HBO - The Crime of the Century (2021) Part 2

There were 487,842 overdose deaths involving opioids from 2000-2019 in the United States. HBO's THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY, a two-part documentary directed by Emmy and Academy Award winner Alex Gibney (HBO's “The Inventor Out for Blood in Silicon Valley,” “Going Clear Scientology & the Prison of Belief”), and presented in association with The Washington Post, is a searing indictment of Big Pharma and the political operatives and government regulations that enable over-production, reckless distribution and abuse of synthetic opiates. The film follows the opioid epidemic in the United States, and the political operatives, government regulations and corporations that enable the abuse of opioids, particularly the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma. Exploring the origins, extent and fallout of one of the most devastating public health tragedies of our time, with half a million deaths from overdoses this century alone, the film reveals that America's opioid epidemic is not a public health crisis that came out of nowhere. In 1996, the drug company Purdue Pharma, then owned and controlled by Mortimer and Raymond Sackler and their heirs, began selling the opioid drug OxyContin. The highly addictive medication was designed for people with severe pain, such as cancer patients, but went to market as a moderate pill for chronic pain sufferers, complete with a succinct, misleading seal of approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Purdue then aggressively marketed OxyContin to doctors across the country as a safe prescription for chronic pain sufferers, although company never held clinical trials to demonstrate that OxyContin was less addictive or likely to be abused than any other opioid. With the help of whistleblowers, insiders, newly-leaked documents, exclusive interviews and access to behind-the-scenes investigations, and featuring expert input from medical professionals, journalists, former and current government agents, attorneys and pharmaceutical sales representatives, as well as sobering testimony from victims of opioid addiction, Gibney's expose posits that drug companies are in fact largely responsible for manufacturing the very crisis they profit from, to the tune of billions of dollars…and thousands of lives.

Part 2

Part Two of THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY shines a spotlight on the mass marketing of the synthetic opioid fentanyl and examines the connections between drug manufacturers and government policy. While America's silent epidemic was killing 40 people a day, Insys Therapeutics, an upstart opioid manufacturer of fentanyl, continued to bribe doctors to overprescribe. Startling video of sales retreats and promotional material speak to a deep cynicism among company employees and a disregard for the widespread, nefarious corporate practices. A complex scheme to defraud the insurance companies existed side by side with fraudulent marketing tactics while lawmakers continued to turn a blind eye to the implications of a complex pipeline that delivers billions of pills around the country. Interweaving stories of personal tragedy from first responders, survivors and family members of opioid victims with the timeline of corporate greed and malfeasance, Part Two of THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY includes insights from former DEA agent Joe Rannazzisi; former DEA attorney Jonathan Novak; Washington Post reporters Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham, Lenny Bernstein; Assistant U.S. Attorneys for Massachusetts David Lazarus, Nathaniel Yeager and Fred Wyshak; former V.P. of Sales at Insys Alec Burlakoff; former Insys regional sales manager Sunrise Lee; and fentanyl dealer Sidney Caleb Lanier. Woven together, the character-driven stories form a larger narrative of shocking corruption.

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