While The Rest Of Us Die 2x8

1. Go, go, go.

2. 50 years ago, America declared a "war on drugs."

3. Every time we have a war on something,

4. we always have more of what we're going to war against.

5. And that inexhaustible supply of illicit drugs has

6. left nearly a million Americans dead.

7. It's just gonna go on.

8. It's just gonna keep going on.

9. And the biggest drug dealers aren't

10. standing on street corners...

11. they're sitting in board rooms.

12. These companies knew where these products were going

13. and they knew it was being abused.

14. Billions in profits off the suffering of the addicted.

15. Secret deals and government cover-ups.

16. The government of Afghanistan

17. was a government of drug dealers.

18. The US turned a blind eye to that reality.

19. It's an endless war with an ever-rising body count.

20. We're losing people left and right.

21. Can we get ahead of this thing?

22. I don't know.

23. For over 70 years, our leaders have told us

24. one thing under the bright lights...

25. The protection of the lives and property of Americans

26. is the responsibility of all public officials.

27. I care, we're trying.

28. We have it so well under control.

29. Help is here and we will not stop working for you.

30. But for decades, America's shadow government and

31. its powerful friends have spent trillions of dollars

32. on an agenda that serves their interests, not ours.

33. You guys paid for all this.

34. So, when the shit really hits the fan,

35. we're on our own.

36. This is not science fiction.

37. This is reality in America right now.

38. The truth is, the rich and powerful will do

39. whatever it takes to save themselves...

40. While The Rest of Us Die.

41. The Kensington neighbourhood

42. in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

43. Anybody want some snacks?

44. We got some snacks.

45. It's notorious for being the largest open-air

46. drug market on the east coast.

47. Well, Philadelphia Police say a bad batch of heroin is

48. to blame for six deadly overdoses today.

49. Most of the overdoses happened in the area of

50. Kensington Avenue and Cambria Street.

51. Kensington has been at the center of one addiction

52. epidemic after another from heroin to crack cocaine

53. to the opioid era to the return of heroin

54. we're living in now.

55. You need some water?

56. So, we have some chips. We have some socks.

57. What do you need?

58. For years, Rosalind Pichardo has been

59. a guardian angel to drug users here.

60. What's up, sunshine?

61. Handing out socks, Slim Jims, and Narcan,

62. a drug that reverses overdoses.

63. Do you need some Narcan in case someone needs it?

64. Thank you, thank you for carrying it, I appreciate you.

65. This is a Bible that...

66. I keep track of every overdose that I reverse.

67. I've logged in here...

68. 628 overdose reversals.

69. So, this was an OD on a train.

70. I gave him 4 Narcans.

71. And he didn't make it, he died.

72. So, that was my first person that I lost.

73. To most of us, Kensington is what the front line

74. of America's war on drugs looks like.

75. But in truth, this is where the war should be fought.

76. An ostentatious world inhabited by America's

77. most notorious drug dealing family.

78. The Sackler family.

79. Scions of a pharmaceutical dynasty.

80. Hundreds of thousands of Americans

81. have become addicted to the pills

82. made by their company, Purdue Pharma.

83. Over 700,000 people have suffered

84. opioid-related deaths.

85. But the Sacklers have gone to great lengths to make sure that

86. when you hear the family name...

87. you think of glitz, glamour and high culture.

88. You may have toured one of the major art museums

89. housing a Sackler Family collection.

90. The Sackler name is kind of emblazoned in gold letters

91. on museums across the world.

92. There are Sackler wings at the

93. Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

94. The Guggenheim, the Natural History Museum,

95. the Tate Modern in London, the Louvre in Paris.

96. The family's wealth goes back generations.

97. This is Arthur Sackler patriarch,

98. one of the world's foremost collectors of Chinese art,

99. and a marketing mastermind.

100. He spent his career currying favors and

101. amassing power and wealth

102. and helping rewrite the rules for Big Pharma.

103. Arthur Sackler was a pioneer

104. in the field of pharmaceutical advertising.

105. Valium works promptly to relieve

106. excessive anxiety and apprehension.

107. Valium, for the response you know, want and trust.

108. Along with his knack for marketing,

109. Arthur understood what medications would appeal

110. to an increasingly stressed-out population.

