shaped by one person goes but. no dares thinks. we dare to ask. for years i had treated patients with heroin addiction with high dose methadone which is the appropriate treatment and so i was thinking well i see how well that works for all these people and they don't tend to overdose on it or have a lot of side effects or have any problems so why wouldn't that be fine for pain patients i do recall individual young man who had

a rough go early in life had some problem with alcoholism was in alcohol recovery had a number of back surgeries and i was in the middle of a tapering course switched him over to methadone from his other drug to ease his taper and using misguided conversion tables. 3 days after i converted them i got a call from his wife buddy a doctor and i was flabbergasted it's not safe for people who just have chronic pain to give them opioids because they don't have the years of tolerance built up that people with heroin addiction have to really understand the complexity of that drug is a reflection on. guys much training this was the published data i said there's something wrong here. and that left a. hole in my heart i still remember him very very clearly he had opened up a shop to small business and was really getting conceit. he even gave me his

a. 100 day tocome already accomplished that information was dribbling in that the opioid miracle pain relievers were killing people is proof pharma and the other drug companies would have acknowledged a potentially lethal effects of opioids when these problems are 1st discovered hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved instead they took steps to suppress negative information within a month received a 3 page letter from purdue pharma. basically saying why are you bothering the doctors this is not a prescribing problem this is a patient misuse problem this is a drug abuse problem patients need to be able to get what they need and then we got a year later got sued in federal court we were all all the medical directors were served in our homes current efforts to stop this overprescribing have been met with much pushback from the pharmaceutical industry they rationalized that the billions

of dollars they were making were helping more people than they were hoarding they insisted and still insists today that only those who are diverting and misusing the drugs to get high are responsible for the epidemic and not those who are prescribe the drug produced distributed a follow up video to i got my life back the double down on their claims that oxycontin was a safe non-addictive long term chronic pain relief returning to these patients off to 2 years shows that when pain treatment is successful it stays successful over the last 3 years i've gotten much much stronger it's just absolutely a god thing it's just such a different i've been away a way to it. and able it's wonderful however in time even produce own video poster children were succumbing to oxycontin lethal effect of the 6 featured patients spotlighted in the videos 3 maintain they were still helped by

the product 2 were deceased from causes thought to be related to their opioid addiction and non linesmen another i think said if i was to go to the mailbox once a month and i would find a bottle an oxy i'm constantly on the even lower and is among the lucky survivors i would allow doctors to prescribe me x. right now it's a synthetic heroin. in 2010 for do introduce the new tamper resistant oxycontin with a spotlight focused on stopping pill mills in the new tamper. just medication easy sources for prescription pain killers began to dry up prescription opioids were expensive on the black market. heroin became a cheaper alternative i can remember this 15 years ago when my patients coming in here for buprenorphine treatment were saying you know heroin is a lot cheaper than most pills and it works better in 2016 the new england journal

of medicine published a study that found that 76 percent of those seeking help for her when addiction began by abusing pharmaceutical opioids primarily oxycontin this draws a direct line between produce marketing of oxycontin then the subsequent care one epidemic currently in the united states policymakers were hearing that all of the problems related to opioids or from so-called drug abusers and that these were wonderful medicines for for pain patients and we recognize this wasn't true one of the 1st people to stand up to the drug companies and lobby for reform was dr andrew . he helped form prop physicians for responsible opioid prescribing their organization as one of the earliest advocates for opioid prescription reform the one federal agency that seemed to understand that overdose deaths in addiction had arisen as a consequence of the medical community overprescribing was the c.d.c.

you know the f.d.a. gets criticized. the c.d.c. really doesn't and the c.d.c. is like you know they care about public health in america at its best and brightest and today had kind of this blue ribbon committee that looked i mean people that had no ties to the pharmaceutical industry no conflicts of interest declare and they spent a long time reviewing all of their research and what they came back and said is incredibly damning there's no evidence to support long term use of opioids for chronic pain. what can any drug company say beyond that chronic pain is 80 said. in percent of the market what separates the current opioid epidemic from the heroin and crystal meth epidemics of the past is that it affects white middle class and rural communities far more than urban minority poor clicked the early eighty's late sixty's. puce and the negative consequences of the abuse of opiates was primarily limited primarily not exclusively limited to minority populations poor

