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A look at how, for decades, the government made alliances with drug lords around the world while Big Pharma's thirst for profits led to the worst drug addiction epidemic in history.
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00:0250 years ago, America declared a war on drugs.
00:06Every time we have a war on something, we always have more of what we're going to worry against.
00:10And that inexhaustible supply of illicit drugs has left nearly a million Americans dead.
00:15It's just going to go on. It's just going to keep going on.
00:18And the biggest drug dealers aren't standing on street corners.
00:22They're sitting in boardrooms.
00:24These companies knew where these products were going, and they knew it was being abused.
00:28Billions in profits off the suffering of the addicted.
00:33Secret deals and government cover-ups.
00:36The government of Afghanistan was a government of drug dealers.
00:40The U.S. turned a blind eye to that reality.
00:43It's an endless war with an ever-rising body count.
00:46We're losing people left and right. Can we get ahead of this thing? I don't know.
00:55For over 70 years, our leaders have told us one thing under the bright lights.
00:59The protection of the lives and property of Americans is the responsibility of all public officials.
01:06I care. We're trying. We have it so well under control.
01:10Help is here, and we will not stop working for you.
01:14But for decades, America's shadow government and its powerful friends have spent trillions of dollars on an agenda that serves
01:20their interests, not ours.
01:23You guys paid for all this.
01:24So when the shit really hits the fan, we're on our own.
01:28This is not science fiction. This is reality in America right now.
01:32The truth is, the rich and powerful will do whatever it takes to save themselves while the rest of us
01:38die.
01:57The Kensington neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
02:04Anybody want some snacks? We got snacks.
02:13It's notorious for being the largest open-air drug market on the East Coast.
02:18Well, Philadelphia police say a bad batch of heroin is to blame for six deadly overdoses today.
02:24Most of the overdoses happened in the area of Kensington Avenue and Cambria Street.
02:29Kensington has been at the center of one addiction epidemic after another.
02:33From heroin to crack cocaine to the opioid era to the return of heroin we're living in now.
02:39You need some water?
02:41So we have some chips. We have some socks.
02:43What do you need?
02:44For years, Rosalind Pichardo has been a guardian angel to drug users here.
02:50What's up, sunshine?
02:52Handing out socks, Slim Jims, and Narcan, a drug that reverses overdoses.
02:57Do you need some Narcan in case someone needs it?
03:01Thank you for caring.
03:02I appreciate you.
03:04This is a Bible that I keep track of.
03:09Every overdose that I reverse, I've logged in here.
03:15628 overdose reversals.
03:18So this was on OD, on the train.
03:21I gave him four Narcans, and he didn't make it.
03:28He died.
03:28So that was my first person that I lost.
03:32To most of us, Kensington is what the front line of America's war on drugs looks like.
03:38But in truth, this is where the war should be fought.
03:45An ostentatious world inhabited by America's most notorious drug-dealing family.
03:51The Sackler family, scions of a pharmaceutical dynasty.
03:56Hundreds of thousands of Americans have become addicted to the pills made by their company, Purdue Pharma.
04:03Over 700,000 people have suffered opioid-related deaths.
04:10But the Sacklers have gone to great lengths to make sure that when you hear the family name,
04:16you think of glitz, glamour, and high culture.
04:29You may have toured one of the major art museums housing the Sackler family collection.
04:33The Sackler name is kind of emblazoned in gold letters on museums across the world.
04:40There are Sackler wings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Guggenheim, the Natural History Museum, the
04:47Tate Modern in London, the Louvre in Paris.
04:50The family's wealth goes back generations.
04:54This is Arthur Sackler, patriarch, one of the world's foremost collectors of Chinese art, and a marketing mastermind.
05:02He spent his career currying favors and amassing power and wealth, and helping rewrite the rules for big pharma.
05:09Arthur Sackler was a pioneer in the field of pharmaceutical advertising.
05:15Valium works promptly to relieve excessive anxiety and apprehension.
05:20Valium, for the response you know, want, and trust.
05:25Along with his knack for marketing, Arthur understood what medications would appeal to an increasingly stressed-out population.