111. Arthur thought that there was a lot of money to be made in

112. prescribing an anti-anxiety medication for women.

113. And that is how Valium got its reputation as,

114. "mother's little helper".

115. Arthur's younger brothers followed his lead.

116. In the 1950s, Mortimer and Raymond Sackler bought a

117. pharmaceutical company that would become Purdue Pharma

118. turning their family business into an empire at a time when

119. mainstream America first begins to warm to the

120. idea of mood-altering drugs.

121. Today, medical science recognizes that some folks

122. aren't helped by relaxing exercises.

123. In cases of difficult tension and nervous apprehension...

124. doctors are now prescribing medicine.

125. The Sacklers' breakthrough is a time-release coating

126. for oral medications.

127. It's called the Contin system

128. short for "continuous."

129. Purdue tests it on a pill to treat asthma,

130. but the pill's a flop.

131. So, the Sacklers are eager to find a new application

132. for their ground-breaking technology.

133. So, the concept was,

134. what if we could use this Contin system,

135. this time release form of a drug,

136. and combine it with morphine?

137. A terminally ill patient could just take one pill and

138. the pain relief would last long enough to get them

139. all the way through the night.

140. So, this was the birth of what came

141. to be known as MS Contin.

142. But the morphine in MS Contin is an opioid chemical

143. derived from a poppy plant.

144. Its pods contain a milky fluid that for centuries provided the

145. raw material for one of the most demoralizing and

146. dissipating vices in the world.

147. The same as heroin.

148. And it didn't take long for the Sacklers'

149. new wonder drug to land on the streets.

150. MS Contin, you know even as early

151. as the late 80s and into the 90s,

152. it was a very prized drug for heroin addicts.

153. And what drug addicts figured out,

154. is that if you just kind of sucked off the time release

155. coating on the exterior, or alternatively,

156. if you crushed it up and snorted it,

157. you get the full payload of the drug all at once.

158. In the early 90s,

159. as the pill designed for terminal cancer patients

160. becomes the street drug of choice,

161. the Sacklers' company earns millions.

162. But Purdue Pharma has a problem

163. not that their creation is being abused

164. but that the patent on the drug is about to expire.

165. They start to search around for some other drug that

166. might replace MS Contin as a steady, reliable

167. stream of revenue for the family.

168. This is where the next generation

169. of Sacklers takes over.

170. Mortimer's daughter, Kathe,

171. and Raymond's son, Richard,

172. use the company's time-release tech on

173. an opioid called Oxycodone.

174. Oxycodone was not invented by the Sacklers.

175. It had been invented in the 1920s, actually.

176. But by combining it with their Contin system,

177. the Sacklers create OxyContin and,

178. like their uncle Arthur did with Valium,

179. they get creative in how and when it can be prescribed.

180. They would market it as a cure for

181. any problem you might be having.

182. For toothaches, for menstrual pain,

183. for back pain, for headaches.

184. It's only, you know, I think a matter of a couple years

185. before it generates 1 billion in sales.

186. And then it goes on to generate 30 billion in sales,

187. over the course of its life.

188. A 12-hour time-released, non-addictive painkiller

189. except it's not.

190. OxyContin does not actually last 12 hours.

191. It might only last 8 hours, or for many people,

192. only 6 or even 5 hours.

193. So, if you took the drug as directed,

194. you were going to experience withdrawal and pain and

195. craving, and then you were gonna experience relief

196. when you took your drug again, right?

197. And that experience is what gets people hooked.

198. OxyContin is highly addictive,

199. and the company later admits to knowing it.

200. But they still lobby the Federal Drug Administration

201. to label it as safe.

202. One of the Sacklers' great talents is that they are very

203. skilled in the dark arts of regulatory capture.

204. Regulatory capture basically means when business interests

205. lobby the government to make regulations and rulings

206. that help create, essentially, a monopoly.

207. And one of the things that Purdue managed to do,

208. was to get the FDA to include this kind of astonishing claim

209. that, because OxyContin was a time release pill,

210. that time release mechanisms were believed to reduce the

211. abuse liability of a medication.

212. Addicts don't want a slow time release hit,

213. they want it all at once.

214. Some patients may be afraid of taking opioids because

215. they're perceived as too strong, or addictive.

