The Megyn Kelly Show - ＂Dopesick＂ - The Sackler Family： A Megyn Kelly Show True Crime Special

00:00:00.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:12.180 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. It is the end of true crime

00:00:17.200 Christmas week here on the show, and we have a very different kind of crime story to bring to

00:00:22.220 you today. Have you heard about the Sackler family? By the end of the show, you will. You'll know

00:00:28.160 their story well, and the story of the opioid crisis in America. It's stunning, it is devastating,

00:00:35.280 and it is indeed criminal. I was so moved by the recent Hulu series, Dope Sick, if you haven't seen

00:00:41.120 this, you must, you must, that I wanted to do a show on it. And today, I'm very, very happy to be

00:00:48.740 joined in just a bit by the author of the book that inspired the series, as well as separately,

00:00:55.520 the creator of the series, Dope Sick. Danny Strong is the director, executive producer

00:01:01.260 of Dope Sick, and he joins me now. Danny, thank you so much for being here. You're the creator,

00:01:06.060 you're the showrunner. And let me just kick it off with, you know, we're going to get into it,

00:01:11.200 but it's basically about how the opioid crisis in America unfolded. What attracted you to that

00:01:16.540 subject matter? Well, first off, thanks so much for having me on your show. And, you know,

00:01:23.120 I'm so thrilled you watched the show, and we're so taken by it. So it's all very appreciated.

00:01:28.180 It all began when a producer named John Goldwyn, who's a really terrific producer,

00:01:33.900 he came to me and said, do you want to write and direct a movie on the opioid crisis?

00:01:37.020 And I had read this New Yorker article by Patrick Radin Keith that came out in 2017 that basically

00:01:44.620 blew the story up as far as the Sackler family's involvement with Purdue Pharma, with OxyContin,

00:01:53.740 in a very damning way. I think that that article was a major turning point in sort of the history

00:02:00.160 of the opioid crisis and who was ultimately responsible for sparking it and setting the

00:02:06.740 flames and then keeping that fire going for at least a decade, if not longer. And so I went back

00:02:13.100 and I had reread the article and I read very closely this time as far as a potential adaptation or not

00:02:20.740 adaptation, but just as a research. And I was fascinated, stunned, shocked, appalled. I then went

00:02:29.120 on and got some books that had already been written on the opioid crisis, a book called Painkiller,

00:02:35.560 a book called Dreamland. My horror grew even more. And I just thought, I have to do this. I have to

00:02:43.120 figure out a way to dramatize the story for as big an audience as I can, because this is one of the

00:02:52.000 most stunning crime stories in the history of the country. And at the time, this was 2018,

00:02:58.140 when I was really deep diving into it. And Purdue Pharma and OxyContin, the prescribing had started

00:03:05.560 to come down in the United States, but they were now using their same dishonest, manipulative,

00:03:13.340 false techniques, advertising techniques and marketing techniques in foreign countries.

00:03:18.380 So when I first started, I had viewed the show as a warning to the rest of the world

00:03:24.220 that Purdue Pharma is coming to lie to you and to addict you to OxyContin. So that's sort of what

00:03:31.080 sparked the journey. You come by your storytelling skills, honestly. It's funny, because when I saw

00:03:39.400 your name, I'm like, I know that name. I know that name. And I know you've worked with Jay Roach,

00:03:43.440 who is, of course, the director of the movie Bombshell, which I have a connection to. I have nothing to do

00:03:47.600 with the movie, but there was a person playing me in it. But that's not how I knew you. It was from

00:03:53.200 Gilmore Girls, which you were on for a while playing Doyle McMaster. But you've also written

00:04:00.440 several big movies, right? Game Change, Recount, and you wrote The Butler. You're a co-writer and

00:04:07.880 maybe producer on Empire as well. I mean, a lot of big hits in your past.

00:04:12.980 Good stuff. Thank you.

00:04:14.060 But this is like, this is your project. So it's got to feel different to you in a way.

00:04:19.220 Yeah, it was. I knew that I would be doing heavy lifting. I had directed an independent film before

00:04:24.900 that had gotten into Sundance, which was very exciting. But this was on a much, much bigger scale

00:04:31.260 as far as creating, show running. I knew I was going to be directing the last couple episodes.

00:04:37.760 And it was great to just sort of take the reins of it. And partly why I felt like, okay, this is a

00:04:48.100 good project for me to do that with for my first time was because I was so passionate about it. And

00:04:53.700 I was so enraged by what had happened. And it seemed like, well, if you're going to, you know,

00:04:58.640 for me, I always worry, I always got a worst case scenario, right? You know, what's going to happen

00:05:03.860 if the whole thing's a disaster and a massive failure? And so I thought, well, if this thing

00:05:08.360 explodes in my face, I'd rather go down swinging on something that I feel really, really passionate

00:05:13.540 about.

00:05:13.900 This feeling is what makes you a success. They say that there was a Kaiser poll that said 56% of

00:05:21.740 Americans either know someone who is an addict or who died from addiction. I feel like it's probably

00:05:29.040 even higher than that. Um, I, I have someone I've, I've revealed to my audience that someone

00:05:34.740 in my family, my, my family of origin, um, fell into the opioid crisis. And when a family

00:05:40.300 member falls into it, the entire family falls into it as you know, you're, as you know, from

00:05:44.620 being the storyteller of this series, I wondered whether you had any personal experience that

00:05:49.200 made you want to do the show.

00:05:50.460 I, I didn't. And I'm so fortunate to be able to say that, that sentence. Um, uh, I'm, I don't

00:05:57.760 know anyone close to me that had a opioid use disorder. I myself have not fallen down any kind

00:06:04.720 of rabbit hole like that. Uh, the rabbit hole I fell down was the rabbit hole of the crimes

00:06:10.520 of Purdue pharma and the culpability of the Sackward family. And that was a rabbit hole that a number

00:06:18.000 of people have fallen down. You know, when I start talking about this to, to different people that

00:06:23.040 have written books on them who may have had a personal experience with addiction or, or a family

00:06:28.840 or friends that has, but what we all have in common is once you start deep diving into what happens,

00:06:36.300 you can't believe it. You, you can't believe what this company did and how, um, literally a group of,

00:06:44.560 I don't know, 20 people, 30 people from one family made billions and billions of dollars off of the

00:06:53.560 suffering of an entire nation. And, you know, when you talk about how the whole family gets affected

00:06:59.140 by, by this, when it happens to, to one person, it's so true. You know, everyone talks about the

00:07:05.520 statistics of, uh, now it's over 700,000 people have died, um, from some type of opioid overdose.

00:07:14.560 Um, since the crisis essentially began, however, that number doesn't even begin to tell the story

00:07:19.940 of the families that are devastated, the family members, um, that, that lose years of their life

00:07:27.160 of suffering of, of loved ones who have fallen into this and the people that are still alive,

00:07:31.840 uh, that didn't die from an overdose, but are either still struggling with opioid use disorder

00:07:37.440 or lost years of their life to it. And are now just trying to put the pieces back together. I mean,

00:07:43.920 the sort of, um, the victims of it continue to splinter on and on and on, uh, in a way that's

00:07:50.040 extremely profound. I know many people think that the homeless issue that is plaguing so many major

00:07:55.240 American cities is heavily sparked by, uh, the opioid crisis and people that have fallen into opioid use

00:08:01.780 disorder. No, it's so true because even if you're one of the quote, lucky ones who doesn't get killed by,

00:08:07.440 an overdose, I mean, I I've seen it happen firsthand. It changes you. It changes a person.

00:08:12.800 It can at least radically to where the person you knew is all but gone, replaced by someone else.

00:08:20.520 Who's a stranger to you, who you have to get to know and, and who that person,

00:08:24.840 him or herself has to get to know. It's just like a new version of you that doesn't tend to be new and

00:08:29.880 improved. Like these drugs do so much lasting damage. And then the drugs you have to take to get

00:08:34.840 off of them and stay off of them can, can do damage as well. It's just a cycle that even if

00:08:40.520 you manage yourself, put yourself out of it, it's very hard to shake the effects of it. And, and the

00:08:46.060 movie and the book and, and this whole series of sort of, uh, research and writings about it are an

00:08:53.000 attempt at accountability, at storytelling, an explanation. How did, how did it happen? And

00:08:58.040 accountability. And I, what I loved about it, Danny is when you go through it, you don't know

00:09:03.300 you're part of a national story, right? You just think, Oh my God, something's terrible is happening

00:09:07.140 in my family or to my people. And, and it would took years, I think for most of us who were sucked

00:09:11.800 into it to realize, Oh my God, this was a thing. This was a national epidemic. And now this is the

00:09:17.860 next piece, which is caused by specific individuals because it was, and I, I agree with

00:09:25.120 their demonization of the Sacklers who we'll get into. So let's, let's talk about the film itself

00:09:29.840 because you basically, the characters are fictional, right? It's a, you, you know, you

00:09:34.560 made them up, but they're kind, they're loosely based. Yes. On real life people. Some are, some

00:09:39.520 are not even loosely based. Some are just the actual people. I mean, the Sackler family, I use

00:09:43.140 the real names and then the key prosecutors out of the Western district of Virginia, uh, the U S

00:09:49.380 attorney there and two of his prosecutors, those are real people as well. Uh, and then the people in

00:09:54.940 the town, Finch Creek, that is, it's a, it's a fictional name, Finch Creek. I wanted to do this

00:10:00.680 sort of, um, every town, USA, uh, Appalachia, um, concept to, to have a couple of people, uh,

00:10:11.700 be our victims that represented, you know, millions of people in that case. Um, the star, uh, originally

00:10:20.460 in the, in the, in the sort of beginning episodes is, uh, a young female minor named Betsy played,

00:10:25.880 uh, by Caitlin Deaver who suffers an injury. She's the daughter of a minor as well. She lives

00:10:30.320 with her parents. She's not a drug addict. She's not an alcoholic. She's a sweet, you know,

00:10:36.080 dreamy faced young minor, you know, it was just such an interesting job for a young woman like that

00:10:41.040 sympathetic character for sure. And, um, I love that you chose her because this was representative

00:10:47.620 of, I think the opioid crisis for most people. It was, these weren't back alley deals. These were

00:10:54.100 people who were prescribed a drug by a doctor. They trusted to treat an injury that was real.

00:11:01.080 And then the spiral came. Yeah, absolutely. And, and partly why I did this approach was because this

00:11:08.860 is where Purdue pharma, uh, uh, that was their phase one areas where they targeted, which were rural

00:11:16.100 areas filled with people that had a higher, um, prescription rate of opioids because they just

00:11:23.260 got injured a lot on the job. So miners, loggers, farmers, those were, those were basically the three

00:11:30.420 areas that Purdue pharma initially targeted. And so it was in Southwestern Virginia, Eastern Kentucky

00:11:37.620 and rural Maine were kind of the ground zero spots. And I chose Appalachia and I chose mining. Uh,

00:11:44.960 I thought it was very sort of emblematic of, of sort of our iconic view of how this all began.