05:32Arthur thought that there was a lot of money to be made in prescribing an anti-anxiety medication for women.
05:40And that is how Valium got his reputation as a mother's little helper.
05:46Arthur's younger brothers followed his lead.
05:49In the 1950s, Mortimer and Raymond Sackler bought a pharmaceutical company that would become Purdue Pharma,
05:56turning their family business into an empire at a time when mainstream America first begins to warm to the idea
06:02of mood-altering drugs.
06:12Today, medical science recognizes that some folks aren't helped by relaxing exercises.
06:19In cases of difficult tension and nervous apprehension, doctors are now prescribing medicine.
06:30The Sacklers breakthrough is a time-release coding for oral medications.
06:34It's called the CONTIN system, short for continuous.
06:38Purdue tests it on a pill to treat asthma, but the pill's a flop.
06:42So the Sacklers are eager to find a new application for their groundbreaking technology.
06:48So the concept was, what if we could use this CONTIN system, this time-release form of a drug, and
06:55combine it with morphine.
06:56A terminally ill patient could just take one pill and the pain relief would last long enough to get them
07:02all the way through the night.
07:03So this was the birth of what came to be known as MS CONTIN.
07:07But the morphine in MS CONTIN is an opioid chemical derived from a poppy plant.
07:13Its pods contain a milky fluid that for centuries provided the raw material for one of the most demoralizing and
07:19dissipating vices in the world.
07:21The same as heroin.
07:23And it didn't take long for the Sacklers' new wonder drug to land on the streets.
07:28MS CONTIN, you know, even as early as the late 80s and into the 90s, it was a very prized
07:34drug for heroin addicts.
07:37And what drug addicts figured out is that if you just kind of sucked off the time-release coating on
07:44the exterior,
07:45or, alternatively, if you crushed it up and snorted it, you get the full payload of the drug all at
07:50once.
07:51In the early 90s, as the pill designed for terminal cancer patients becomes a street drug of choice,
07:56the Sacklers company earns millions.
07:59But Purdue Pharma has a problem.
08:01Not that their creation is being abused, but that the patent on the drug is about to expire.
08:07They start to search around for some other drug that might replace MS CONTIN as a steady, reliable stream of
08:15revenue for the family.
08:17This is where the next generation of Sacklers takes over.
08:20Mortimer's daughter, Kathy, and Raymond's son, Richard, used the company's time-release tech on an opioid called oxycodone.
08:30Oxycodone was not invented by the Sacklers. It had been invented in the 1920s, actually.
08:35But by combining it with their content system, the Sacklers create oxycontin.
08:40And like their Uncle Arthur did with Valium, they get creative in how and when it can be prescribed.
08:46They would market it as a cure for any problem you might be having, for toothaches, for menstrual pain, for
08:56back pain, for headaches.
08:59It's only, you know, I think a matter of a couple years before it generates $1 billion in sales, and
09:03then it goes on to generate $30 billion in sales over the course of its life.
09:08A 12-hour, time-released, non-addictive painkiller. Except it's not.
09:15Oxycontin does not actually last 12 hours. It might only last 8 hours, or for many people, only 6 or
09:22even 5 hours.
09:23So if you took the drug as directed, you were going to experience withdrawal and pain and craving, and then
09:31you were going to experience relief when you took your drug again, right?
09:34And that experience is what gets people hooked.
09:40Oxycontin is highly addictive, and the company later admits to knowing it.
09:44But they still lobby the Federal Drug Administration to label it as safe.
09:47One of the Sackler's great talents is that they are very skilled in the dark arts of regulatory capture.
09:56Regulatory capture basically means when business interests lobby the government to make regulations and rulings that help create, essentially, a
10:07monopoly.
10:07And one of the things that Purdue managed to do was to get the FDA to include this kind of
10:15astonishing claim that because Oxycontin was a time-release pill,
10:21that time-release mechanisms were believed to reduce the abuse liability of a medication.
10:27Addicts don't want a slow time-release hit. They want it all at once.
10:32Some patients may be afraid of taking opioids because they're perceived as too strong or addictive.