216. But that is far from actual fact.

217. Less than 1% of patients taking opioids

218. actually become addicted.

219. Now, this was nonsense.

220. The company knew how easy it was to

221. circumvent the time release shell.

222. This particular claim of lower abuse liability

223. had never been allowed before and

224. has never been allowed since

225. for an opioid medication.

226. The Sacklers were quick to reward the man who helped

227. get their drug labelled as non-addictive.

228. The actual person at the FDA who approved the OxyContin

229. application, is a guy named Curtis Wright.

230. And Curtis Wright ended up leaving the FDA

231. after OxyContin was approved.

232. And then, came to work at Purdue,

233. where he reportedly earned a salary of more than

234. $400,000 a year.

235. Crucial to the scheme's success doctors

236. the very people we trust with our health.

237. Many were incentivized by the Sacklers' marketing team

238. to prescribe more and more pills to patients.

239. They would host fancy getaways...

240. for the weekend.

241. They would actually pay doctors directly,

242. getting them on the Purdue payroll,

243. by inviting them to participate in what they called the

244. Purdue Speakers Bureau.

245. The system where you ask one of the doctors to give maybe a

246. 10-minute presentation at the beginning, and at the end,

247. you hand them a check for $500 or $1000.

248. And doctors weren't the only ones

249. getting money from the Sacklers.

250. Purdue and the Sacklers, personally,

251. would donate repeatedly to politicians over the years.

252. It all cleared the way for the tragedy to come.

253. As OxyContin sales start to take off in 1999,

254. in 2000 and 2001, we start to get reports,

255. particularly in rural areas, that abuse of this drug

256. is becoming widespread.

257. The crime rate spikes,

258. overdose deaths start to pile up.

259. These are the latest pharmacy robbers, on the run tonight,

260. suspected of holding up 11 different shops,

261. mostly mom and pop pharmacies, for OxyContin.

262. And it really starts to fray the social fabric.

263. These people who are doing these robberies

264. are severe addicts.

265. They don't want to hurt anybody.

266. All they just want is their next fix.

267. As opioid deaths continued to rise,

268. the reality of the worst drug addiction epidemic in

269. America's history became impossible for anyone to deny

270. except the Sacklers.

271. In a recently released 2015 deposition tape the family had

272. tried to bury for years, Richard Sackler appears

273. unrepentant about the company's business practices.

274. Do you believe Purdue's marketing was overly aggressive?

275. No.

276. Do you believe Purdue's marketing was appropriate?

277. I believe so.

278. Purdue Pharma wasn't the only bad actor in the opioid crisis.

279. In the 2000s, greed was a contagion that affected

280. some of the biggest corporations in the country.

281. These companies knew where these products were going.

282. It was not a bad judgment, a mistake.

283. They knew exactly where it was going,

284. and they knew it was being abused.

285. It was all about the bucks.

286. We're in Kensington, Philadelphia.

287. Heavily infested drug area.

288. What's crazy is for the most part,

289. I'd say about 80% of the people down here

290. ain't even from down here.

291. They just come here and get stuck like flypaper.

292. For decades, Big Pharma raked in

293. billions on prescription painkillers

294. trapping millions of Americans in the

295. vice-like grip of addiction.

296. These prescription pills entered communities through

297. a sophisticated distribution network,

298. designed by pharmaceutical companies

299. for ruthless efficiency.

300. Kermit, West Virginia. 392.

301. How many prescription opioids do you think made their way

302. into a single pharmacy here over the course of two years?

303. A hundred? A hundred thousand?

304. A million?

305. The answer is nine million.

306. And if you don't believe these arrived in Kermit

307. by lawful means, well, neither did the DEA.

308. Overdoses are occurring.

309. West Virginia was leading the country in overdoses

310. on a per capita basis.

311. Former manager at the DEA's Diversion Control division,

312. James Geldhof, still gets emotional describing his

313. up close and personal exposure to the opioid epidemic.

314. So, there was a town hall meeting I attended in

315. Portsmouth, Ohio, in early June of 2011.

316. It was mothers, fathers and grandparents of...

317. Who, um...

318. who died of overdoses.

319. And the chief of police at one point in the meeting,

320. turned off all the lights in the gym.