00:11:51.160 And I started watching YouTube videos of different people in these areas on these YouTube videos.

00:11:58.220 It's a, it's a technique I use for research because there's something so authentic about them.

00:12:02.340 There are often amateur videos that are just taken by real people trying to put some kind of short

00:12:08.880 subject documentary together about their lives. And I was so taken by so many of the miners and

00:12:16.560 the pride they had and what they did. And that there was this sort of magical connection to the

00:12:23.160 mountains, um, the blue Ridge mountains, the mountains in Appalachia. And, you know, when I went

00:12:27.700 on a research trip up there, I understood where that connection came from because they're really

00:12:32.040 beautiful. It's just this very beautiful part of the country and, and very sort of isolated and on its

00:12:37.640 own. So it seemed to me, Oh, this is, this is a great way into the story. Uh, and I, you know,

00:12:43.940 in one of the videos, I saw this young woman who was a minor being interviewed. Uh, she struck me as

00:12:50.200 someone who seemed like she was a lesbian. And I thought, wow, that's really interesting being a

00:12:55.780 lesbian in a very, you know, conservative part of the country where that may not be as accepted as say

00:13:01.920 it is in New York city where I live. And I just wanted to explore these different issues. And so

00:13:07.760 what happens when the issue begins, uh, her arc begins about her sexuality and what that means to

00:13:14.660 her and her family, but it quickly takes a left-hand turn when, um, the drug use completely consumes it

00:13:23.420 and takes it over. And that was so very much kind of the early stages of me putting this together.

00:13:27.940 And I do want to throw a huge shout out to Beth Macy and her incredible book, Dope Sick.

00:13:34.280 We ended up getting teamed up, um, after I'd come up with these initial ideas and I read the book and

00:13:40.140 I loved it. And Beth has been an incredible part of the project, the process. She was in the writer's

00:13:45.960 room and her and I kept doing interviews all the way throughout the entire process. So it's a big

00:13:50.940 shout out to Dope Sick author, Beth Macy. And anyone listening to this, if you've seen the show and you

00:13:55.260 haven't read the book yet, I highly recommend it. Yeah. She's coming up next. So they're going to

00:13:58.780 meet her momentarily, but she does get it. I mean, she, she sort of, um, her book is not totally

00:14:04.380 dissimilar from Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance. You know, it just takes a hard, honest, and sometimes

00:14:11.220 unfavorable view of Appalachia and what's happened there. And it's not, it's not critical of the people.

00:14:18.160 It's just, there's joblessness and there's disability claims and there's globalization. And there are all sorts

00:14:23.660 of things that have affected this part of the country that gets ignored too often. And then

00:14:28.180 people are like, how did Trump get in office? And it's like, well, it's, it's complicated,

00:14:32.500 but it's understandable if you take the time. Um, okay. So you've got, um, she's Betsy is one of

00:14:39.660 our main stars. And then you've got Dr. Samuel Phoenix, Phoenix, right? Okay. I'm just want to

00:14:44.900 make sure I'm pronouncing it right. Cause I know I'm a Sam and that's played by Michael Keaton. And I,

00:14:48.800 this character is trying to help his community. He loves West Virginia. He loves Apalachia. He loves

00:14:54.420 the minors. He's trying to help, but like so many doctors in the opioid crisis really didn't right.

00:15:01.700 He was pulled in by Purdue Pharma as so many real life doctors were, and it's dazzling snazzy drug reps

00:15:10.720 who are saying all sorts of things about this drug, which is so exciting that they fooled even the

00:15:17.320 doctors, which was a critical part of their plan. Yeah, a hundred percent. I think there's this

00:15:23.580 perception of that all doctors that prescribed Oxycontin were evil pill mill doctors that were,

00:15:31.700 you know, essentially legal drug dealers. And those people certainly didn't exist. And there were,

00:15:36.960 there were many pill mills and a number of people that have been arrested and gotten massive

00:15:41.320 jail sentences, 30 years, 25 years. However, I believe that the majority of the doctors prescribing

00:15:48.960 Oxycontin were not that they were completely well-intentioned doctors, uh, that believed what

00:15:55.200 Purdue Pharma had told them. And even the sales reps at Purdue Pharma believed at least initially,

00:16:01.500 uh, the information that they were given, there was basically this elaborate con in which Purdue

00:16:08.080 Pharma, well, I'll start with these independent pain societies, these independent pain societies

00:16:13.180 were creating this new movement, um, that pain has been wildly undertreated in this country and that

00:16:22.040 opioids are much safer than we have, uh, perceived them for decades. And that this movement went so far

00:16:29.300 as to, to turn pain as the new fifth vital sign. So this was a huge campaign that was happening

00:16:36.120 between late eighties into the mid nineties, into the late nineties, right? During this whole period

00:16:41.760 that coincided with Purdue Pharma coming up with a new opioid that they were marketing as non-addictive,

00:16:48.920 which tied into the national movement of yes, and opioids are much safer. And then these pain societies

00:16:54.760 would put out studies, uh, uh, certain doctors would write articles that would end up in these really

00:17:00.300 respected, uh, news, medical news journals. And it was, and it gave this elaborate, uh, elaborate

00:17:06.440 appearance that this, there's a whole new movement in medication and in pain treatment. And what we have

00:17:12.360 learned is that these pain societies were not independent. They were partially or fully in some

00:17:18.360 cases funded by Purdue Pharma. The doctors that were writing articles were funded by Purdue Pharma.

00:17:25.980 And in some cases, the periodicals that these articles would come out in were funded by Purdue

00:17:31.120 Pharma. So it was like an elaborate shell game, a con. And then when you go back in time to the 1950s

00:17:38.480 and the 1960s, uh, there was a man who basically created all of this, this entire elaborate shell game

00:17:45.400 of, of having, having fake studies being written about by doctors on your payroll, put in periodicals

00:17:52.180 that are also on your payroll that you would then use that to convince doctors of whatever you're

00:17:56.220 trying to convince them. And, and this man was Arthur Sackler, the uncle of Richard Sackler,

00:18:01.880 who was the godfather of Oxycontin. Right. So you see, Oh no, this is what the family they've been

00:18:09.420 doing this for the last 50 years. This is just their playbook. Uh, and when you get into that,

00:18:15.700 that this is a generational scam. I view it as sort of like pharma grifters. They're a family of

00:18:21.360 pharma grifters. Right. And then it goes back generations. Uh, it gets to be incredibly

00:18:27.400 fascinating, uh, that there's this long history of it. Um, and, and quite devious, you know,

00:18:33.100 this is covered in the book dope sick, but there's another book called empire of pain

00:18:36.640 that came out not too long ago that goes into Arthur Sackler in the fifties and the sixties

00:18:41.380 in such exquisite detail. I call it, uh, Charles Dickens in hell. I mean, it's very,

00:18:47.660 I want to read that and quite fascinating, uh, the entire family history of what they've done.

00:18:53.280 Um, obviously the Sacklers and Purdue pharma are, they do not come out favorably in the movie or the

00:18:59.720 book or life. Uh, their lives are pretty good. Their lives are pretty damn good, but I'll tell

00:19:06.360 you the biggest villain right after them is the FDA. And, and you will not believe how Purdue pharma

00:19:12.240 managed to convince all these doctors that Oxycontin was less addictive, that the doctors could feel

00:19:17.440 totally comfortable prescribing it to young minors who may have hurt their backs and so on. Um,

00:19:22.860 free form, just go for it. It's totally safe. How did they do it with the help of, of a complicit

00:19:28.580 FDA, which the movie exposes brilliantly. We have more with Danny after this quick break. Don't go away.

00:19:34.320 So Danny, um, before I get to FDA, Richard Sackler, can you help me? I love this actor,

00:19:48.440 Michael. Is it Stuhlbarg? Stuhlbarg. Stuhlbarg. Okay. Cause I always see it written and I never hear

00:19:53.540 it spoken. He's, I loved him in boardwalk empire. He was totally brilliant in that series. Um, he was

00:19:59.400 in Woody Allen's blue Jasmine, many other films. You'll recognize him. He's such a good villain.

00:20:04.340 He's amazing at being a villain. So he plays Richard Sackler and, um, Richard Sackler, what you

00:20:10.840 learn is more than any other Sackler. And that's saying something is hugely ambitious. He's incredibly

00:20:16.680 driven and he's also very smart. Um, but he was determined once he created this baby Oxycontin,

00:20:25.180 uh, because they, uh, a patent on another drug they owned was running out Purdue pharma and they

00:20:29.700 needed a new star in the Purdue pharma family and Oxycontin was it. So he was determined to make sure

00:20:37.280 it got marketed out there that the, that the sales were exponential. And here's just a clip from the

00:20:41.720 movie. This is soundbite one of Michael Stuhlbarg as Richard Sackler. Listen, board doesn't seem to

00:20:49.440 understand. I'm trying to make this a blockbuster drug, which I can't do without more sales reps.

00:20:55.760 Uh, Dr. Richard, with all these new sales reps, we won't even have enough doctors for them to target.

00:21:00.780 IMS is about to release a 3.0 version that tracks daily prescriptions instead of quarterly. So if we

00:21:11.020 double our sales force, we can use this data to target doctors prescribing Lortab and Vicodin

00:21:17.720 and flip them to Oxycontin. The upgrade is a million dollars.

00:21:27.880 Do you know who created the IMS database?

00:21:33.100 Arthur Sackler.

00:21:36.240 It's been kept secret for years, but this is a family invention that was sold off years ago.

00:21:41.100 And now you're telling me we should deny all this data that only exists because of my fucking uncle

00:21:48.460 purchase the upgrade and increase the sales force. Thank you.

00:21:57.840 And that's exactly what they did. And that's Salesforce went out there and did his bidding

00:22:03.260 in a way that was pretty sickening. It was pretty gross.

00:22:06.900 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first off, uh, thanks for all your, uh, compliments for Michael's

00:22:13.540 performance. I think he is unbelievable in this show. And, uh, it's funny. He plays all

00:22:19.280 these villains in person. He's literally the sweetest guy you'll ever meet. And yeah, he's

00:22:24.760 so sweet. And Michael Keaton and Caitlin Deaver both give staggering performances. They were

00:22:29.480 actually just nominated for critics choice awards for their performances. Uh, it's just an

00:22:35.240 incredible group of people. So I just want to give my, my love to them and my entire cast who I

00:22:39.920 think, I think it's amazing. You know, one of the things that Mary Winningham, she was amazing too.

00:22:44.760 Pardon? Mary Winningham. Amazing. She plays Betsy's mother.

00:22:47.900 God be it. Come on. It's Mary Winningham. She's unbelievable, right?

00:22:50.940 Everything. She's great in everything.

00:22:52.920 Yeah. Yeah. And Rosario Dawson too is just killer.

00:22:56.560 She's that Rosario Dawson plays the bad-ass DEA agent who will not be shut up. She just is like,

00:23:01.500 she's a dog with a bone. And while everybody's like, shut up, go away. Purdue Pharma is very

00:23:06.220 powerful and rich. She just doesn't give it. She doesn't give a damn. She just continues on them.