10:39But that is far from actual fact. Less than 1% of patients taking opioids actually become addicted.
10:48Now this was nonsense. The company knew how easy it was to circumvent the time-release shell.
10:55This particular claim of lower abuse liability had never been allowed before and has never been allowed since for an
11:02opioid medication.
11:03The Sacklers were quick to reward the man who helped get their drug labeled as non-addictive.
11:08The actual person at the FDA who approved the Oxycontin application is a guy named Curtis Wright.
11:14And Curtis Wright ended up leaving the FDA after Oxycontin was approved and then came to work at Purdue where
11:21he reportedly earned a salary of more than $400,000 a year.
11:25Crucial to the scheme's success? Doctors. The very people we trust with our health.
11:31Many were incentivized by the Sacklers marketing team to prescribe more and more pills to patients.
11:39They would host fancy getaways for the weekend. They would actually pay doctors directly getting them on the Purdue payroll
11:48by inviting them to participate in what they called the Purdue Speakers Bureau.
11:53The system where you ask one of the doctors to give maybe a 10-minute presentation at the beginning and
11:58at the end you hand them a check for $500 or $1,000.
12:02And doctors weren't the only ones getting money from the Sacklers.
12:06Purdue and the Sacklers personally would donate repeatedly to politicians over the years.
12:12It all cleared the way for the tragedy to come.
12:15As Oxycontin sales start to take off in 1999 and 2000 and 2001, we start to get reports, particularly in
12:23rural areas, that abuse of this drug is becoming widespread.
12:28The crime rate spikes, overdose deaths start to pile up.
12:33These are the latest pharmacy robbers on the run tonight, suspected of holding up 11 different shops, mostly mom and
12:39pop pharmacies for Oxycontin.
12:41And it really starts to fray the social fabric.
12:44These people that are doing these robberies are severe addicts. They don't want to hurt anybody. All they want is
12:50their next fix.
12:52As opioid deaths continued to rise, the reality of the worst drug addiction epidemic in America's history became impossible for
13:00anyone to deny, except the Sacklers.
13:04In a recently released 2015 deposition tape the family had tried to bury for years, Richard Sackler appears unrepentant about
13:12the company's business practices.
13:13Do you believe Purdue's marketing was overly aggressive?
13:18No.
13:19Do you believe Purdue's marketing was appropriate?
13:21I believe so.
13:26Purdue Pharma wasn't the only bad actor in the opioid crisis.
13:30In the 2000s, greed was a contagion that affected some of the biggest corporations in the country.
13:36These companies knew where these products were going. It was not a bad judgment, a mistake. They knew exactly where
13:43it was going and they knew it was being abused. It was all about the bucks.
13:52We're in Kensington, Philadelphia, heavily infested drug area.
13:56What's crazy is the most part, I'd say about 80% of the people down here ain't even from down
14:02here. They just come here and get stuck like flypaper.
14:06For decades, Big Pharma raked in billions on prescription painkillers, trapping millions of Americans in the vice-like grip of
14:13addiction.
14:14These prescription pills entered communities through a sophisticated distribution network designed by pharmaceutical companies for ruthless efficiency.
14:23How easy was it to get pills?
14:26Very easy. So many ways you can handle them pills.
14:31But now they try to make the pills where you can't crush them and like snore them.
14:36But that...
14:38Most people turn to heroin anyway.
14:39Do you think that the big drug companies that make Oxy, are they just as big of a drug dealer
14:45as a guy in the street?
14:47Just legal. Just legal. Just legal drug dealer.
15:01Kermit, West Virginia. Population 392.
15:06How many prescription opioids do you think made their way into a single pharmacy here over the course of two
15:11years?
15:12A hundred? A hundred thousand? A million?
15:17The answer is nine million.
15:19And if you don't believe these arrived in Kermit by lawful means, well, neither did the DEA.
15:26Overdoses are occurring. West Virginia was leading the country in overdoses on a per capita basis.
15:33Former manager at the DEA's Diversion Control Division, James Geldof, still gets emotional describing his up close and personal exposure
15:40to the opioid epidemic.