individuals inner city populations. from ny perspective what ended up happening is this current circumstance going to jump start from prescription opioids and as a result of that it impacted the much broader socioeconomic strata in our community particularly individuals who have access to health care middle class for the most part white families in 2007 produce foreman 3 of its executives pled guilty in federal court to charges of misleading the public about oxycontin their risk of addiction and ease of abuse they were fined over $635000000.00 the biggest pharmaceutical settlement and u.s. history now that may sound like a lot it is a lot but if you look at the damage that's been done particularly since then in terms of the number of people that are taking. not only oxy cotton but many types

of opioids for conditions that really have there's no value for these drugs. today the opioid epidemic commands national attention there are now dozens of court cases against purdue and other pharmaceutical companies for their collusion to promote drugs they knew were dangerous for turning a blind eye to the sale of opioids to doctors and clinics that were killed mills and for the destruction of states and communities ravaged by the up at that. i'm not sure i'm enough of a medical expert to say what steps need to be taken at this point. but you know what what's very clear is that unless you have. public health experts regulators criminal investigators local officials and the medical community working together. in some kind of established program the problem

will never get solved the one thing that we have to do is slowly and surely. the. prescriptions we need to get them doctors are no strongly encouraged to cautiously prescribe for both chronic pain and acute pain this will lessen the chance of surplus pills being diverted in the buz surgeons or dartmouth hitchcock medical center in lebanon new hampshire recently published guidelines to reduce the number of excess opioid pills prescribed for acute pain what we found was that only about a quarter of the opioid pills that were being prescribed were taken by the patients so it was clear that we were over prescribing these opioids and so we came up with a guideline and said ok for a partial mastectomy 5 pills should be enough to satisfy 80 percent of the patients for lack of stopping gallbladder removal calls the stock to me 15 pills should be

enough to worry and say well did a whole bunch of patients come back for refills when we are really taking care of their pain ok and the answer that was we were taking care of the pain cry because less than one percent of the patients ended up needing an opioid we felt some doctors question the use of opioids at all and feel they were more effective non-addictive options even for acute pain when we think about treating patients in pain we should understand what the ability of the body is to respond to those things themselves. we have endorphins and we stimulate those with activity and exercise. oftentimes when somebody is in pain we tell them not to move that's the bad it that's bad it was. as we exercise use our systems normally we can create our own and orphans and pain control that's number one and. number 2 is to go to over the counter medications for example there are lots of

good studies that show that the combination of taking acetaminophen which is tylenol. and ibuprofen which comes in multiple forms like advil and motor and in aleve it's a combination of those medications together actually is much more effective than opioids for taking care of acute pain we can use. activity we can talk about comedy reading there's things to divert people from pain if we sit home all day in pain we will guarantee you you will have pain if you try to be active you won't necessary get rid of it but you'll learn to deal with it better on the other hand there are those patient there is no alternative but to use narcotics i can count those on one hand and anyone. it's very rare.

seems wrong. to me. to stamp out just a constant that's ok and it. equals betrayal. when somebody find themselves worlds apart. choose to look for common ground. this disinfection technician used to be the boss in his old. duty and this entrepreneur was the queen of entertainment. and saves lives in the red zone. and this

is a buddhist monk he takes a video camera to the cemetery. coronavirus made them change their lives and. frankly. one of the architects of america. it was going to ask when you can vote for free money. and this is what. people voted for free money and now it's officially her band frank if. it's. done. doctors are getting the message that certain uses of opioids are not appropriate for example long term chronic use there are lots of educational programs out there there are. d.n.a.

enforcement activities out there. in fact some doctors are now complaining that it's so hard to write a narcotic prescription that they don't even bother to talk to people who are chronic pain patients and i get e-mails from people on phone calls who believe that their opiate prescription isn't working for them. they are very scared of the discussions going on they're scared that their doctors not be able to prescribe it the federal government's going to take away their pellets and that are allowing them to have a quality of life that they don't believe is possible about the drugs there are a lot of patients that are. going to have pain acute pain and chronic pain that aren't attics that need to be treated properly with pain medication that does work for some people so i don't think we should throw the baby with the bathwater about 10 to 12000000 americans who have been put on long term opioids. many of whom may never be able to come on and who many of whom are convinced the opioids are helping

them they're desperate to maintain their supply and the idea of folks out there telling other doctors that these aren't safe and effective that they don't work well long term they will rightly believe that it could make it harder for them to continue to access opioids and so. from some of these pain patients who are opioids. threats and it's it's often a threat. wanting to cause bodily harm so that. they are like maybe i have a different feeling about opioids and i was injured that that type of threat i do worry in some ways that now perhaps the pendulum. swinging so far the other way that we're going to see a lot of people and so it's cut off from their long term supplies of opiates which are not appropriate for them to be on. but i imagine we'll be seeing those people