00:23:11.320 Not having it, not having, uh, and, and a really cool person too. But so the,

00:23:16.320 one of the things I really wanted to do with Richard Sackler, right, is he's so demonized

00:23:20.120 in everything you read and so despised, um, by so many people. And then I was able to

00:23:26.120 interview a number of people that knew him and worked with him and they seem to hate him even more.

00:23:31.140 The people that don't know him. Yeah. He's, he's not like, uh, the most loved individual when you

00:23:39.280 know him, uh, one-on-one and what was important to me was, well, what really made him tick? What's

00:23:46.040 really going on here? Is it just money? Because it's hard for me to believe that it's just money

00:23:52.020 because he's already rich. They're already rich before Oxycontin even existed. Right.

00:23:57.740 So I went on a deep dive to do everything I could to try to figure out. So what makes this guy tick?

00:24:05.440 Uh, and I went to the, to the extent of, I did a therapy session where I role-played that I was

00:24:12.100 Richard Sackler. I'd never done anything like this before. And a friend of mine, the really successful

00:24:16.560 screenwriter and his wife is a therapist and he had done this with her. So he was like, why don't you

00:24:21.060 try doing a session with my wife, uh, where you role-player Richard Sackler? And it was incredible,

00:24:27.020 um, to try to get under the skin of this person. And I think that, that I think, you know,

00:24:32.800 Stuhlbarg did a great job of that as well. And that there's some really interesting layers

00:24:36.980 to what's happening here. You know, he grew up, uh, with this famous uncle that we discussed earlier.

00:24:42.800 Uh, and he, I think he desperately didn't want to be a dilettante. He wanted to prove

00:24:48.260 that he could succeed on his own. Uh, and what he ends up doing is he ends up succeeding

00:24:53.940 probably beyond anyone's wildest expectations and maybe the most successful person in the history

00:24:59.740 of his family, as far as the revenue that he brought in, but that drive to succeed. Well,

00:25:04.880 it had consequences and those consequences were the opioid crisis and the devastation that it brought

00:25:11.040 to this country. And if you were to point to one individual most responsible for it, um, I think

00:25:17.920 the blame has to go directly to Richard Sackler. And I think that these, many of these books that

00:25:22.480 have been written, uh, they, they back that up by, uh, this isn't, you know, my own, uh, my own

00:25:27.840 conclusion. It's sort of the historical record at this point. Yeah. I think Beth Macy is going to say

00:25:32.480 that too, that it's not that Oxycontin was the only drug being abused during the opioid crisis. Uh,

00:25:38.320 but it was certainly patient zero, if you will. It's, it was the biggest and most important and

00:25:43.520 most effective and widespread. And the way they did it is indicative of how, how many problems there

00:25:49.120 were with the system, including the FDA. So the FDA, they're supposed to be on our side. That's

00:25:54.960 supposed to be a government watchdog that looks out for the little guy, but in the same way, so many

00:25:59.560 people have been distrusting many government agencies over the past 10 years or so. This agency's

00:26:05.080 on that page too, because they weren't looking out for the little guy. They looked out for Purdue

00:26:09.800 and in particular, a guy named, uh, Dr. Curtis Wright, uh, at the FDA. Well, why don't you tell

00:26:16.560 us what they did for Oxycontin? Uh, and then what happened to Dr. Wright? And this story is it's,

00:26:23.760 it's one of the first jaw droppers of, of the opioid crisis origin story when, when you start to

00:26:30.020 research it. So, um, one of the most effective tools that Purdue pharma had in marketing the drug

00:26:36.540 and getting doctors to feel comfortable that this opioid was less addictive than other opioids

00:26:42.840 was because the FDA granted them a label that said that was the case. It was an unprecedented label

00:26:49.620 that essentially said that this drug is less addictive than other opioids. And so a doctor seeing

00:26:57.160 this label, uh, being told this, it was a major part of the sales pitch. Well, that's going to

00:27:02.220 really make them feel much more comfortable trying it besides that elaborate shell game that I talked

00:27:07.880 about earlier. This is what takes it over the edge in a very significant way. And the wording of this

00:27:13.300 warning label was highly unusual. It's, it's, it barely makes sense. It's a little confusing.

00:27:18.560 It says, you know, uh, is believed Oxycontin is believed to reduce the abuse liability of the

00:27:24.860 drug because, or the time release system is believed to reduce the abuse liability of the drug. Well,

00:27:29.300 believed, believed by who, who believes it, you know, negative. Do you believe it? Do I believe it? I

00:27:33.560 mean, it doesn't even say who, who believes it. Uh, and so when you scratch the surface, so how could

00:27:40.600 this unprecedented label that, that gave them a blank check to say that the drug was less addictive?

00:27:46.360 Well, how does that come to be? Well, clearly there were studies that were done that showed that

00:27:51.000 was again, no, there were no studies. It was the time mechanism was able to just, just this time

00:27:56.240 release system convinced the FDA of the case. Well, what happened was the guy that approved this label,

00:28:03.800 Curtis Wright, he goes and 18 months later, uh, gets a job at Purdue Pharma for $400,000 a year.

00:28:13.040 I'm guessing he was making about $100,000 a year, uh, at the FDA. So the appearance of corruption

00:28:20.080 is so staggering. I I'm, I'm still feel like there needs to be a major investigation into Curtis Wright

00:28:29.980 and the failures at the FDA. And, and rule change. They should not be allowed to take jobs

00:28:35.140 with big pharma within 10 years of leaving the FDA. Yeah. And I think that's one of the reasons

00:28:41.520 why I thought this story is so profound because it goes beyond a criminal company and it goes beyond

00:28:49.880 the dishonesty of a few people. Uh, it ends up tying into the very broken nature of our government's

00:28:57.940 relationship with private industry. And then if someone could have a job at the FDA in which they

00:29:03.440 are directly, um, overseeing, uh, pharma companies, and then they can immediately go work for those

00:29:11.040 pharma companies, the revolving door, uh, you end up with situations like what happened here. And I

00:29:16.820 think that it's not even just Curtis Wright, but the FDA stayed really lenient on Purdue Pharma for many

00:29:23.280 years, siding with them over and over and over again. And how could Curtis Wright's massive salary

00:29:30.000 and job not have some sort of influence on these future decisions where people are working at the

00:29:37.500 FDA thinking either a, there's a job for me at Purdue pharma when I get out or B a job at, at a

00:29:43.620 consulting company that can be hired by Purdue pharma. Or in some, in one case, a person was put on a board

00:29:50.380 at Tufts university that Purdue pharma was in charge of that board. Right. And, and being put on these

00:29:55.720 boards, but that's really helpful for the person's career. So there's all sorts of goodies to be had

00:30:02.140 for your career, your future, your pocketbook by playing ball with Purdue pharma. And I think that,

00:30:07.940 I think looking at the revolving door, coming up with new rules that can, uh, not enable someone

00:30:14.200 to oversee their warning label and then go work for them. She could have got to work for them the next day.

00:30:21.420 It's obvious. It's so clear, right? When you spell it out, what happened just as a, uh, as a compliment

00:30:26.880 to all of this, uh, reporting and discussion, 60 minutes did a piece, uh, not long ago, taking a

00:30:33.400 deep dive on all of this. It was in 2019 and they interviewed a whistleblower from within big pharma.

00:30:39.620 This guy himself was a big pharma kind of guy. He was selling drugs. I mean, legal drugs. Um, his name

00:30:44.920 was Ed Thompson. And he, he was telling 60 minutes that when Oxy was first approved in 1995,

00:30:50.060 it was based on science. 1995 is the very first time we've met Oxycontin. It was based on science

00:30:56.420 that only showed it was safe and effective when used short term. Okay. But it, six years later in

00:31:02.240 2001, um, pressured by big pharma and pain sufferers, the FDA made a fateful decision and expanded the use

00:31:11.000 of Oxycontin to just about anybody with chronic ailments, anybody with chronic ailments, like a back

00:31:15.300 pain. Arthritis could now use it. And, and 60 minutes got their hands on a court order, uh, that

00:31:20.380 would demand the production of the documents. It showed there were secret meetings between the FDA

00:31:24.420 in which they bowed to Purdue pharma's demands to ignore the lack of scientific data and change the

00:31:30.060 label to, you can use this around the clock for an extended period of time. Ed Thompson said it opened

00:31:37.120 the floodgates. It was the point of no return for the FDA. They were in bed under the covers naked next to

00:31:44.880 the Sacklers for the duration. And as you point out now, not just because of Oxy, but 700,000 Americans

00:31:52.020 are dead. I mean, yes, Oxycontin and other opioids did help some people. We should point that out, but, but

00:31:59.660 those in charge knew it was also extremely deadly and they denied it at every turn. Yeah. And Oxycontin

00:32:06.680 has real, um, there's, there's some real, uh, good use for Oxycontin and opioids, severe pain,

00:32:13.060 cancer pain, post, uh, surgery treatment. Uh, it's very effective for it, but Purdue pharma had already

00:32:19.700 had a drug MS cotton that did that. And they knew how much money you could make by having a drug for

00:32:27.800 severe pain for cancer treatment for post-surgery treatment. And it's a pretty small market, but by

00:32:33.560 opening it up to chronic pain, and here was the other element to it. It wasn't just chronic pain,

00:32:39.200 but moderate pain, right? Because it's now non-addictive, uh, it could be used for all sorts

00:32:46.040 of ailments like wisdom teeth surgery or migraine headaches or all sorts of things that, uh, uh, an

00:32:53.120 addictive narcotic never should have been used for. And that combination of that and using it for

00:32:58.660 chronic pain, um, which meant you had to be on it on an ongoing basis, um, you know, uh, opened it up

00:33:05.520 this, this skyrocketing of addiction and overdoses. And I, and I will put, uh, another, there was another

00:33:10.900 category too of people, which are people with severe chronic pain, um, that had been able to

00:33:16.540 effectively use OxyContin to treat their chronic pain, um, that now can't get access to it either.

00:33:23.580 So, so now there's like another set of victims because of the dishonesty that occurred in the

00:33:30.180 marketing and promotion of this drug. The other, the other villain inside of Purdue Pharma, in addition

00:33:38.300 to the other Sacklers who were a hundred percent on board, uh, with this drug, they, they were just

00:33:43.520 worried about how much money it would make. They weren't worried about people's health from,

00:33:46.200 from the sound of it, um, was the drug reps. Now the drug reps are the people who go out to the

00:33:52.420 doctors and try to convince them that this is a great drug and that they should prescribe it to

00:33:56.200 all their patients. And the, the film does a great job of showing people the pressure on them

00:34:02.320 by their top guy to push, push, push. We're making bigger, bigger pills of Oxy, more and more

00:34:08.620 Oxy in each pill. The answer, if you're starting to feel withdrawal is not less OxyContin, it's more

00:34:15.300 OxyContin. That's your body telling you, you need OxyContin and the drug reps. I mean, basically they

00:34:21.380 were told do whatever you need to do. Um, push, push, push. Like you've got to get not necessarily

00:34:28.400 people hooked, but you've got to push this drug and you've got to, you've got to sort of convince

00:34:33.120 people, um, to push it no matter what you have to give them. I'm trying to look for the exact

00:34:37.680 soundbite we have. Oh, is it, is it sought to? Uh, okay. Listen, sought to make your doctors feel

00:34:47.840 special, get dolled up, take them to expensive dinners, offer to fill up their car with gas

00:34:53.820 just to get 10 minutes to pitch and bribe the receptionist with a mani-pedi. So she'll let you

00:35:00.280 in the office, but you have to get to know your doctors, which is why we will give you full

00:35:06.600 psychological profiles on each of them. If they've got kids, get them tickets to Disney World.

