUFFY: “So they’re profiting while much of the rest of the country is suffering”.

16:34

DENNIS HERRERA: “I think that’s a fair statement”.

16:57

George preparing to inject heroin

CONOR DUFFY: On the streets, George has been living rough for a while. He now shoots up heroin, but says nearly everyone in this alley got their first taste with Oxycontin.

GEORGE: “Probably everybody started like that. 

17:00

George interview on street

Because that’s how you’re introduced to the drugs, you know, is by pills.  And little by little it’s like your money gets tight, and you’re just like well where, where can I get something close to this but cheaper?  And then, it's heroin, you know? I do sort of think that those pharmaceutical companies do play a big role.  That’s why my mom always used to tell me, don’t trust doctors.  They’re not your friend.  You know, these doctors here are not anywhere near your friend”.

17:19

Patrol car slowly rolling down the alley. Officer talking to George

POLICE OFFICER: “Did your family contact you at all?”

GEORGE: “What?”

POLICE OFFICER: “Remember, I helped you get shoes one day with your mom”.

GEORGE: “Yeah, yeah, yeah”.

CONOR DUFFY: Police here know the users.  They have to balance treating this as a health crisis, as well as a criminal problem, aware that George

17:51

George preparing to shoot up

is battling to pay for multiple daily hits of Mexican heroin.

GEORGE: “It’s just like a dime, you know ten bucks.  You know ten bucks will get you, you know, a cool high.  On a daily basis I probably spend like $50 to $80”.

18:07

Older white men sit on camp chairs in street

CONOR DUFFY:  It’s clear that addiction doesn’t discriminate.

18:23

Young blonde woman sitting on street

GEORGE: “All over America it’s going on right now.  And it’s all the youth, you know, is being hooked on this shit. I just think it’s embarrassing, you know, because other countries aren’t going through this”.

18:29

Duffy walks in rain with Ciccarone

PROFESSOR DAN CICCARONE: “There’s still poverty, a sense of desperation.  There’s still public drug dealing and drug use”.

18:47

CONOR DUFFY: San Francisco based drug expert, Professor Dan Ciccarone travels the country, mapping the wreckage of the opioid crisis.  He’s tracked Oxycontin use morphine to a second wave of heroin injecting and now into an even deadlier third wave, a synthetic opioid called Fentanyl, coming in from Mexico and China.

PROFESSOR DAN CICCARONE: [University of California] “Fentanyl’s about

18:55

Ciccarone interview. Super:
Professor Dan Ciccarone
University of California

40 times as potent by weight as heroin.  And so because of that sheer potency, we’re concerned that it’s too much for the typical human to consume, therefore a higher rates of overdose.  There’s also a new, a fourth wave, if you will, coming up right behind the opioid crisis which is stimulants.  East Coast cocaine, West Coast methamphetamine, we’re seeing a lot of new meth users out here.  They’re mixing meth and heroin. I think we’re about halfway through it.  

19:26

And I know that’s terrible bad news, but if you see the rate of decline now, we are seeing a levelling off in the pill overdose deaths, we are seeing a levelling off of heroin only overdose deaths.  The Fentanyl curve is still going up.  It’ll take ten years to get to baseline”.

20:08

George in laneway under umbrella

CONOR DUFFY:  George may not have that long.  He’s graduated from pills to heroin mixed with meth that’s now laced with Fentanyl.  The daily fix has become a raging habit.

20:30

George interview, preparing to inject

GEORGE: “Whoever is putting that shit into all the drugs is smart because Fentanyl’s very addictive, so if you spike that shit in very drug, every user’s going feel it.  You wonder why you keep coming back so quick to get a hit, it’s because of the fucking Fentanyl in that shit, you know?  That’s why I know I’m coming back every thirty minutes for this shit.  Because back then I could get high and go about my day, but now it’s like that’s just calling me, you know?  It’s like, you know, it’s like a real, it’s a fucking, like a King Kong on my back”.

20:46

Traffic/Addicts in side street/Hotel exteriors/Mural

Music

21:21

Duffy and Harkin on roof

PAUL HARKIN: “We’ve been in all of these hotels here. We’ve taught people overdose prevention, we’ve done HIV tests”.

CONOR DUFFY: Paul Harkin is another who knows these streets better than most, delivering syringes and disease tests to the homeless.

21:51

PAUL HARKIN: “Like in the city there’s about a 122-ish of these single room occupancy hotels, you know low income, some people are only allowed to stay for 90 days”.

22:05

CONOR DUFFY:  He’s a Director at GLIDE, a social justice movement founded by the United Methodist Church, that for half a century has been saving lives.

22:14

PAUL HARKIN: Organisations like GLIDE Harm Reduction are absolutely what’s required to

22:24

Harkin interview on roof. Super
Paul Harkin
GLIDE Program Manager

get us to begin to dismantle the war on drugs and start to treat drug users with compassion and with evidence based intervention. From the last numbers we have were 2017 I believe there was 72,000 overdose deaths nationally. I mean it’s just an incredible volume of mostly preventable deaths”.