coming to our addiction treatment programs as that begins to happen as states but more restrictions in place for physicians people want to blame big pharma and say they're greedy they're terrible now but the problem is that big pharma is the engine for medical innovation in this country they develop drugs they are willing to invest millions may invest in 40000000 dollars in oxy hard before they've made a dime from it. so if we if we say let's you know what's make all of our drug companies non-profits like we're not going to have a lot of innovative drugs that are going to a cure cancer are things like that so it's a problem and the rest of the world is counting on american drug companies to come up with cures chronic pain is truly a life altering problem for millions of people 'd. search for safe non-addictive solutions for pain really we can probably produce better drugs in terms of alleviating pain without the addictive component and some of the faculty here at

the similar institute are working very hard on the pain we need to treat pain is very important to treat i've been studying the opiate systems. in england we cloned . from the gene which we call the we can block the information in the brain and we don't quite know what that will do i think what's needed is a drugs which don't. necessarily all 'd. drugs which work at this but don't reach the reward system there is some process in the playing field in developing new drugs the focus of our study is really to investigate the role that the immune system actually plays in chronic pain and so that's. a new angle. in research regard to the. cells to actually valid. response is worth on animals so we decided to shoot from animals as well as. an expression and produce an expression and i think the really promising aspect of our study then is that

these. are a target for treating pain better so we could inhibit the activity. and actually improve the clinical efficacy of its get rid of some of these problematic effects like tolerance addiction exaggerated and i came to stanford to understand how proteins these very fascinating molecules work at the most basic level i'm an instructor in the department of molecular and cellular physiology where we study very basic aspects of biology and the work that we've been doing lately is to understand how. they bind to their receptors and function these models provide is really remarkable ways of developing new drugs because what i'll do next is put up a. drug like morphine here in orange inside its receptor you can see if it's really nicely and i was told into that i can i can kind of cut away and you can see how well those little balls are fitting inside that receptor because what we can do now

is to say well this is the receptor binding poket what other drugs are in this binding pocket and then can we use this kind of knowledge to develop better drugs that these receptors are not addictive opioid would be a medication that targets new opioid perceptor. turns it on provides pain relief but doesn't trigger the rewarding pathways in the brain that cause tolerance for cause addiction you know with these other drugs that target different systems likely also are coming down the pike actually see either a complete turn to drugs that are actually used to treat pain or we can actually apply these drugs to improve the clinical profile of our people it's. true it's could still be administered but if we shut down the signaling that occurs at the same. time and then we can eliminate these problems of tolerance addiction as i said earlier the system better because as well despite all the attention focused on the opioids to make the crisis continues to grow. according to the c.d.c.

. 2016 there were over 62000 deaths due to overdue this is the worst manmade epidemic in modern medical history. we still haven't reversed it and we've known about it for more than 10 years so we're are where are these teachers that taught us to do these things why are they all very helping to reverse this during the making of this documentary resort to interview representatives from purdue in the form of suitable industry and those doctors who advocated for the sure hope your knowing would appear on. this is a common problem experienced by most journalists covering the open door of the potomac yeah i would love to talk to anyone from the sackler family because they you know they're smart people and this is a complicated problem and i want to hear what they say about it it's a family company and there is a sense that i got from talking to people that are associated with it that they feel that they've been mistreated by the media by the government by politicians.

and that they feel attacked and you know i was interviewing someone who has a very high opinion of the company and very high opinion of the family i mean he didn't want his name used because he's like if look i stand by the 100 percent but if i give you my name then like i'll be just pillory you know people look askance at me all the internet people trolling me. and so i feel like they have this you know they would say it's a well grounded cynicism about the media and about just you know coverage of their drugs i believe that. in terms of the blame for opioid addiction epidemic produce. forum was a purse shoot financial profit and the fact that they didn't care about an epidemic of addiction and overdose deaths that they were fuelling. the fact that the food and drug administration failed to properly regulate the claims that produce was