15:42So there was a town hall meeting I attended in Portsmouth, Ohio, in early June of 2011.
15:49There was mothers, fathers and grandparents of...
16:06who died of overdoses.
16:09And the chief of police at one point in the meeting turned off all the lights in the gym and
16:18showed pictures of these kids.
16:27Prompt pictures, homecoming, graduation pictures, football jerseys, all of them young, and they were dead before they had a chance
16:44to live.
16:49Seeing the carnage the pills were causing in small-town America, Geldof began focusing on the pharmaceutical distributors, the shadow
16:56pushers in the new drug trade.
16:59The top companies, McKesson, Cardinal, Amerisaurs Bergen, are three of the largest corporations in America, controlling around 85% of
17:08big pharma's distribution.
17:10And it was also done by companies that, frankly, if you'd have told me in 1972 when I started that
17:16they'd be involved in this kind of behavior, I wouldn't have believed it.
17:19Some of these companies were the blue bloods of the industry.
17:24But with the internet came online pharmacies and a vast, virtually unregulated new distribution network for dangerous pharmaceuticals, some shipping
17:33millions of pills a year.
17:35When you see that kind of quantity, it's obvious that nobody's paying attention.
17:40There's no way somebody could think those kind of quantities would be used legitimately.
17:45But when the DEA begins cracking down on online pharmacies in the early 2000s, addicts begin standing in line at
17:52so-called pill mills, one-stop shops that combine a doctor's office and a pharmacy.
17:58Pill mills were operated by doctors, so you would go in there, you'd pay for an office visit, could be
18:03200 bucks, whatever it might be, and then you'd get a script, and then, of course, you'd take it to
18:08the pharmacy and fill it.
18:10And these pill mills will supercharge an already growing opioid epidemic that spreads across the country.
18:17The doctors that were working in these pill mills were essentially drug dealers.
18:21We considered them criminals, and we approached the investigation as a criminal investigation.
18:29Federal agents raided the Total Medical Express Clinic today, seizing files and computers.
18:34We never thought we would be going into doctor's offices, and, you know, that's a very honorable profession, and unfortunately,
18:41some folks throughout the country have brought dishonor to that profession.
18:46Twin brothers Chris and Jeff George operated four pill mills in Florida.
18:51Confiscated vehicles seized by authorities earlier, Vipers, Bentleys, Mercedes, all paid for in cash from suspected pill mill operators.
18:59At the center of all this is Jeff George, who will face murder charges.
19:04Prosecutors say he and his twin brother Christopher ran a $40 million criminal enterprise.
19:09But he's in trouble.
19:10In three years, the brothers moved an estimated 20 million pills before finally being busted in 2010.
19:16Boxes of supplies and interviewed staff as...
19:18And they were just two guys in a single state.
19:21Shutting down the pill mills was like stamping out a campfire when the forest is already in flames.
19:26He said it's a pill mill, you know?
19:29Is it?
19:29Don't say anything. Don't say anything. Don't say anything.
19:32So the DEA looked to stop the pills at their source.
19:36Distribution companies were required to inform the DEA of suspicious deliveries.
19:40But they often stayed silent.
19:43The most common excuses we've heard from the wholesalers is basically they were just delivery boys.
19:48They knew exactly where it was going and they knew it was being abused.
19:52Purdue did keep a list internally of doctors that they suspected were involved in black market diversion.
19:59They called it list zero.
20:02And anytime a sales rep would start to suspect that a doctor was involved in diversion, they'd be added to
20:09this list.
20:10Sometimes they would continue selling to that doctor.
20:12Sometimes they would stop selling to that doctor.
20:15But what they never did was share that list with law enforcement.
20:20The users were addicted to the drugs and the drug companies and distributors were addicted to the steady flow of
20:25cash.
20:26And in 2016, the federal government even passed a law that made it more difficult for the DEA to do
20:32anything about it.
20:34Sold as a way to ensure patients access to needed pain medications while also improving enforcement.
20:39Representatives Tom Marino and Marsha Blackburn introduced HR 471.
20:45Few noticed that buried in the bill were provisions that would instead put a stranglehold on the DEA by raising
20:51the burden of proof its agents needed to launch investigations of large prescription drug shipments they found suspicious.