00:35:12.500 If they're going through a divorce, get them laid, whatever it takes to win their friendship

00:35:20.560 and their trust.

00:35:23.240 Hmm. They were important. Really important.

00:35:26.400 Oh yeah. They were a very, very significant part of the process. And what Purdue did,

00:35:30.960 they did a couple of things that was very clever and very devious. One was they were the, it was

00:35:36.260 the first time where in selling a class two narcotic where people's bonuses were tied into the number

00:35:42.560 of milligrams that they sold. So the more milligrams that they sold, the higher the bonus they got.

00:35:48.580 Then they also went out of their way to not hire people that had a background in opioids or

00:35:56.120 in, uh, narcotics because one could argue, uh, those people would have been suspicious of the

00:36:02.860 claim that it was less addictive, uh, than other opioids. And I interviewed a number of, uh, Purdue

00:36:08.440 pharma reps, uh, former Purdue pharma reps, and there's been a lot written about them. And, uh,

00:36:13.640 the sort of the theme that comes up frequently is they believed what they were told. Uh, they believed

00:36:20.780 to the studies, but then at a certain point, it becomes clear to them that it's not true. And I

00:36:27.500 remember I asked one of them, I said, what was the moment? What was the moment where you realized,

00:36:31.880 oh, there is something very wrong with this drug. And he had, uh, he had, he remembered the exact

00:36:37.460 moment of what it was. He said it was when he pulled up to a pain clinic and it looked like a

00:36:42.100 tailgate party out front that there were a massive amount of people, uh, grilling meat, uh, hanging out

00:36:49.240 beer. It was like a giant party outside of a pain clinic when everyone was waiting to go get

00:36:55.000 their Oxycontin. So they were definitely culpable at a certain point, even though Purdue did go out

00:37:01.400 of their way to try to, to trick the pharma reps as well. Well, yeah. I mean, if they could be sincere

00:37:07.460 and earnest in the pitch, so much the better, right? If not, everybody has that acting ability,

00:37:11.420 right? Like, like the people in your cast, most people would have to actually believe it in order to

00:37:16.340 be effective at selling it. The, the series does a great job of painting the relationship between

00:37:21.080 Michael Keaton's character, this well-meaning West Virginian doctor. Um, and one of those sales reps,

00:37:25.900 this, the character's name is Billy Cutler played by Will Poulter. And, uh, Billy is sort of this,

00:37:32.080 he's a fresh face kid who's trying to make it and you get a good salary and so on. And he starts off

00:37:36.480 believing in the drug. Uh, and you sort of see that, that change over time and his relationship with

00:37:42.620 Michael Keaton is very good. And that changes over time. And even Michael Keaton is touting the drug

00:37:47.540 as a doctor to his community early on in the film saying, you know, trust me that you guys,

00:37:51.780 these are good people. I know you're good people come by pain, honestly, and I'm going to help you

00:37:55.640 fix it honestly. And by the end of the movie, there's a tumultuous exchange between the Michael

00:38:02.380 Keaton's doctor character and this Billy Cutler character, the drug rep, um, where you can,

00:38:07.480 you can feel, you can feel the deterioration. You can feel the crisis that, that they are in,

00:38:12.200 that the nation is in. Um, it's soundbite nine. No, no, sorry. Forgive me. It's, uh,

00:38:18.360 yeah, it's soundbite eight. Um, take a listen.

00:38:22.560 It's so poison, Billy.

00:38:26.380 What's that?

00:38:27.100 That's all it says. It's so poison. That's what you do. That's just poison.

00:38:32.180 No, doc.

00:38:33.080 Yeah, that's what it is.

00:38:37.860 Yeah, it's poison.

00:38:38.740 I can talk you through it, doc. It's only a concept. It's all in here.

00:38:44.580 These are good, hard-working people. These are good, hard-working people.

00:38:49.000 If you have FDA labeled this, doc, anything in here that you don't understand, I can talk to you.

00:38:56.900 Okay.

00:38:57.900 Get out.

00:38:59.080 Get out.

00:38:59.720 All right.

00:39:01.220 No!

00:39:02.100 Doc, it's me!

00:39:02.560 Billy!

00:39:02.820 Billy!

00:39:02.980 You need to get going.

00:39:06.880 Don't ever come in.

00:39:07.640 Doc, doc, get out of here.

00:39:09.560 Doc, get out of here.

00:39:10.260 Please.

00:39:13.160 You come back.

00:39:14.360 There's these metals.

00:39:15.360 I'll fucking kill you.

00:39:16.620 Yeah, I'll fucking kill you myself.

00:39:20.100 Hmm.

00:39:21.660 The anger.

00:39:23.160 You're feeling it yourself as an audience member by that point in the series.

00:39:27.240 Yeah.

00:39:28.160 Yeah, no, I mean, that was, I remember when I was writing that scene, and I hadn't planned

00:39:34.340 on him punching him.

00:39:36.200 And then I wrote the scene, and I felt like it didn't capture the true rage of what this

00:39:41.720 doctor would be going through.

00:39:43.280 And so I rewrote it with him punching him and it becoming the sort of melee that it turns

00:39:47.640 into.

00:39:47.920 And there's a number of moments throughout the show that are in many ways my rage, and

00:39:54.520 my anger, and some of the dialogue that people say is very much a product of the anger that

00:40:00.500 I have about what happened.

00:40:02.500 And there's something, you know, I feel so fortunate that I'm able to express that anger

00:40:06.980 to millions of people in the work that I do.

00:40:10.220 It's a very unusual situation to be in.

00:40:13.500 And I remember someone asked me, so do you get it out of your system?

00:40:16.860 Is it, are you, are you released like in a therapeutic way?

00:40:19.880 And I said, no, but it does feel, it does feel good.

00:40:22.760 It does feel good.

00:40:23.480 It's a temporary release.

00:40:24.700 I can relate to my job too, frankly.

00:40:26.980 But I appreciate outlets like your outlets like yours for helping me do it without having

00:40:30.780 to be firsthand involved in it.

00:40:32.520 So what happened?

00:40:33.640 What happened to Purdue Pharma?

00:40:35.200 Like what happened to this company, to Richard Sackler?

00:40:39.120 That's the part that outrages Danny the most from what I read.

00:40:43.520 And that's where we're going to pick it up right after this quick break on where they

00:40:46.640 are now.

00:40:47.740 And remember, folks, you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel

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00:40:55.760 YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly.

00:40:58.500 If you prefer an audio podcast, go subscribe to ours.

00:41:01.900 It's doing really, really well.

00:41:03.300 Thanks to all of you.

00:41:04.620 You can subscribe and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your

00:41:08.820 podcasts for free.

00:41:10.440 And there you'll find our full archives of more than 220 shows.

00:41:16.640 Joining me today, Danny Strong, executive producer and creator of the very powerful Hulu

00:41:25.760 series, Dope Sick, about the Sackler family and the opioid crisis.

00:41:30.520 And I guess now would be a good time to ask you what dope sick means.

00:41:33.860 I just sort of blindly started watching it, not even asking that question.

00:41:37.200 And then it gets explained in the series.

00:41:39.500 It is a thing.

00:41:40.340 What is it?

00:41:40.800 Yeah, so dope sick is the condition one feels that has an opioid use disorder, the withdrawal

00:41:49.120 pain they feel that is so severe and staggering that they feel like they're going to die if

00:41:56.680 they're not able to get their next fix of some type of opioid.

00:42:01.360 Um, and it's, it's so all, uh, all empowering, all overwhelming, uh, people will turn their

00:42:08.940 back on everything in their life to not get dope sick, their family, their children, their

00:42:16.640 jobs.

00:42:17.220 This is how people end up, you know, living under a bridge in a tent, uh, is because that

00:42:23.500 withdrawal pain, uh, overwhelms every sense of, of, of their body, soul, et cetera.

00:42:29.920 And, and, um, it's one of the, the deviousness, the diabolical nature of opioids, when you become

00:42:38.660 addicted to them is that they hijack your brain, they change your brain chemistry.

00:42:43.880 Right.

00:42:44.400 So this, the sort of the, uh, the stereotype or the perception that many people have is

00:42:51.480 that someone who's addicted to opioids, that they can't get off their week, they're maybe

00:42:56.360 lazy and they just want to get high.

00:42:58.360 They're losers, they're junkies.

00:43:00.360 It's a lot of judgment, but when you dig into it, what you learn is, oh no, their brain has

00:43:07.560 been hijacked and they cannot live without it.

00:43:11.640 And that's what makes it so uniquely difficult to overcome, uh, opioid use disorder.

00:43:18.920 And, uh, and that's where the word dope sick comes from.

00:43:21.660 Yeah.

00:43:22.200 It's all, it's another word, uh, is the, it's, it's like they're kidnapped.

00:43:25.940 They've been kidnapped by this drug, the real person, and it's so hard to get them back no

00:43:30.960 matter how much the ransom you pay.

00:43:33.500 So the, the series takes us through the progression that, um, one of the characters has and that

00:43:39.440 the country has as well, which is past OxyContin.

00:43:43.380 The next drug of choice is heroin.

00:43:46.200 It's sort of the gateway to heroin.

00:43:49.660 And then in, in more modern times, uh, illicit fentanyl, which is where we are now.

00:43:54.760 Uh, this is what people are dealing with currently.

00:43:56.560 And, um, it's incredibly hard to get off.

00:44:02.140 Sorry, go ahead.

00:44:03.060 Yeah.

00:44:03.180 What were you saying?

00:44:03.940 Oh, I was just saying fentanyl is so dangerous.

00:44:06.700 Literally one pill can kill you.

00:44:08.340 I mean, that's how, that's how severe and dangerous this whole crisis has become.

00:44:12.500 Yep.

00:44:13.120 So the progression happens for one of the characters and, and it happens for the nation too.

00:44:17.840 And the meantime you're asked, uh, you're shown the, the effort by some law enforcement

00:44:21.880 agents, you mentioned the West Virginia prosecutors, um, certain people at the higher levels

00:44:26.540 of the federal government were on the good guy's side and certain people were not, uh, it's

00:44:30.700 never fully explained what was happening, but we're led to believe that Purdue Pharma had

00:44:34.080 connections even there.