321. And, showed pictures of these kids.

322. Prom pictures...

323. Homecoming...

324. Graduation pictures...

325. Football jerseys.

326. All of them young.

327. And they were dead before they had a chance to live.

328. Seeing the carnage the pills were causing

329. in small town America, Geldhof began

330. focusing on the pharmaceutical distributors,

331. the shadow pushers in the new drug trade.

332. The top companies McKesson, Cardinal,

333. AmerisourceBergen are three of the largest corporations

334. in America, controlling around 85% of

335. Big Pharma's distribution.

336. It was also done by companies that, frankly,

337. if you'd have told me in 1972 when I started,

338. they'd be involved in this kind of behavior,

339. I wouldn't have believed it.

340. Some of these companies were the blue bloods of the industry.

341. But with the internet came online pharmacies

342. and a vast, virtually unregulated new

343. distribution network for dangerous pharmaceuticals

344. some shipping millions of pills a year.

345. When you see that kind of quantity,

346. it's obvious that nobody's paying attention.

347. There's no way somebody could think those kind of

348. quantities would be used legitimately.

349. But when the DEA begins cracking down on online

350. pharmacies in the early 2000s, addicts begin

351. standing in line at so-called "pill mills"

352. one stop shops that combined a

353. doctor's office and a pharmacy.

354. Pill mills were operated by doctors.

355. So, you would go in there,

356. you'd pay for an office visit.

357. It could be 200 bucks, whatever it might be,

358. and then you'd get a script. And then of course,

359. you'd take it to the pharmacy and fill it.

360. And these pill mills will super-charge an already growing

361. opioid epidemic that spreads across the country.

362. The doctors that were working in these pill mills

363. were essentially drug dealers.

364. We considered them criminals.

365. And we approached the investigation

366. as a criminal investigation.

367. Federal agents raided the Total Medical Express clinic today,

368. seizing files and computers.

369. We never thought we would be going into doctor's offices.

370. That's a very honorable profession and,

371. unfortunately, some folks...

372. throughout the country have brought dishonor

373. to that profession.

374. Twin brothers Chris and Jeff George

375. operated four pill mills in Florida.

376. Confiscated vehicles seized by authorities earlier, Vipers,

377. Bentleys, Mercedes, all paid for in cash from

378. suspected pill mill operators.

379. At the center of all this is Jeff George,

380. who will face murder charges.

381. Prosecutors say he and his twin brother, Christopher,

382. ran a $40 million criminal enterprise.

383. In three years, the brothers moved an estimated 20 million

384. pills before finally being busted in 2010.

385. boxes of supplies. And interviewed staff

386. And they were just two guys in a single state.

387. Shutting down the pill mills was like stamping out a

388. campfire when the forest is already in flames.

389. So, the DEA looked to stop the pills at their source.

390. Distribution companies were required to inform the DEA of

391. suspicious deliveries but they often stayed silent.

392. The most common excuses we heard from the wholesalers is,

393. basically, they were just delivery boys.

394. They knew exactly where it was going,

395. and they knew it was being abused.

396. Purdue did keep a list, internally,

397. of doctors that they suspected

398. were involved in black market diversion.

399. They called it List Zero.

400. And, at any time a sales rep would start to

401. suspect that a doctor maybe was involved in diversion,

402. they'd be added to this list.

403. Sometimes they would continue selling to that doctor.

404. Sometimes they would stop selling to that doctor.

405. But what they never did was share that list

406. with law enforcement.

407. The users were addicted to the drugs,

408. and the drug companies and distributors were

409. addicted to the steady flow of cash.

410. And in 2016,

411. the federal government even passed a law that

412. made it more difficult for the DEA to do anything about it.

413. Sold as a way to ensure patients' access to needed

414. pain medications while also improving enforcement,

415. Representatives Tom Marino and Marsha Blackburn

416. introduced HR 4-71.

417. Few noticed that buried in the bill were provisions that would,

418. instead, put a stranglehold on the DEA

419. by raising the burden of proof its agents needed to

420. launch investigations of large prescription drug

421. shipments they found suspicious.

422. Geldof's boss confronted Congresswoman Blackburn.

423. 16,651 people in 2010 died of opiate overdose.