20:58Geldof's boss confronted Congresswoman Blackburn.
21:0116,651 people in 2010 died of opiate overdose.
21:07Okay. Opiate associated overdose.
21:09This is not a game. We're not playing a game.
21:11Nobody is saying it is a game, sir. We're just trying to craft some legislation.
21:16The legislation passed by unanimous consent and was signed into law by President Obama.
21:21With little attention paid to the fact that Marino and Blackburn together had received nearly a million dollars in campaign
21:27donations from the pharmaceutical and health industries.
21:30The effect on the DEA's diversion control was devastating.
21:34The cases became more difficult to make.
21:36Chief Counselor kept requiring more and more evidence to make these cases.
21:42So how does an anti-opioid addiction bill end up limiting the DEA's powers, leading to more addiction?
21:50It helped that a former DEA attorney, Lyndon Barber, reportedly helped craft the legislation so it aided his new client,
21:59pharmaceutical distributor Cardinal Health.
22:01Agile DEA compliance program.
22:04If you have a DEA compliance issue or you're facing a government investigation
22:08or you're having administrative or civil litigation involving the Controlled Substances Act, I'd be happy to hear from you.
22:15I did lose respect for Lyndon at that point. There was no reason for that legislation to pass.
22:19As it got harder for the DEA to enforce the law, the wreckage from opioid abuse grew.
22:25The opioid crisis was in full bloom.
22:28If you're going to do anything, if you're going to err on the side of anything, you got people dying
22:32here.
22:32These aren't record keeping violations. These are pills that are winding up on the street.
22:36By the late aughts, nearly 50,000 Americans are dying each year from opioid abuse, triple the number from just
22:43a decade earlier.
22:45So many die that the average American's life expectancy drops by nearly a year.
22:51Addiction to prescription opioids has caused people to turn to cheaper narcotics like heroin.
22:57And soon, the big pharma-fueled opioid epidemic will give rise to the tragic return of heroin, a drug whose
23:05dark history is directly tied to the US government's overseas wars.
23:11If your primary goal is fighting communism and your secondary goal is fighting drugs, then maybe you've got to subordinate
23:17your goal of fighting drugs to the higher good of fighting communism.
23:24Our country's leaders have spoken out for years about the dangers of illegal drugs in America.
23:29Drugs are menacing our society. They're threatening our values and undercutting our institutions. They're killing our children.
23:37Fine-tuning the message as the drug of choice changed.
23:40This, this is crack cocaine, seized a few days ago by drug enforcement agents in a park just across the
23:50street from the White House.
23:52And yet even as presidents spoke out against drugs, their administrations helped fuel every major addiction epidemic.
23:59The only answer to communism is a massive offensive for freedom. Freedom from hunger, from disease. And a victory for
24:08the ageless hope of people everywhere. Freedom from tyranny.
24:13As the US and the Soviet Union battled for geopolitical dominance, the CIA formed strange alliances abroad, shaking hands with
24:22some of the world's most notorious drug traffickers in the name of democracy.
24:32Communism and socialism. What can we do about it?
24:35At the end of World War II, the US is concerned that more and more countries are going to go
24:39socialist, go communist.
24:43And in France, it looked like the communists might actually be able to win national elections. They controlled Marseille.
24:50France has become the battleground for clashing ideologies.
24:54Maurice Torres leads the communists in an open fight between two political extremes.
24:59The CIA starts allying with the, the Corsican Marseille Mafia.
25:07To, you know, use them as a kind of terror force against the communists.
25:12And part of that alliance with these gangsters in southern France involves turning a blind eye and even facilitating their
25:20importation of heroin from Southeast Asia.
25:22I think that what this puts into relief are evils of politics.
25:28You've got to break some eggs to make some omelets.
25:30If your primary goal is fighting communism and your secondary goal is fighting drugs, then maybe you've got to subordinate
25:36your goal of fighting drugs to the higher good of fighting communism.
25:41Years later, America's war against communism and its partnership with the drug trade extended to Southeast Asia itself.