00:44:35.000 They hired Rudy Giuliani.

00:44:36.400 He knew how to work.

00:44:37.440 The government is at the height of his popularity right after nine 11.

00:44:40.060 Uh, and he tried to work his magic on Purdue's behalf, used his good name on their behalf,

00:44:45.140 which is just, oh, hurts.

00:44:47.240 Um, and ultimately the, the civil lawsuits and finally the, the criminal prosecutions against

00:44:54.640 Purdue Pharma got us where Danny?

00:44:57.680 Well, the criminal prosecutions.

00:44:59.780 So, and that's where the show ends.

00:45:02.760 Uh, the season basically ends around it's in 2007, which is a settlement, uh, that Purdue Pharma

00:45:10.680 has with, uh, the U S government, uh, three executives plead to misdemeanors, um, and does

00:45:18.540 from this settlement in which the company pleads to a felony, 600, um, um, uh, million dollars

00:45:24.140 in fines.

00:45:24.740 Uh, so is this, do they change their ways?

00:45:27.920 Do they, are they reformed by this settlement?

00:45:30.660 Um, the answer is a definitive no.

00:45:34.480 In fact, and this is where for me, I start to think that these people are sociopaths, uh,

00:45:41.120 because they have had this massive investigation against them.

00:45:45.080 They have pled guilty to a felony.

00:45:48.620 There is so much data at this point in 2007 of, of overdoses, crime rates, communities devastated.

00:45:56.260 Uh, do they change their ways?

00:45:57.960 Do they make any sort of adjustments?

00:45:59.660 No, they hit the gas and they sell even harder and they triple their sales in two years.

00:46:06.720 And like I said, that's where I start to think, oh, oh, they're, they're, they're literally

00:46:10.720 sociopaths where they, they just do not care.

00:46:13.300 They don't care about any of the damage that they're causing.

00:46:16.560 They are just trying to make as much money as possible.

00:46:19.320 So then that brings us now to, to 2021 and 2020, lo and behold, they have to plead guilty

00:46:25.840 to two more sets of felonies.

00:46:28.120 And instead of $600 million in fines, it's $8.5 billion in fines.

00:46:33.900 Partly this settlement was because they blew off the safeguards of the 2007 settlement.

00:46:38.940 Uh, the company goes into bankruptcy.

00:46:41.940 Uh, they ended up getting this very favorable judgment in which, uh, the Sackler family

00:46:47.860 will pay out.

00:46:49.000 I believe it was 3.5 or 4.5, 4.5, right?

00:46:54.240 Yeah.

00:46:54.720 Yeah.

00:46:55.280 Billion dollars in fines.

00:46:56.580 However, they are now immune to all future civil, civil litigation.

00:47:02.920 Um, however, here's where it gets a little interesting or very interesting, depending on

00:47:08.520 your point of view is that they are not immune to criminal liability and they could still

00:47:14.200 be prosecuted.

00:47:15.680 And there was a big rally outside the justice department just a few days ago, uh, filled

00:47:22.500 with activists filled with, uh, Rick Mountcastle, the real prosecutor who we dramatize in the

00:47:28.020 show was there, gave a speech.

00:47:29.280 I actually gave a speech.

00:47:30.540 There were three former, uh, us, uh, three former justice department prosecutors giving a

00:47:38.140 speech to push the justice department to file criminal charges against members of the

00:47:45.380 Sackler family.

00:47:46.400 So this isn't over.

00:47:48.700 And now the common belief has always been amongst, I don't know who, but that this will

00:47:54.040 never happen if they'll never be charged.

00:47:56.340 However, there is a push now.

00:47:58.160 I think that the TV show, um, has put a lot of attention on it and given it some momentum

00:48:02.520 and it's really emboldened the activists who threw this rally.

00:48:06.040 Uh, and supposedly there's going to be a justice department meeting in the next week, uh, with,

00:48:11.340 uh, the lawyer for these activists and some of the activists, and they're better.

00:48:14.720 They better meet with them because literally Purdue pharma certainly has met with the justice

00:48:20.420 department many times.

00:48:21.840 Uh, so I would think these activists should be able to get this meeting, but so there is

00:48:26.080 a push right now for criminal charges.

00:48:28.660 There is a huge sense amongst these activists, uh, that justice has not been served.

00:48:34.460 The company has now pled guilty to three felonies, but no individuals have, and the company didn't

00:48:40.500 make these decisions, individuals made these decisions.

00:48:43.920 And Sackler, the Sacklers paid money toward that bankruptcy settlement of Purdue, but they

00:48:48.300 still have plenty of money.

00:48:49.860 It's not unlike the Epstein case with justice on the wrong side for a lot of years and now

00:48:54.300 getting it right.

00:48:55.320 Danny strong.

00:48:56.420 Thank you so much for being here and for telling this story and all the best with it.

00:49:00.620 Oh, thank you so much, Megan.

00:49:02.960 I had a great time, uh, talking about this with you.

00:49:05.520 So thank you so much for having me here.

00:49:07.420 All the best.

00:49:08.460 Take care.

00:49:09.720 Up next, uh, the journalist who wrote the book Dope Sick, Beth Macy.

00:49:14.540 Don't go away.

00:49:15.160 Joining me now, Beth Macy, journalist and author who wrote the book Dope Sick, which was recently

00:49:27.100 adapted into the TV series that you've been hearing us talk about.

00:49:30.640 Beth, thank you so much for being with us today.

00:49:32.800 I, I loved your book and I love your work.

00:49:36.000 And I think you have this sage ability to see things that the rest of us can't necessarily

00:49:42.040 see.

00:49:42.560 So we're lucky to have journalists like you.

00:49:45.140 Thank you.

00:49:46.100 That's the truth.

00:49:47.440 I mean, you, you saw something here when it came to these small distressed communities

00:49:52.740 in Appalachia and similarities that were in all of these towns and then similar ways of

00:49:59.880 dealing with the problems.

00:50:01.100 So first, can you just describe sort of what were, what were some of the problems they shared

00:50:06.520 that sort of preceded the opioid crisis?

00:50:09.280 So one of the factors about where the crisis first broke out was the fact that Purdue Pharma

00:50:19.040 bought data that showed them which communities were sort of rife to be exploited by their

00:50:25.460 products.

00:50:26.020 That is, they picked the communities in America.

00:50:28.940 These tended to be distressed rural towns where the jobs were going away.

00:50:33.020 And these were places that had furniture factory making, coal mining, logging, fishing.

00:50:40.260 So you first see the, the crisis break erupting in places like Southwest Virginia, West Virginia,

00:50:48.060 rural Maine, because Purdue knew that doctors in those communities were already prescribing

00:50:54.060 competing opioids that, uh, at a higher rate and with their, um, FDA label that we now know

00:51:01.980 is quite in question.

00:51:02.940 They went out and they tried with the reps.

00:51:05.800 They tried to flip the, uh, doctors from prescribing Percocet, Vicodin, Loratab to OxyContin,

00:51:13.880 which they said was safer because of this continuous, uh, release mechanism.

00:51:18.760 And they got, they, they, they got the doctors to flip thanks to that FDA insert, which was

00:51:25.240 completely bought and paid for by Purdue Pharma, um, to the great expense of really lower, not

00:51:32.960 even, I mean, maybe lower to middle, uh, income Americans to begin with.

00:51:36.480 And then it's spread and spread and spread.

00:51:38.040 I know you write about, um, a study that took a look at the, the life expectancy of people

00:51:46.840 in these regions, um, and how like the difference between the bottom fifth, uh, in terms of income

00:51:53.660 and wealth and the top fifth in income and wealth in, in this country is huge.

00:51:59.100 It's something like a difference of 13 years and life expectancy.

00:52:03.060 And so these people really, they, they've been overlooked by a system that has been focused

00:52:08.000 on globalization that's been trying to kill coal.

00:52:10.980 Um, and no one's been paying any attention to them.

00:52:13.640 And then Purdue Pharma did and managed to manipulate their very doctors to sort of turn on them

00:52:20.480 without understanding.

00:52:21.540 That's what they were doing.

00:52:23.260 Right.

00:52:23.880 And that was a real double whammy.

00:52:26.240 If you've already lost the majority of your jobs, some of the communities I was reporting

00:52:30.740 on from my first book factory man, which came out in 2014, which is about the aftermath of

00:52:36.640 globalization.

00:52:37.180 As I was wrapping up that reporting, I was starting to hear things like we've got a heroin

00:52:43.560 crisis in Martinsville, Virginia.

00:52:46.060 We're talking like a tiny town about an hour South of me here in Roanoke, Virginia.

00:52:51.040 And I didn't understand it at the time, nor did most journalists that the Oxycontin story

00:52:57.800 was so related to the heroin epidemic story because they're basically chemical cousins.

00:53:03.560 And when the drugs start to get harder to get more expensive around 2010, 2012, you and

00:53:11.220 I may not have known that Oxycontin and heroin were chemical cousins, but the cartels did.

00:53:16.440 And so they bring them in and start converting people, uh, to heroin because it's cheaper.

00:53:22.020 It's easier to get.

00:53:23.100 And they know that one's fear of becoming dope sick.

00:53:27.080 That is this excruciating feeling of withdrawal that they all say is like the worst flu times

00:53:33.040 a hundred, uh, really is one hell of a good business model.

00:53:37.540 And can you explain what the cartels, which we already know are evil due to the drug in

00:53:42.160 order to make sure the clientele gets hooked and keeps coming back?

00:53:46.880 Well, first they just, I remember the story from a young woman named Tess Henry that I

00:53:53.160 followed for dope sick and she could pinpoint the month that the DEA started cracking down

00:53:59.120 hydrocodone products had been upscheduled.

00:54:01.880 I think it was like 2014.

00:54:04.160 And she said, all of a sudden she couldn't get the pills on the black market from her dealer.

00:54:09.280 And so he personally showed her how to snort heroin, which you think heroin, yuck, you know,

00:54:17.220 if you're her, which she did at first, but really if you're snorting in a line, it was

00:54:21.560 just the same as she had been snorting the pills.

00:54:24.900 And once because of, because with opioids, you, you need more and more in order not to

00:54:30.580 get dope sick.

00:54:31.800 Um, then when the snorting, the heroin didn't work, her dealer taught her how to shoot it up.

00:54:38.640 And that, you know, times, times a million across our country, that's the way it went

00:54:42.820 down.

00:54:43.240 And now we have fentanyl, uh, poisoning the drug supply because it's smaller, more potent

00:54:51.540 and easier to smuggle in.

00:54:54.420 The, um, in the book you write about how they would, they'll sort of pack the initial dose

00:55:00.120 with, um, some extras and, and you get this big high and you love it.

00:55:04.760 And then you come back and they lower the dosage and your next, your next delivery.

00:55:10.320 So then you start to get the feeling you, you need the next hit sooner.

00:55:13.720 You pay more, you know, and it's now they've got you.

00:55:16.280 I mean, now you're, now you're a customer for life.