22:31

Night time GVs

22:52

Paramedics wheel patient on gurney

“And our people in harm reduction know that there has always been an opioid crisis in other communities and what we’ve seen here is the changing demographics where more white people are being impacted by this.

22:59

Duffy walks with GLIDE members, various handouts to homeless and drug users

On any given night, we’ll give out maybe 3,000 to 5,000 syringes to people who inject drugs.  Usually we give maybe 7 or 8 NARCAN kits for people to prevent overdose”.

23:15

HOMELESS MAN ON STREET: “So the purpose of what you’re doing now is to stop the spread of disease primarily.

23:38

VOLUNTEER: “That’s the primary thing, you know, but, you know, what I’d say that’s part of it, but I’d say also part of it is just connecting people”.

23:44

PAUL HARKIN: “Then when the FDA started to clamp down on Oxycontin, what we saw then was a lot of people who had developed the habit of having to switch to heroin and we saw a sort of explosion of people looking for heroin and then subsequently Fentanyl. We’re seeing more Fentanyl enter cuts in the drugs and overdose deaths this year are going to be up”.

ALICIA: “I’ve OD’ed

23:52

Alicia interview on street

several times and I’m still here. You know, I’ve tried to hurt myself a few times, too … I’ve been through it”.

CONOR DUFFY: Alicia has been using drugs for decades and knows the reality of that deadly shift.

24:15

ALICIA: “Right now I’m really struggling right now because I’m out here by myself.  My family members now… they won’t hardly talk to me too much anymore because of where I’m at and what I’m doing”.

24:32

Bridge lit up at night/San Francisco skyline

Music

24:51

Ext. Wharf venue/Choir singing at benefit

CONOR DUFFY: Just across town, GLIDE’s gospel choir reaches out to San Francisco’s elite.

SINGING: “Love is the answer”.

25:00

Patrick Kennedy at elite benefit function

CONOR DUFFY:  They mingle with America’s most famous recovering Oxycontin addict, former Democratic Congressman, Patrick Kennedy.  Son of a late Senator, nephew of an assassinated President.  He deploys the political star power of the family name.

25:12

Kennedy interview

PATRICK KENNEDY II: “There’s no question that this was a drug that knew no socioeconomic, gender, background. It really was meant for anybody who was unsuspecting, and if that person also had a high propensity for addiction, as I did, then it was off to the races the moment it was prescribed”.

25:33

Choir sings

CHOIR: “Love is the answer”.

26:00

Kennedy interview

PATRICK KENNEDY II: “They over marketed a clearly addictive drug called Oxycontin, knowing full well that it was addictive, much like the tobacco industry knew for generations that cigarettes were addictive, but refused to acknowledge it”.

26:05

Function GVs

CONOR DUFFY: Tonight is about fund raising for hospital beds to treat those felled by the spin cycle of drug addiction, mental illness and homelessness.

26:28

Kennedy address event

PATRICK KENNEDY II: “If it’s good enough for cardio vascular disease, if it’s good enough for cancer, it ought to be good enough for mental illness and addiction, which affects every single family in this great country of ours.  Thank you very much”.

26:39

Standing ovation

CONOR DUFFY: It’s a test Kennedy says the Trump White House and Congress are failing miserably, allocating barely 20% of the funds dedicated to fight HIV at the height of the AIDS crisis.

26:56

Kennedy interview. Super:
Patrick J. Kennedy II
US Congressman 1995-2011

PATRICK KENNEDY II: [US Congressman 1995-2011] “I was serving on the President Trump’s opioid panel on recommendations to fight this epidemic, and I was shocked knowing as we all do, that President Trump comes from a family that has been impacted by alcoholism and addiction, that he would not take this historic moment and really run with it”.

27:09

Function GVs

CONOR DUFFY: The well-heeled crowd dig deep, a half a million-dollar pledge here, a million-dollar donation there.  Patrick Kennedy wants billions more from the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma.

27:33

Kennedy interview

PATRICK KENNEDY II: “There is no doubt in my mind that we’re going to get a tobacco sized verdict against Purdue Pharma and those who are also culpable in this conspiracy and this corruption”.

27:51

Bridge at night, projection of Purdue logo

Mu

28:05

CONOR DUFFY:  Purdue Pharma continues to deny any responsibility, accusing critics of exaggeration, blaming users and drug dealers for the crisis.  The company’s considering declaring bankruptcy to head off the looming avalanche of lawsuits.

28:09

San Francisco. Night. Street shots/Addicts/Needle exchange

One hundred and thirty Americans now die of opioid overdoses every day.  Time is not on the side of those at the bottom of the opioid spiral – they may not live to see a settlement.

28:29

Alicia interview on street

Fade to black

ALICIA: “You know, when you’re involved in an addiction like this, it’s hard.  And it’s sad, you know?  Because you feel so lost and alone. You feel like you have nobody”.

28:49

Credits

reporter
Conor Duffy

producer
Mark Corcoran

camera
John Mees

29:10

editor
Like Judickas

research
Jill Colgan
Alison McClymont

additional vision
Sandi Bachom

executive producer
Matthew Carney

foreign correspondent
abc.net.au/foreign
© 2019

Outpoint

29:30