26:01As the war in Vietnam is ramping up and the US role in that war is increasing,
26:08there are these off-the-book wars in Laos in particular.
26:13And that war involves the training by the CIA of hill tribes, particularly the Hmong, as a mercenary force to
26:22fight the path that Laos were a communist force in Laos.
26:25And one of the ways that that war was conducted and funded was in collaboration with Vang Pao, who was
26:32a major drug smuggling warlord.
26:36Along with being a staunch anti-communist, Vang Pao also controls massive fields of poppies, which he harvests and refines
26:43into heroin.
26:45So a bargain is made.
26:46When Americans are risking their lives in war, it is the responsibility of their leaders to take some risks.
26:55One of those risks involves the CIA partnering with Pao's ragtag army to fight a secret war against the communists.
27:02In exchange, the CIA helps Pao move his drugs out of the country using an agency-owned passenger and cargo
27:08airline called Air America.
27:10Air Force Aerial Port personnel, under constant enemy fire, load and offload air.
27:16Turning a blind eye to ongoing heroin smuggling by their forces and then also, you know, using that income stream
27:24to help fund this secret war.
27:28Vang Pao's heroin then makes its way to the West with the help of New York gangsters and their old
27:33connections in Marseille,
27:34a smuggling route immortalized in the movie The French Connection.
27:47By the early 70s, America's inner cities are flooded with smack.
27:51Every day I had taken heroin.
27:54For a year and a half?
27:56Yes.
27:56How much did it cost to you?
27:58Well, I really couldn't say, but it cost enough to kill myself.
28:02But it won't be the last time the U.S. government strikes a devil's bargain in pursuit of a strategic
28:07foreign policy goal.
28:13Three decades after Vietnam, another war.
28:18This one, a so-called war on terror, will see America once again climb into bed with some of the
28:24world's biggest heroin producers.
28:31The story begins with the Soviet invasion occupation of Afghanistan.
28:37The U.S. starts to support these Mujahideen groups and these Mujahideen parties are the U.S. allies in the
28:46process of destroying the Afghan communist revolution.
28:51Part of how the Mujahideen groups are funding their effort is through exporting opium poppy that's then refined into heroin.
29:01Again, it's the smuggling networks for weapons and supplies and personnel facilitate the smuggling of drugs.
29:07But the Mujahideen have created such misery and horror that this fanatical puritanical force arises out of the south of
29:17Afghanistan, the Taliban.
29:20They eventually control most of Afghanistan.
29:22They give sanctuary to Osama bin Laden.
29:25Then after 9-11, the U.S. returns.
29:29Coming after Osama bin Laden, the U.S. drives out the Taliban.
29:33Who is the U.S. going to use as local allies?
29:36Well, those Mujahideen parties.
29:38Once again, our military leaders make a bargain that will haunt American cities and citizens for years to come.
29:46I want to remind you that while today's operations are visible, many other operations may not be so visible.
29:54Kandahar province, southern Afghanistan, 2001.
29:58As the U.S. military is fighting a deadly Taliban insurgency, they make a powerful ally.
30:04The brother of the U.S. installed president.
30:07Kamed Karzai's brother, Wali Karzai, is a major drug dealer, and everybody knew that.
30:12The government of Afghanistan was a government of drug dealers.
30:18And the U.S. turned a blind eye to that reality.
30:21It's an open secret that our troops are protecting Karzai's poppy fields.
30:26Even right-wing news stations are covering our military's strange assignment.
30:29We are tolerating the cultivation of the opium because we know that if we were to destroy it now, the
30:35population would turn against the Marines and it would be a real security risk.
30:39And that was at the heart of the failure of any kind of nation-building effort in Afghanistan.
30:48After 2001, the global distribution of heroin explodes under America's watch.
30:54If the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated in the early 2000s that 92% of world heroin
31:04supply was sourced from Afghanistan, then presumably some of it reached the U.S.
31:10The timing couldn't have been worse.
31:12By the 20-teens, opioid use has reached epidemic levels, leaving the door wide open for a cheaper street drug
31:19to gain hold.