00:55:18.340 Is heroin a lot cheaper than Oxycontin?

00:55:22.540 And I mean, obviously you don't get a prescription for it, so you just get it like on the streets,

00:55:26.180 but it's more accessible and it's cheaper.

00:55:29.340 Absolutely.

00:55:30.280 It's a lot cheaper and forgive me.

00:55:32.240 I don't remember exactly how much it's going for right now, but of course, fentanyl is in

00:55:36.840 all of the drugs right now.

00:55:38.380 So you're getting people overdosing, uh, with cocaine that's laced with fentanyl, MDMA drugs.

00:55:44.720 Um, and these are so much easier to get, uh, on the black market than the treatment, the

00:55:54.100 medicines, um, the medication assisted treatment that science says is the gold standard of care

00:56:00.220 for treating people with opioid use disorder.

00:56:02.520 I mean, that's, it's so much easier to just go out and get dope again, rather than it is

00:56:07.480 to be treated like a human being with a medical condition in our healthcare system.

00:56:11.920 Mm-hmm.

00:56:13.020 And so you get hooked on something like Oxycontin, thanks to Purdue and its fancy marketing skills

00:56:17.780 and its manipulation of the FDA and doctors and its own sales reps.

00:56:20.900 And then when you either run out of money or the ability to get more prescriptions, once

00:56:25.860 the government cracked down on these, um, you know, pill pushers, um, then where are you?

00:56:30.500 Cause you're still addicted and you can't get your drug anymore.

00:56:33.000 So you turn to heroin or you're turned to fentanyl and you have a high likelihood of dying.

00:56:37.840 I mean, that's the thing.

00:56:38.840 So we, we didn't solve the opioid crisis by cracking down on some of these characters.

00:56:44.820 No, absolutely.

00:56:46.000 Nor did we solve the opioid crisis with, by reducing prescriptions, even, um, a lot of

00:56:52.260 people thought that would, um, you know, help with overdoses because, and maybe it, it does

00:56:58.080 help with not starting new cases, but for the people who are already addicted, that horse

00:57:03.180 is long out of the barn.

00:57:04.660 So that's why we need to make these, uh, addiction treatments and modalities so much more accessible

00:57:11.460 than they are.

00:57:12.160 Yeah.

00:57:12.400 Well, we'll get to, we'll get to the treatment in just a little bit, but the, the book, uh,

00:57:16.820 also the series based on the book does a great job of showing you how it can corrupt your life,

00:57:22.700 how it can corrupt the life of somebody who is innocent, you know, who, who is well-meaning,

00:57:27.680 who is not, I don't know.

00:57:29.080 You know how it is when you grow up, at least in the seventies, you talk about people who got

00:57:32.140 addicted to drugs, you think of somebody who was kind of dirty, kind of a dirt bag, you

00:57:36.220 know, like, oh gross, who does drugs?

00:57:38.360 That's not what happened with the opioid crisis.

00:57:40.200 And, and it's one of the things I love about the storytelling because it accurately represents

00:57:44.420 that, you know, whatever moms, daughters, you know, innocent high school kids, the get

00:57:50.200 getting sucked into this, um, the, the path in the movie of, um, the, the main star takes

00:57:57.000 us, uh, her name is Betsy played by Caitlin Deaver takes us to a really low moment.

00:58:02.140 When her parents figure out she's, she's still on drugs.

00:58:04.780 She's, she's been, they've tried to get a rehab and she's still on drugs.

00:58:08.280 And if you've ever had an addict in your family, you've been through something like

00:58:11.220 this because they don't get clean right away.

00:58:13.260 First time they try, you go through this over and over lies and sneaking and cheating

00:58:18.260 with more and escalating to other drugs.

00:58:20.960 And, uh, it's captured powerfully in what we have labeled as soundbite nine.

00:58:26.240 Watch.

00:58:26.600 I sold all of it.

00:58:32.280 Well, um, you've been, you've been going to AA.

00:58:38.860 That's where I get my pills.

00:58:42.140 What?

00:58:43.440 Hey, hold on.

00:58:45.000 Dad?

00:58:45.740 You get your goddamn pills.

00:58:48.120 Dad, no, no, no.

00:58:49.740 The only thing you care about.

00:58:50.940 Dad, no, no.

00:58:51.720 Get your hands off on me.

00:58:53.000 What?

00:58:53.520 Goddamn pills.

00:58:54.380 No, please, no, you can't.

00:58:56.340 Uh-huh.

00:58:57.140 Right here.

00:58:57.900 You sold your mom's precious heirlooms for this trash.

00:59:02.980 Huh?

00:59:03.980 Get in there.

00:59:05.180 Dad.

00:59:05.980 Dad.

00:59:06.800 Betsy.

00:59:07.760 Dad.

00:59:08.720 No, no.

00:59:12.040 Dad, no.

00:59:13.980 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:59:18.720 Stop, I can't.

00:59:20.520 I can't.

00:59:20.820 whittaker and you slaughtered all yourilch right here.

00:59:23.340 Oh, my God.

00:59:23.940 Hold on for me.

00:59:25.360 I can't.

00:59:25.800 Please.

00:59:26.720 Oh, my God.

00:59:27.560 No.

00:59:30.960 Please.

00:59:32.420 God.

00:59:33.420 God.

00:59:34.300 Sam.

00:59:35.860 Oh, ho.

00:59:37.000 Mom.

00:59:37.920 No.

00:59:39.160 Mom.

00:59:41.660 No.

00:59:43.860 Oh.

00:59:45.580 Mom.

00:59:47.340 Mom.

00:59:48.460 oh my god it's upsetting to watch i mean it's upsetting to watch

01:00:16.740 because it's almost it's too realistic and i know you it's too realistic and uh i've heard from

01:00:22.000 parents who have been triggered by watching it who are on twitter warning other parents i mean this

01:00:26.780 is such a common story folks like this stealing from their relatives um you know they've been

01:00:33.600 stigmatized and made to feel ashamed and and parents many of whom just like betsy's parents

01:00:41.540 don't really understand the science behind opioid use disorder so they too are ashamed i mean i was

01:00:47.680 talking to somebody at the rally just friday night who works with families in massachusetts

01:00:51.720 and she said people will still call her and they're dealing with it in their family and they'll they'll

01:00:58.300 want to meet her four towns over from where she lives because they're so stigmatized by the hoax

01:01:05.920 that the sacklers did on families in america stigmatizing the wrong people

01:01:11.500 the the thought of the doctor telling an innocent patient who comes in there

01:01:17.080 earnestly seeking the treatment of pain um and the way they pitched oxy as non-addictive and and

01:01:24.960 totally safe and first they'd give you you know these small units and then when the small and

01:01:29.980 they were supposed to last they were supposed to uh last overnight even and then people said well i

01:01:34.420 they're not lasting they're not lasting i need help and uh produce said well let's call that

01:01:39.000 breakthrough pain that's breakthrough pain and the way we're going to address that is with

01:01:42.640 take a guess more oxycontin and then they kept making the pills bigger and bigger and even the

01:01:48.320 initial dosages given to the patients would be bigger and bigger and all i can think watching that

01:01:53.520 scene is you know imagine saying to a patient who came in for minor back pain just looking for some

01:01:58.300 relief um i'll give you this drug it will turn you into a bomb you will become a human bomb that

01:02:03.780 will blow up your entire family your life as you know it all of your loved ones it will turn you

01:02:09.360 into a thief into a liar into a felon and possibly into a dead corpse here you go that's that's the

01:02:17.080 warning that these drugs should have had on them absolutely absolutely um and i i say this to

01:02:23.800 physicians groups maybe not quite that forcefully as you megan but i will say that um you know 5 000 of

01:02:31.260 you went out to fancy resorts courtesy of purdue pharma and learned how to become uh good prescribers

01:02:39.060 of their drug they took gifts they took fancy dinners and you know when journalists aren't even

01:02:44.180 allowed to go to take somebody out for a lunch right and um and yet these doctors that that make a lot of

01:02:50.760 money already are doing taking these free trips they're becoming paid speakers for the company

01:02:56.740 and what i say to doctors is um i know you were lied to but you helped get us into this mess and

01:03:03.980 you need to help get us out and what's the answer to that how can they so we know that not everyone

01:03:11.760 responds the same to addiction we know that a person with heroin addiction a typical person it's going to

01:03:17.880 take them five to six treatment attempts and over eight years to get just one year of sobriety

01:03:23.900 so that's one thing is we have to get realized that this is a chronic relapsing disease we know

01:03:29.860 that buprenorphine and methadone which people call mat for medication assisted treatment uh reduce

01:03:36.560 overdose deaths by 50 to 60 percent or more in some cases and but that also it's really important to get

01:03:44.620 people housing and social supports and counseling along with this these are all things we don't do very

01:03:49.960 well in this country as we see the homelessness rate skyrocketing and you know many of the young

01:03:55.560 people that i followed in my book ended up in prison ended up doing sex work living homeless i mean

01:04:01.940 people who were doctors kids people who were civic leaders kids um wealth didn't protect anyone in this

01:04:10.040 case in fact because of the stigma attached to wealthier families in some cases it made it worse uh people

01:04:16.600 would send their kids away to these abstinence only rehabs spend a fortune for them a lot of middle

01:04:22.560 class families would remortgage the homes to send them to exactly the kind of uh treatment that science

01:04:29.140 says doesn't really work for opioid use disorder and you've seen that in the keaton story when when

01:04:33.700 he's there i forget if it's episode six or seven he's like hey you've been back here a lot right in rehab and

01:04:40.360 the guy says yeah five or six times and he says you know but it worked it worked for me finally

01:04:46.520 and he says well were you alcohol and uh he says yeah alcohol so we know that the rehab works better

01:04:52.700 for abstinence only modalities work better than uh than for for opioids which um you really most people

01:05:02.160 need the medication assisted treatment see that's another thing that we didn't know when going through

01:05:08.140 this right like i i remember being one of the like you know you got to go cold turkey you know you

01:05:14.060 gotta you gotta let this person hit rock bottom i don't reveal who it was in my family because i

01:05:18.600 don't have the permission of the person or the person's um other family members but um you know i was

01:05:24.740 of the mind of like tough love you know you can't keep picking up the pieces uh you can't give this

01:05:31.040 person the home that they lost because of all the lies and all the drugs and all the bankruptcies and

01:05:35.560 you can't do that you know like let them deal with the laws of natural consequences and it's only now

01:05:40.460 with some distance that i start to see it's just not that simple and you can't really apply the rules

01:05:46.640 you may have thought applied to a disease like alcoholism and you could take issue with my my plan

01:05:52.620 even there um to this addiction that's absolutely right and i saw that over and over and over again and

01:06:00.520 it's still happening you know uh parents are sort of beating their heads against the wall and they're

01:06:05.220 being told many of them are being told that that's the way to do it um i tell the story of this mom

01:06:11.260 in my new book raising lazarus which comes out next august who had this critical moment where she knew