424. Okay, opiate associated overdose.

425. This is not a game, we're not playing a game.

426. Nobody is saying it is a game, sir.

427. We're just trying to craft some legislation.

428. The legislation passed by unanimous consent and

429. was signed into law by President Obama...

430. with little attention paid to the fact that

431. Marino and Blackburn together had received

432. nearly a million dollars in campaign donations

433. from the pharmaceutical and health industries.

434. The effect on the DEA's diversion control

435. was devastating.

436. The cases became more difficult to make.

437. Chief counsel kept requiring more and more evidence

438. to make these cases.

439. So, how does an anti-opioid addiction bill end up

440. limiting the DEA's powers?

441. Leading to more addiction?

442. controlled substances...

443. It helped that a former DEA attorney, Linden Barber,

444. reportedly helped craft the legislation so it aided his

445. new client, pharmaceutical distributor, Cardinal Health.

446. DEA compliance program.

447. If you have a DEA compliance issue,

448. or you're facing a government investigation,

449. or you're having administrative or civil litigation involving

450. the Controlled Substances Act, I'd be happy to hear from you.

451. I did lose respect for Linden at that point.

452. There was no reason for that legislation to pass.

453. As it got harder for the DEA to enforce the law,

454. the wreckage from opioid abuse grew.

455. The opioid crisis was in full bloom.

456. If you're gonna do anything,

457. if you're gonna err on the side of anything,

458. you've got people dying here.

459. These aren't record-keeping violations.

460. These are pills that are winding up on the street.

461. By the late aughts, nearly 50,000 Americans

462. are dying each year from opioid abuse

463. triple the number from just a decade earlier.

464. So many die that the average American's life expectancy

465. drops by nearly a year.

466. Addiction to prescription opioids has caused people

467. to turn to cheaper narcotics like heroin.

468. And soon, the Big Pharma-fueled opioid

469. epidemic will give rise to the tragic return

470. of heroin a drug whose dark history is

471. directly tied to the US government's overseas wars.

472. [Bang, bang]!

473. If your primary goal is fighting communism and

474. your secondary goal is fighting drugs,

475. then maybe you've got to subordinate your goal of

476. fighting drugs to the higher good of fighting communism.

477. Our country's leaders have spoken out for years about

478. the dangers of illegal drugs in America.

479. Drugs are menacing our society.

480. They're threatening our values and

481. undercutting our institutions.

482. They're killing our children.

483. Fine-tuning the message as the drug of choice changed.

484. This... this is crack cocaine.

485. Seized a few days ago by Drug Enforcement agents

486. in a park just across the street

487. from the White House.

488. And yet, even as presidents spoke out against drugs,

489. their administrations help fuel

490. every major addiction epidemic.

491. The only answer to communism is a massive offensive for

492. freedom. Freedom from hunger, from disease,

493. and a victory for the ageless hope of people everywhere.

494. Freedom from tyranny.

495. As the US and the Soviet Union battled for geopolitical

496. dominance, the CIA formed strange alliances abroad...

497. shaking hands with some of the world's most notorious

498. drug traffickers in the name of democracy.

499. Communism and socialism. What can we do about it?

500. At the end of World War II,

501. the US is concerned that more and more countries

502. are gonna go socialist, go communist.

503. And in France, it looked like the communists might

504. actually be able to win national elections.

505. They controlled Marseilles.

506. France has become the battleground

507. for clashing ideologies.

508. Maurice Torres leads the communists in an

509. open fight between two political extremes.

510. The CIA starts allying with

511. the Corsican Marseilles mafia...

512. to, you know, use them as a kind of terror force

513. against the communists.

514. And part of that alliance with these

515. gangsters in southern France involves

516. turning a blind eye and even facilitating their

517. importation of heroin from Southeast Asia.

518. I think that what puts this into relief are...

519. evils of politics.

520. You've got to break some eggs to make some omelets.

521. If your primary goal is fighting communism and

522. your secondary goal is fighting drugs,

523. then maybe you've got to subordinate your goal of

524. fighting drugs to the higher good of fighting communism.

525. Years later, America's war against communism

526. and its partnership with the drug trade

527. extended to Southeast Asia, itself.

528. !