making the failure of the medical establishment. and the fact that it took money from purdue and other opioid makers and promoted aggressive use of state medical boards that failed to regulate the way in which doctors prescribing and even encouraged aggressive prescribing there's a lot of blame to go around the question is is who is guilty or who should feel guilty i don't know that anybody feels too guilty i kind of wish a few more people did feel a little more guilty despite public outcry pharmaceutical companies find new and creative ways to market their heroin builds. what's in the parts lauren and we do have power under which i'm employed from. and it looks to be very open you're worried. including painkillers marketed to children the food and drug administration announced about

a month ago that they were determining that oxycontin is safe and effective for children 11 and up which is very disturbing most of the companies that now operate in these bases in this space have gone dark. it's not the big names that you and i would recognize like pfizer or johnson and johnson pfizer does have a little bit but not a lot. is actually these small very focused companies the focus on pain and the not names in the household names they don't have to worry as much about the sort of reputational damage as forces in our nation strengthen against the over prescribing of opioids from a suitable company see their us market eventual narrowing. as one door closes another opens produce private company owners international from munda pharma has already begun the same kind of marketing campaign in latin american asia the middle east and africa. nations where chronic pain is high and people haven't the money or

access to medical treatment communities ill equipped to handle an opioid epidemic los angeles times reporter harriet ryan was the 1st to break the story interviewed someone who is going around the world training physicians of foreign countries for purdue for teaching them how to use oxycontin he admitted he doesn't use it as an practiced citizen think it's a. as big pharma broadens its horizons our nation continues to struggle in the aftermath of their deceit. and it wasn't until february of 2017 after much had been exposed about the overprescribing of opioids that a new doctor at the clinic noticed 70 year old linda g.n.r. he had a serious opioid addiction she discontinued her high dose prescriptions causing linda to experience a painful withdrawal process get nauseous you might throw up and get diarrhea

there's a whole array of stuff you feel pretty miserable for people like myself need some relief from the chronic pain. and it doesn't take 150 milligrams of the whole to do that today life is better but that doesn't make up for the decades of endangerment and loss of quality of life linda innocently experienced by trusting her doctors would do her no harm this film quite a journey one i don't want to go through it again. happy with how things are now. i think it's fair to say that this epidemic of opioid addiction and overdose deaths was in many ways caused. i buy green meat so i think inform public is critical to resolving this problem. people need to understand that these drugs are very potent very dangerous. very addictive the opioid

epidemic can only be contained if it is attacked from multiple fronts start with an information regulatory agencies that placed public welfare above special interests health care and pharmaceutical industries government by providing each an oath to help the sick and to do no harm. the battle continues. pleasure to have this opportunity to speak with you all about the opioid addiction epidemic i'm going to just jump right in i'll start off by saying i have no financial relationship with pharmaceutical companies and i think you'll understand if you hear my talk why no pharmaceutical companies that want to relationship with me. i'm going to start off by saying something very obvious or something that should be obvious but unfortunately is not obvious when we talk about drugs like oxy co don't

which isn't oxycontin or hydrocodone which is invited and we're talking about drugs that come from opium to to make oxycodone and hydrocodone you start with opium and the effects that hydrocodone and oxy co don't produce in the brain are indistinguishable from the effects produced by heroin if you give an experienced heroin user oxy called onan heroin to self administer like a blind taste test in fact they did a study like this at columbia. the heroin user can't tell which is which and if you ask them which they like a little bit better they actually rate the oxycodone higher than the heroin so when we talk about opioid painkillers we are essentially talking about heroin.

seemed wrong but old just told. me to get to shape out just come out again and engagement it was betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart. just to look for common ground. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy going foundation let it be an arms race in this on off and spearing dramatic development only personally i'm going to resist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time to sit down and talk. and then as planned across the delusional. but you have australian version they go

. to the new. study did they go to look into. the needs of those but it seems to me. you need to go to church for those new look at a lot of these older title to put it you'll do good because there will be a choice to be on your boat it will show you such that it will in the postal order grow out of the roof through. were full of good churn you. point of the beautiful and hear them. we're going. to put so that the new. blood but their ambition. for. gas to. be used when

you're in the water with your dogs looks we're going to see it in your will address dark blue i don't need to just what. could you will show when you are going in the store usually does. violent riots on capitol hill that's been compared to a failed attempt at least 5 people dead dozens charged and arrests. also this week an unprecedented display of big social media sites permanently on the u.s. president and some of his supporters from claiming his post could encourage further violence. elsewhere a breakthrough. blocks in u.s. extradition request joy of his supporters is tempered the other largely supporting

america's espionage charges against him saying it gets dangerous press.