01:06:18.340 uh her son was going to die if he didn't get help and her best friend had a teenage daughter who

01:06:25.740 had cancer and she said i'm gonna treat him the way lisa treats amelia i'm not gonna just uh kick

01:06:34.080 him out of the house i'm gonna feed him uh if he comes home and he's um high i'm not gonna engage

01:06:42.520 but i'm also not gonna be cruel and then we're gonna have a conversation the next day and i'm not giving

01:06:47.820 up on him and she says now he's he's six years into sobriety she says her only regret was that she

01:06:54.220 hadn't approached his addiction like the medical condition it was much so wow it's so hard that

01:07:02.160 she's a strong woman because unlike the cancer patient this patient is lying and cheating and

01:07:10.640 stealing and bankrupting other family members and you know you you're angry with them right it's like

01:07:17.040 how you have to check your anger because what you really want is to solve it you know you don't you

01:07:22.180 don't want to just punish it's not about retribution it's it's like i want this all to stop and the way

01:07:27.580 to stop is is your friend's approach but man it's it's so hard you're right and they mess up your

01:07:34.660 christmas dinner and your thanksgiving dinner and and they hurt everyone you love everyone you love

01:07:41.600 yeah yeah i will never forget with with tess was the young woman i followed the most and dope sick

01:07:47.520 um she would disappear and live homeless and then she'd come home every now and then and the last

01:07:53.020 thanksgiving they had together she had hurt her siblings so much that and they were very much kind

01:08:00.720 of had come up in tough love that they were just done with her and even though she made the whole meal

01:08:07.460 she did all the shopping and her mom just sent me a picture the other day after thanksgiving she goes

01:08:12.440 remember this it was tess's last she called it the thankless thanksgiving she made the whole meal

01:08:17.480 and no one thanked her and you know shortly after she had another breakdown and you know she went back

01:08:24.620 out in the streets and you know i know her mother wishes she would have acted sooner with love and she

01:08:31.160 now says you know rock bottom has a basement the basement has a trap door i wish i knew now what i

01:08:36.680 knew then what i knew now it's a good line um coming up we're going to talk about how the system

01:08:43.200 is not positioned not at all to help uh people who find themselves addicted to opioids get out of it

01:08:50.800 and get their lives straight um and clean in to the contrary it's built i think to keep them down

01:08:57.620 and it does a really effective job at it uh we'll pick it up there with beth macy uh coming up right after

01:09:02.100 this so beth just to take a step back um the book does a good job of explaining how we we've had some

01:09:13.600 shifts as a country this isn't the first time that we've been i guess dope sick um and you talk about

01:09:18.940 how one of the things that struck me in the book was that you talked about how they used to um it was

01:09:24.140 i'm looking at my note here in 1899 bear bear as in bear aspirin was cranking out a ton of heroin a

01:09:30.980 year and selling it in 23 countries and you you write that in the u.s cough drops and even baby

01:09:37.800 soothing syrups were laced with heroin so this is in the late 1800s we were given heroin to our babies

01:09:44.960 yeah so this kind of comes about uh as a result of civil war war wounds and women who had lost their

01:09:55.100 families and heroin is actually introduced by bear uh as a cure for morphinism uh which is doctors

01:10:04.000 would give um morphine away along with um needles to patients and have them use them as needed and of

01:10:13.120 course just as then even though then it was much uh a lighter uh dosage than than the heroin we have

01:10:20.800 certainly of now is but people would need more and more and then when the harrison narcotics act

01:10:27.800 came along in 1914 outline most of the black market uh uses of the drug people then went to the black

01:10:37.760 market um and so that's when there became this dichotomy between legitimate white market users who were

01:10:45.580 prescribed and uh so-called black market users so for most of the 1900s until 1996 when purdue comes

01:10:53.720 out with oxycontin we knew that opioids were addicted and should only be used um in the instances of cancer

01:11:02.100 end of life post-surgery but just for a few days because we doctors were rightly worried about addiction

01:11:08.600 which we've known for centuries actually um and yet uh purdue managed to flip the narrative not just

01:11:15.900 for oxycontin but through the pain societies that they funded a lot of um and through things like the

01:11:23.940 joint commission which they had a role in um you know things like uh consumer surveys where patients

01:11:32.360 would you know give a hospital a bad ding you see that playing out in the show when our character randy

01:11:37.400 is in the hospital for his prostate cancer um we just they just uh shifted that narrative uh right

01:11:44.820 away and it it all blew up again so in other words just to add to that you're saying because this is

01:11:49.960 portrayed in the film the movie too um that if you go to the hospital and you have a negative experience

01:11:55.380 and you give them a bad rating because they didn't address your pain that hurts the hospital and so

01:12:00.540 there was a big push started by oxycontin to purdue to get doctors and nurses on it if you feel pain

01:12:08.440 there's no more like just dealing with it and there's no more like all right well let's titrate

01:12:12.440 it a little bit you know it's give them why not why not more why not more oxycontin and if you're

01:12:18.120 worried about it here's the special fda label that says don't worry about it but like there was a

01:12:22.420 consumerist response to this pain problem that the hospitals had to worry about because they are after

01:12:29.300 all businesses absolutely they could lose the ratings they could lose reimbursements from

01:12:35.700 medicare and medicaid if they didn't treat a person's pain and still today i was at the er with

01:12:40.780 a friend not long ago you still see that rate your pain scale with the smiley faces one to ten

01:12:45.680 um so there are still elements of it although i think um most doctors or and nurses are much wiser

01:12:53.920 about it and one of the things we've done since you know the the mid 90s the mid you know to the

01:12:58.640 early aughts is we've gotten around the problem of doctor jumping right i don't know what the

01:13:03.380 technical term for it is but i get a prescription from dr smith for oxycontin and he fills it but he

01:13:08.400 knows only to give me 30 days worth or one back then they were giving a few refills but then i go to

01:13:14.000 dr jones because dr smith's not going to give me any more when i ran out of it after a week and i get

01:13:19.320 one from him and then i get one from this this other female doctor you can't do that anymore right

01:13:23.680 technically you're not supposed to be able to do all the states now have they're called pdmp's

01:13:28.080 prescription monitoring programs um i think only one state is a holdout but you you see michael

01:13:34.660 keaton doing that at the height of his addiction he's because he's in the corner of far southwest

01:13:40.460 virginia and it's just a half hour drive to get to tennessee and this way to kentucky this way to

01:13:45.460 west virginia and they would really take advantage of that and and you also see in the show this idea

01:13:51.420 that uh oh they're cutting down they're cutting back on prescribing at home but people would rent

01:13:56.500 vans to drive down they called it um that uh what did they call it the pillbilly express or the

01:14:03.660 oxycontin express they've drive down to florida which had um which had no restrictions at the time and

01:14:11.500 you would see these strip mall office setups with doctors uh prescribing with without hardly even

01:14:18.580 doing exams and they would be running pharmacies out their back door i mean sometimes in um like

01:14:24.600 the equivalent of a food truck you know because you can get rich as a doctor by doing that you could get

01:14:29.700 rich as a doctor by doing that and by the way one of the things that's happened in the news recently

01:14:34.060 just a couple weeks ago was a judgment of liability against cvs walgreens and walmart for

01:14:41.440 their role in the opioid crisis their pharmacies and a couple other ones like rite aid and another

01:14:46.560 had settled so they were also swept in um in just indiscriminately filling all these prescriptions

01:14:52.120 when and we're not just talking about mild abuse but in abuse of these drugs that should have been

01:14:57.480 obvious to any pharmacy um then yet they turned a blind eye because they too made a lot of money off of

01:15:03.900 this absolutely that's right and what you have now and every time i do an interview i'll hear from

01:15:09.960 the chronic pain community but when i and and they're angry because a lot of folks who are actually

01:15:15.920 on stable dosages of legit pain medications are being uh abandoned as well and so you see some of

01:15:25.280 those folks either suffering in pain or uh going to the black market and getting heroin laced with fentanyl

01:15:32.200 or committing suicide so so that's a concern too but but that's directly because of the actions of

01:15:38.940 purdue making it so over prescribed to start with that it's it's it's hard to suss out for some doctors

01:15:45.700 who's legit and who isn't but so just just a nod to the fact that you know there are other unintended

01:15:51.660 victims of this that's right today and and i hear from them a lot the um the lawsuit started to come

01:15:59.100 against purdue as people started to feel it as communities started to put together that entire

01:16:04.240 towns were falling apart and found themselves addicted i mean in particular in appalachia

01:16:09.260 and um the big one we mentioned a minute ago with danny strong was uh the 2007 uh settlement with purdue

01:16:16.900 where the three executives pleaded guilty um to was it a felony it was a felony uh yes yeah

01:16:24.600 to a felony no i'm sorry the the executives pleaded uh guilty to misdemeanors they were on probation

01:16:30.820 for a few years they had fines the company made it and then the the holding company not purdue pharma

01:16:37.200 rather but purdue frederick uh pleaded guilty to a felony um now if purdue pharma would have pleaded

01:16:44.300 guilty i mean their lawyers were so ahead of everybody else on this they they cunningly knew

01:16:49.540 that purdue pharma wouldn't be able to continue to sell oxycontin if if it had a felony so they

01:16:54.760 they did the deal with the holding company purdue frederick and it was allowed and by the way none of

01:17:00.260 those executives was last name sackler it was all it was three other guys absolutely yeah so and if you

01:17:06.560 talk to the activists now because danny and i were just with a bunch of them on friday at this rally on

01:17:11.100 december 3rd uh they didn't even know the name sackler back then and think about that like you

01:17:17.420 know you've got all these museums and wings and whatnot but back then if you went to the purdue

01:17:23.160 farmer website you wouldn't even see the name sackler on anything they were very clever and as word that

01:17:30.000 these uh lawsuits were coming up um they cleverly you know resigned from their board positions and um you

01:17:39.140 know in a way allowed uh their philanthropy to sort of cloak their villainy so how did they come back

01:17:46.300 you know we were just talking with danny about how they i think tripled their sales within a couple of

01:17:50.720 years they went forward the sacklers and purdue like nothing had ever happened that's right um well

01:17:57.620 a lot of the the government regulators that should have been um monitoring uh their their corporate

01:18:05.120 integrity agreement i mean in corporate integrity agreement there's the very phrase like is kind of

01:18:11.360 laughable when you see how they just continued to do what they were doing before and in many ways

01:18:17.900 amped up their sales richard sackler personally went on sales calls at least one time that we know of

01:18:23.900 and they hired mckinsey to to double down to sell sell sell and um and we didn't have we don't have

01:18:34.420 structures in place to to make sure that the proper checks are happening such that in 2020 the company

01:18:42.520 uh pleads guilty to to more felonies which are basically the same kind of fraudulent uh behaviors

01:18:50.260 in in between those two times i mean i don't when would you say we became aware that of the opioid

01:18:56.420 crisis you know we as a nation had the national consciousness that this was a thing that's a really

01:19:01.020 good question in 2015 the nobel winning economist ann case and angus deaton wrote about uh was a