529. As the war in Vietnam is

530. ramping up and the US role in

531. that war is increasing, there are

532. these off-the-book wars

533. in Laos in particular

534. and that war involves the training by the CIA

535. of hill tribes, particularly the Hmong,

536. as a mercenary force to fight the Pathet Lao,

537. which were a communist force in Laos.

538. And one of the ways that that war was conducted and

539. funded was in collaboration with Vang Pao,

540. who was a major drug smuggling warlord.

541. Along with being a staunch anti-communist,

542. Vang Pao also controls massive fields of poppies,

543. which he harvests and refines into heroin.

544. So, a bargain is made.

545. When Americans are risking their lives in war,

546. it is the responsibility of their leaders...

547. to take some risks.

548. One of those risks involves the CIA partnering with Pao's

549. ragtag army to fight a secret war against the communists.

550. In exchange, the CIA helps Pao

551. move his drugs out of the country

552. using an Agency-owned passenger and cargo airline

553. called Air America.

554. Airforce aerial port personnel,

555. under constant enemy fire, load and offload...

556. Turning a blind eye to ongoing heroin smuggling by

557. their forces and then also, you know, using that

558. income stream to help fund this secret war.

559. Vang Pao's heroin then makes its way west -

560. with the help of New York gangsters and

561. their old connections in Marseilles.

562. A smuggling route immortalized in the movie,

563. The French Connection.

564. By the early 70s, America's inner cities

565. are flooded with smack.

566. Every day, I had taken heroin.

567. - For a year and a half? - Yes.

568. How much does it cost to get?

569. Well, I really couldn't say,

570. but it cost enough to kill myself.

571. But it won't be the last time the US government

572. strikes a devil's bargain in pursuit of a

573. strategic foreign policy goal.

574. Three decades after Vietnam, another war.

575. This one, a so-called War on Terror,

576. will see America once again climb into bed with some of

577. the world's biggest heroin producers.

578. The story begins with the Soviet invasion,

579. occupation of Afghanistan.

580. The US starts to support these Mujahideen groups.

581. And these Mujahideen parties are the US allies in the

582. process of destroying the Afghan communist revolution.

583. Part of how the Mujahideen groups are funding their effort

584. is through exporting opium poppy that's then

585. refined into heroin. Again,

586. it's the smuggling networks for weapons and supplies

587. and personnel facilitate the smuggling of drugs.

588. But, the Mujahideen have created such misery and

589. horror that this fanatical, puritanical force arises

590. out of the south of Afghanistan the Taliban.

591. They eventually control most of Afghanistan.

592. They give sanctuary to Osama bin Laden.

593. Then after 9/11, the US returns...

594. coming after Osama bin Laden.

595. The US drives out the Taliban.

596. Who is the US going to use as local allies?

597. Well, those Mujahideen parties.

598. Once again, our military leaders make a bargain that

599. will haunt American cities and citizens for years to come.

600. I want to remind you that while

601. today's operations are visible,

602. many other operations may not be so visible.

603. Kandahar Province, southern Afghanistan, 2001.

604. As the US military is fighting a deadly Taliban insurgency,

605. they make a powerful ally...

606. the brother of the US installed president.

607. Hamid Karzai's brother, Wali Karzai,

608. is a major drug dealer. And everybody knew that.

609. The government of Afghanistan...

610. was a government of drug dealers.

611. And, the US turned a blind eye to that reality.

612. It's an open secret that our troops are

613. protecting Karzai's poppy fields.

614. Even right-wing news stations are covering

615. our military's strange assignment.

616. We are tolerating the cultivation of the opium

617. because we know that if we were to destroy it now,

618. the population would turn against the marines,

619. and it would be a real security risk.

620. And that was at the heart of the failure of any kind of

621. nation building effort in Afghanistan.

622. After 2001, the global distribution of heroin

623. explodes under America's watch.

624. If the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

625. estimated in the early 2000s

626. that 92% of world heroin supply

627. was sourced from Afghanistan, then presumably

628. some of it reached the US.

629. The timing couldn't have been worse.

630. By the 20-teens,

631. opioid use has reached epidemic levels

632. leaving the door wide open for

633. a cheaper street drug to gain hold.

634. Health officials are concerned about Oxy addicts making the

635. switch to heroin, both experienced users and

636. especially those using the drug for the first time.