31:20Health officials are concerned about OxyAddicts making the switch to heroin, both experienced users and especially those using the drug
31:28for the first time.
31:33In 2007, news breaks that the Department of Justice finally seems to have caught up with the Sackler family's company,
31:40Purdue Pharma.
31:41Purdue had admitted it falsely promoted OxyContin as less addictive by, among other means, claiming the drug's slow-release formula
31:49did not cause a buzz or euphoria and could be used to weed out addicts.
31:54The corporate giant faces an array of criminal and civil charges for falsely marketing its drug OxyContin as less addictive
32:02than other opioids.
32:04Purdue Pharma's top executives, Michael Friedman, president and CEO, and the company's medical director, Paul Goldenheim, and lawyer, Howard Udell.
32:12All three executives and the company pled guilty in the US to misleading regulators, physicians, and patients.
32:20As punishment for misbranding OxyContin as a cure-all for any type of pain, Purdue is forced to pay $634
32:28million, a record for a pharmaceutical company,
32:31but a mere fraction of the Sackler family fortune earned off of the drug.
32:35The company has cut a plea deal with the government. None of the company's executives are sentenced to prison, and
32:42no one from the Sackler family is personally implicated in the charges.
32:46More than 70,000 people died of overdoses last year, the largest number ever recorded.
32:53While Purdue's 2007 settlement with the feds was a slap on the wrist for the drug maker, it's a punch
32:59in the gut to their victims and their families.
33:03And in the 20 teens, as the healthcare industry finally cracks down on dirty doctors writing shady scripts, and law
33:09enforcement shuts down the last of the pill mills,
33:12hundreds of thousands of addicts are left desperate for a fix.
33:29In the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, residents reckon with the horrors of a still-out-of-control heroin epidemic.
33:38Rosalind Pichardo has been working with users on these streets for years, saving one life at a time, sometimes with
33:45news cameras in tow.
33:47Come on, sunshine.
33:49Yo.
33:50There we go.
33:52If we weren't around, he would have died.
33:56Many of the users here tell a similar story.
33:59They started down the road to addiction with the Sackler's OxyContin pills.
34:04So I started at the painkillers, and there's a lot of quirky doctors out here that would take, they would
34:09take cash and give you some medicine.
34:12And then it just went on and on and on and on.
34:15Once I found out that heroin was cheaper, it got worse.
34:19And as pill addicts move to cheaper and easier to obtain heroin, they find much of the product is laced
34:25with the highly potent synthetic painkiller fentanyl.
34:28When I was doing heroin in 2000s, people were dying. They weren't dying like they are now.
34:34I thought heroin was bad back then. This is the hardest thing I've ever tried to come off.
34:38I'm literally scared to try to come off this drug.
34:42It's so addicting, so strong. And it's scary to even think about trying to come off of it.
34:48But Shardo and other activists see this epidemic that began with prescription pills as a public health crisis, where saving
34:56lives should be the first priority.
34:58They propose opening the country's first ever safe injection site.
35:04What the safe consumption sites mean for me is a place where people can use drugs safely, but also have
35:11services, you know, having doctors on board in case someone ODs to know that if someone wants to use drugs,
35:18they can, but they won't die.
35:20The people like me, they can have a safe spot to use what they got to use and do what
35:27they got to do and go.
35:29But I think that would be great.
35:33But a federal judge declares the Kensington safe injection site proposal illegal, citing the 1986 so-called crack house statute
35:41that makes it a felony to knowingly use a location for distribution of a controlled substance.
35:46For the government to think that a safe consumption site is a crack house is ludicrous.
35:51A safe consumption site is not giving drugs. They're already bringing their drugs.
35:55You know, we're just making sure that when they use their drugs, they come out alive.
36:00And while efforts like Pichardo's are stymied by the government's unrelenting and unsuccessful war on drugs.
36:07A decade after the Justice Department's sweetheart deal with the Sackler family, efforts to finally hold them personally accountable for
36:14the crisis they helped to create have yet to succeed.
36:17I have to wonder if it turns out that the Sackler family and there are some hints right now that
36:20they have moved around money to protect it, knowing that there could be potential future litigation.