637. When I, when I was doing heroin, early 2000s,

638. people were dying,

639. they weren't dying like they are now.

640. In 2007, news breaks that the Department of Justice

641. finally seems to have caught up with the Sackler family's

642. company, Purdue Pharma.

643. Purdue had admitted it falsely promoted OxyContin as less

644. addictive by among other means claiming the drug's

645. slow-release formula did not cause a buzz or euphoria and

646. could be used to weed out addicts.

647. The corporate giant faces an array of criminal and civil

648. charges for falsely marketing its drug OxyContin

649. as less addictive than other opioids.

650. Purdue Pharma's top executives

651. Michael Friedman, president and CEO

652. and the company's medical director, Paul Goldenheim,

653. and lawyer Howard Udell,

654. all three executives and the company plead guilty in the US

655. to misleading regulators, physicians and patients.

656. As punishment for misbranding OxyContin as a cure-all for

657. any type of pain, Purdue is forced to pay $634 million,

658. a record for a pharmaceutical company,

659. but a mere fraction of the Sackler family fortune

660. earned off of the drug.

661. The company has cut a plea deal with the government.

662. None of the company's executives are sentenced

663. to prison, and no one from the Sackler family

664. is personally implicated in the charges.

665. More than 70,000 people died of overdoses last year.

666. The largest number ever recorded.

667. While Purdue's 2007 settlement with the feds

668. was a slap on the wrist for the drug-maker

669. it's a punch in the gut to

670. their victims and their families.

671. And in the 20-teens, as the healthcare industry finally

672. cracks down on dirty doctors writing shady scripts,

673. and law enforcement shuts down on the last of the pill mills,

674. hundreds of thousands of addicts

675. are left desperate for a fix.

676. Dan, wake up! There you go.

677. - Come on, man. - See?

678. Oh! There you go. That Narcan got em'.

679. In the Kensington neighbourhood of Philadelphia,

680. residents reckon with the horrors of a still

681. out of control heroin epidemic.

682. Rosalind Pichardo has been working with users on these

683. streets for years, saving one life at a time.

684. Sometimes with news cameras in tow.

685. Come on, sunshine.

686. Yo, there we go.

687. If we weren't around, he would have died.

688. Many of the users here tell a similar story:

689. They started down the road to addiction

690. with the Sacklers' OxyContin pills.

691. So, I started with painkillers.

692. And as pill addicts move to cheaper and

693. easier to obtain heroin,

694. they find much of the product is laced with the

695. highly potent synthetic painkiller Fentanyl.

696. When I when I was doing heroin, early 2000's,

697. people were dying, they weren't dying

698. like they are now.

699. I thought heroin was bad back then.

700. This is the hardest thing I've ever tried to come off.

701. I'm literally scared to try and come off of this drug.

702. It's, it's so addicting, so strong.

703. And it's, it's scary to even think about

704. trying to come off of it.

705. Pichardo and other activists see this epidemic

706. that began with prescription pills,

707. as a public health crisis

708. where saving lives should be the first priority.

709. They propose opening the country's first-ever

710. "safe injection site."

711. What the safe consumption sites mean for me is

712. a place where people can use drugs safely.

713. But also have services, you know,

714. having doctors on board in case someone ODs,

715. to know that if someone wants to use drugs, they can,

716. but they won't die.

717. The people like me, they can have a safe spot to use what

718. they got to use and do what they got to do and go.

719. But I think that would be great.

720. But a federal judge declares the

721. Kensington safe injection site proposal illegal,

722. citing the 1986 so-called "Crack house statute"

723. that makes it a felony to knowingly use a location for

724. distribution of a controlled substance.

725. For the government to think that a safe consumption site

726. is a crack house is ludicrous.

727. A safe consumption site's not giving drugs,

728. they're already bringing their drugs.

729. You know, we're just making sure that,

730. when they use their drugs, they come out alive.

731. And while efforts like Pichardo's are stymied by the

732. government's unrelenting and unsuccessful war on drugs...

733. a decade after the Justice Department's sweetheart deal

734. with the Sackler family, efforts to finally hold them

735. personally accountable for the crisis they helped to create

736. have yet to succeed.

737. I have to wonder, if it turns out the Sackler family

738. and there are some hints right now that they have

739. moved around money to protect it, knowing that

740. there could be potential future litigation.

741. Members of the Sackler family began making

742. transfers of money out of the company.

743. They transferred up to $10 billion out of the company and

744. into their own network of trusts.

745. The Sackler name was hammered off the building in front of a

746. group of people, mostly Tufts Medical School students.

747. The name came down, you could hear those cheers.

748. The members of the Sackler family who owned and at times

749. ran Purdue Pharma have tried to escape the public spotlight

750. in the years since their 2007 plea deal.

751. But that was all about to change.

752. I think it's clear that your family has tried to

753. fraudulently shield money for your own personal benefit.

754. I think it's appalling.

755. Those profits, in my opinion, should be clawed back.

756. The House Committee on Oversight & Reform hold a

757. virtual hearing to investigate the role Purdue Pharma and

758. members of the Sackler family had played in

759. America's ongoing opioid crisis.

760. Will you apologize for the role you played in the opioid crisis?

761. Despite all the misery and death directly tied to

762. their product, both Kathe Sackler and

763. her cousin David take no responsibility.

764. I have asked myself over many years.

765. I have tried to figure out, was

766. is there anything that I could have done differently,

767. knowing what I knew then,

768. not what I know now, and, and I...

769. I have to say, I can't there's nothing that

770. I can find that I would have done differently.

771. I believe I conducted myself legally and ethically.

772. And I believe the full record will demonstrate that.

773. An estimated 800,000 Americans have died from

774. opioid related deaths since 1999.

775. The true cost of over twenty years of death and destruction

776. seems incalculable, but by 2018,

777. public pressure to hold the Sackler family accountable

778. was now impossible to ignore.

779. A dramatic protest inside the Sackler wing at

780. New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

781. And in the courts, thousands of lawsuits from families and

782. state governments demanding restitution are stacking up.

783. Feeling the heat, in November 2020 the Justice Department

784. announces they have reached a new deal with the family...

785. The global settlement announced today involves the company

786. pleading guilty to 3 felony counts for

787. defrauding the United States.

788. It could be the largest settlement ever paid

789. by private citizens.

790. The resolution also requires tens of millions of documents

791. to be made public about the role that Purdue and the

792. Sacklers played in the opioid crisis.

793. If this seems like a win for the government, it isn't.

794. Members of the Sackler family transferred up to $10 billion

795. out of the company and into their own network of trusts.

796. When we talk about the settlement,

797. which is $4.25 billion, that's a fraction of

798. what they took out of the company.

799. With an estimated family fortune of $11 billion,

800. and payments scheduled over 9 years,

801. the $4.2 billion settlement can be paid off with interest alone.

802. And while the 487-page bankruptcy deal calls for the

803. Sacklers to relinquish control of Purdue Pharma,

804. which is reformed as a new entity whose profits will go

805. towards to those who have suffered...

806. Sackler family members are all given immunity

807. from any future prosecution.

808. It's a shocking outcome that makes news across the country.

809. In a landmark ruling, Wednesday,

810. a federal bankruptcy judge in New York granted immunity from

811. opioid lawsuits to members of the Sackler family,

812. the owners of Purdue Pharma.

813. Even the judge who signed the final deal

814. called it a "bitter result."

815. After all the death and destruction...

816. One thing remains clear:

817. The Sackler family appears untouchable.

818. And so, when we look back on the opioid crisis,

819. the story the Sacklers and OxyContin and Purdue Pharma,

820. it's hard not to see this as a parable,

821. not about how the government can't be effective,

822. but about how, if you take the brakes off of corporate power,

823. the government can't be effective.

824. Our government's misguided alliances

825. with drug traffickers facilitated the importation

826. of heroin into this country and helped set the stage

827. for the opioid era and the return to heroin

828. we're living through now.

829. Allowing drug makers like Purdue to flood our

830. neighbourhoods with their pills only added fuel to the fire.

831. And it's all a uniquely American problem.

832. A lot of people are in denial.

833. So, I, I think that if people will come here with an

834. open mind and an open heart, to see what we see,

835. hopefully, that will change their mind.

836. And obviously it's not over,

837. it's still burning through our society.

838. We're all paying the price.