36:26Members of the Sackler family began making transfers of money out of the company.
36:31They transferred up to $10 billion out of the company and into their own network of trust.
36:47The Sackler family was hammered off the building in front of a group of people, mostly Tufts medical school students.
36:52The name came down. You can hear those cheers.
36:57The members of the Sackler family who owned and at times ran Purdue Pharma have tried to escape the public
37:02spotlight in the years since their 2007 plea deal.
37:05But that was all about to change.
37:08I think it's fair that your family has tried to fraudulently shield money for your own personal benefit.
37:13I think it's appalling. Those profits, in my opinion, should be clogged at.
37:19The House Committee on Oversight and Reform hold a virtual hearing to investigate the role Purdue Pharma and members of
37:25the Sackler family had played in America's ongoing opioid crisis.
37:29I ask you again, will you apologize for the role you played in the opioid crisis?
37:34Despite all the misery and death directly tied to their product, both Kathy Sackler and her cousin David take no
37:41responsibility.
37:42I have asked myself over many years, I have tried to figure out, is there anything that I could have
37:50done differently knowing what I knew then, not what I know now?
37:55And I have to say, there is nothing that I can find that I would have done differently.
38:03I believe I conducted myself legally and ethically, and I believe the full record will demonstrate that.
38:18An estimated 800,000 Americans have died from opioid-related deaths since 1999.
38:25The true cost of over 20 years of death and destruction seems incalculable.
38:30But by 2018, public pressure to hold the Sackler family accountable was now impossible to ignore.
38:37A dramatic protest inside the Sackler Wing at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
38:43Fund rehab! Fund rehab! Fund rehab!
38:48And in the courts, thousands of lawsuits from families and state governments demanding restitution are stacking up.
38:56Feeling the heat, in November 2020, the Justice Department announces they have reached a new deal with the family.
39:03The global settlement announced today involves the company pleading guilty to three felony counts for defrauding the United States.
39:12It could be the largest settlement ever paid by private citizens.
39:15Resolution also requires tens of millions of documents to be made public about the role that Perdue and the Sacklers
39:22played in the opioid crisis.
39:25If this seems like a win for the government, it isn't.
39:29Members of the Sackler family transferred up to $10 billion out of the company and into their own network of
39:37trusts.
39:37When we talk about the settlement, that's a fraction of what they took out of the company.
39:47With an estimated family fortune of $11 billion and payments scheduled over nine years, the settlement can be paid off
39:54with interest alone.
39:57And while the 487-page bankruptcy deal calls for the Sacklers to relinquish control of Perdue Pharma, which is reformed
40:04as a new entity whose profits will go towards those who have suffered,
40:09Sackler family members are all given immunity from any future prosecution.
40:13It's a shocking outcome that makes news across the country.
40:18In a landmark ruling Wednesday, a federal bankruptcy judge in New York granted immunity from opioid lawsuits to members of
40:25the Sackler family.
40:26They're the owners of Perdue Pharma.
40:27Even the judge who signed the final deal called it a bitter result.
40:33After all the death and destruction, one thing remains clear.
40:39The Sackler family appears untouchable.
40:46And so, when we look back on the opioid crisis, the story of the Sacklers and OxyContin and Perdue Pharma,
40:53it's hard not to see this as a parable not about how the government can't be effective,
40:58but about how, if you take the brakes off of corporate power, the government can't be effective.
41:04Our government's misguided alliances with drug traffickers facilitated the importation of heroin into this country
41:10and helped set the stage for the opioid era and the return to heroin we're living through now.
41:16Allowing drug makers like Perdue to flood our neighborhoods with their pills only added fuel to the fire.
41:23And it's all a uniquely American problem.
41:27A lot of people are in denial.
41:28So I think that if people would come here with an open mind and an open heart to see what
41:35we see,
41:36hopefully that would change their mind.
41:38Obviously it's not over. It's still burning through our society.
41:41We're all paying a price.
41:46We're all paying a price.
41:47We're all paying extra attention.
41:49We're not paying for the price.
41:49we're paying for the $1.
41:49We've been working with a $2.
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