01:19:09.060 bombshell study was on the cover of time magazine deaths of despair um so we realized that for the

01:19:16.200 first time in american history since world war one our life expectancy was going down and it was going

01:19:22.600 down largely due to opioid overdose uh alcoholism related diseases like cirrhosis of the liver and to

01:19:29.220 suicide but by far the biggest of those three factors was opioids you had sam canoni's book dreamland

01:19:36.220 uh came out in 2016 i believe my book came out in 2018 um and then the lawsuits started happening

01:19:43.740 and a lot of those um most of the the suits ended up over 2600 lawsuits uh were brought by cities and

01:19:53.740 counties and state governments they ended up in the multi-district litigation under the

01:19:58.840 direction of a judge pollster in cleveland but um purdue was able to pull their case out by

01:20:08.020 filing bankruptcy and where did they file bankruptcy not in a location where they actually conduct

01:20:13.740 business but they filed it in the jurisdiction of a bankruptcy judge named robert drain who is known

01:20:20.240 for being uh one of the minority of judges who allows what's called a third party release

01:20:25.480 which so it was like a bankruptcy loophole they file in white plains because they know drain drain is one

01:20:33.320 of the few judges that allows the sackler to attach to get uh civil immunity from further litigation

01:20:42.520 in exchange for their settlement yeah and just to make clear this is an issue because the sacklers

01:20:48.220 individually were not filing for bankruptcy they're billionaires just purdue pharma was but they wanted to

01:20:54.500 sort of glom on to their company and say oh and no lawsuits against us and no more criminal no no

01:20:59.620 trouble for us of any kind um because we've contributed four billion dollars or we've contributed

01:21:05.100 to this massive bankruptcy settlement but they they basically but that was backfunded as i understand by

01:21:11.100 purdue anyway so it's all fungible these are still going to be billionaires and now if this goes

01:21:16.960 through they can't be sued four billion so if you take that 10.4 and then you let them pay off the

01:21:22.960 four and a half over nine years by the way they have nine years to pay it so uh with investments

01:21:29.660 at the going rate they could be richer uh at the end of the nine years than they are right now i mean

01:21:35.480 where is the justice in that oh my gosh they're clever i mean that's definitely something we saw in

01:21:41.020 in all of this they're clever one of the things you point out in your book and i think it's good too

01:21:44.920 is um a couple of very famous deaths you know sometimes i don't want to say these people were

01:21:50.620 used you know by a higher power to sort of underscore the dangers of drugs to us but um you

01:21:56.880 point out in the book philip seymour hoffman's death i mean this incredibly promising actor who

01:22:02.080 was just stunning when he died prince died i mean both of them swept up in this same crisis that we're

01:22:09.000 talking about and sometimes seeing somebody that famous and talented seeing their life cut short

01:22:15.560 can really be i don't know it gets your attention and it and it focuses you in a way that can be

01:22:21.500 productive yes it's a wake-up call and as i think somebody in the book said nobody wants to tell prince

01:22:28.280 that he has an opioid problem right so back to this idea that wealth and power can protect you from this

01:22:35.060 nobody's protected from this that's why we all need to pay attention and become you know advocates

01:22:41.320 for our own medical treatments yep so um then it morphs you know from oxy to the heroin scene

01:22:50.280 and you write in your book about how this is like the suburban heroin scene the young teenage girl

01:22:55.700 heroin scene would shock people can you talk about that a bit because it's hard to believe that you know

01:23:00.580 young cheerleaders are doing heroin but they are yeah and of course not all of them but right you

01:23:08.100 know unlike you and i growing up in the 70s and 80s um you know when kids would experiment with alcohol

01:23:16.840 or weed you know maybe some mushrooms or something i don't know but but you talk about kids that grew up

01:23:23.820 in the 90s in the aughts they had pills at their disposal because purdue had massively uh talked

01:23:31.740 doctors into massively over prescribing these drugs so a kid could just experiment like the way a kid in

01:23:39.040 years your would have done with alcohol or marijuana but only now they're they're they're using a much more

01:23:45.300 dangerous uh drug and so i mean actually i was just at a premier event here in roanoke with the first

01:23:52.360 person i ever knew uh who this had happened to and he was a young man um who named spencer mom power

01:23:59.900 and when i first met him he was from a wealthy family his mom was a civic leader had a chain of

01:24:04.640 jewelry stores and he was about to go to federal prison for five and a half years for having sold

01:24:09.640 heroin to his former private school classmate who died and i spent the summer hanging out with him

01:24:17.120 trying to learn about this nascent cell of heroin users in the in the wealthy white suburbs of roanoke

01:24:24.040 and he said dude i'm the one that told you what the word dope sick meant and i was like you're

01:24:29.540 absolutely right i didn't know what it meant then but i remember him describing uh how if if he said if

01:24:36.800 your dope man wasn't coming until you know for three more days and you only had this little this much

01:24:42.000 left you would parse it out so that you would still have a little bit at the end because the the driving

01:24:48.020 fear of all of it was this fear of withdrawal and this fear of dope sickness of course this like any

01:24:54.080 addiction is more likely to affect you if you have a parent who is an addict um your book points out

01:24:59.320 that i think you have a 50 to 60 percent you're 50 to 60 percent more likely to become addicted if you

01:25:05.960 have a parent who is an addict so you know there is of course as with any addiction an extra special

01:25:10.780 red warning label uh to people who have that in their family um but there is a treatment and we

01:25:17.080 talked about how you know the the version of aa doesn't work so well for the opioid addicts but

01:25:21.640 there is a treatment called suboxone that that does help now it too is considered a controlled substance

01:25:29.040 right uh like an opiate it's an opiate so it will show up in your blood if you want to do a job that

01:25:36.380 tests your blood before they hire you it will show up and it will show up as suboxone and then they'll

01:25:41.160 know that you're on that drug which helps you get off of another opiate so you've got sort of an

01:25:44.600 opioid in your blood which is helping you get off of probably a more serious opioid and boom bob's your

01:25:50.020 uncle i mean these jobs aren't going to hire you that that's that's a real problem but that drug

01:25:55.540 seems to be very much part of the solution to this crisis absolutely it's protective and megan it has

01:26:02.800 buprenorphine in it which is the opioid that uh kind of gloms on to the opioid receptor but it also

01:26:10.600 has naloxone in it which is the the generic name for narcan so that if somebody does go out and use

01:26:17.140 it's not going to work for them and so it is protective in that way and you see in our show

01:26:22.360 the way the michael keaton character is um stigmatized for being on it and he said

01:26:28.860 it's it's what's keeping me clean i've never felt clearer than i have in my life you see betsy

01:26:34.860 go to the aa meeting and be told that she's considering going on it but somebody says to her

01:26:40.760 you know that's just treating a drug with another drug and this happened over and over to the young

01:26:46.680 people uh that i was following for my book and it it is a real problem especially among law

01:26:55.080 enforcement people who have seen it diverted and sold but um i would argue and many experts argue

01:27:01.720 that the reason it is so widely diverted is because it largely isn't available to the people who need it

01:27:08.540 so there is this this big market demand for it only one in five people with opioid use disorder

01:27:16.160 has access to it so that's that's something we know it works we know it's it's um it's it's it's

01:27:23.860 dangerous to uh go off of uh harder opioids without being on it um so we really need to make it available

01:27:33.060 at a scale to match the crisis how long can one stay on it so everyone's different um and some people

01:27:41.700 think it's okay you might have to be on it for the rest of your life dr van z the doctor who's portrayed

01:27:47.060 in the show he he told me years ago he said he's got patients weaned down very very slowly and they

01:27:53.280 might just be on a teeny little bit every day but he's afraid because he's seen people um you know

01:28:00.680 even when they're on a small amount when they go off they some have relapsed and so he's very very

01:28:06.480 cautious about it he only does it when a person voluntary one voluntarily wants to taper off but

01:28:12.900 it's something to be done with all caution um but he i mean he does have some amazing success stories

01:28:19.620 as do all mat doctors i mean the thing about law enforcement is they only see the bad side of it

01:28:25.320 the people breaking the law side of it they don't see the people who are uh getting jobs back getting

01:28:30.400 their kids back well and i think employers need to see that drug and maybe have a different reaction

01:28:35.200 instead of seeing like oh drug addict and they've got an opioid in them now it's no someone who has

01:28:40.940 actively taken steps to change their life and you can find out for how long they've been clean and been

01:28:45.160 on it um because you're not taking opioids in addition to suboxone if you're taking suboxone

01:28:50.780 but you know to me it's just so frustrating because you see beth you know it's like you

01:28:54.520 these companies they get you addicted they get you addicted to their drug your life spirals so many of

01:29:00.320 these people wind up committing crimes whatever whether it's shoplifting or something with cars what

01:29:04.520 have you because they're desperate you know selling drugs buying drugs um and now they have a criminal

01:29:09.940 record then they get on suboxone which is the way out for a lot of them then they can't get a job

01:29:14.900 because they've got that in their blood which is a tell so now you can you know your employers are

01:29:18.660 looking at somebody who's got a criminal past who's got this drug which is a tell um who probably

01:29:23.160 doesn't present all that well physically because they've been an addict for all this time and it's

01:29:27.480 an impossible spiral to pull yourself out of you need so much support so much love so much understanding

01:29:35.380 from your family from society from employers from law enforcement from the judicial system and

01:29:40.740 from we didn't even touch the story of expanded medicaid and i you know your your book is really

01:29:46.700 smart on that i love people to read your arguments for medicaid expansion um it's just number one tool

01:29:53.180 for for um uh reducing overdose deaths in in various states but we still have 12 states that haven't

01:29:59.500 expanded it right yep yep because they think it's again i think they think it may be tough love but it

01:30:05.220 may just be cruel and a way of stopping people from getting out of a really tough situation right and

01:30:10.380 as this opioid litigation money as the funnel start as it starts to funnel down is so important

01:30:15.860 that states and communities get together people who really understand the science and aren't just

01:30:21.840 you know spouting off this tough love crap which uh isn't working um and is starting to meet people

01:30:30.780 where they are we know that people who visit needle exchanges i know that sounds counter on intuitive

01:30:36.060 why you're going to give a drug user a clean needle well because they're going to use uh regardless until

01:30:42.260 they get real help so why don't we make sure they use safely and that's going to cut down on the spread

01:30:47.940 of hepatitis c and hiv which is skyrocketing in some communities yeah no i heard you say more likely

01:30:54.880 to enter treatment when when they go to a needle exchange oh and on top of that you you've said it's

01:31:00.240 cheaper to pay for the needle than it is to pay for the disease the treatment of the disease they're

01:31:04.040 going to get from dirty needle so it's like society's in we're we're in this whether we want

01:31:07.980 to be or not and the only question now is what what is the smart way of dealing with it beth macy is

01:31:14.020 one of the people who has been calling attention to it for a long time with thoughtful diagnoses and

01:31:19.380 possible solutions i'm grateful for you beth thank you thank you so much thank you megan really

01:31:24.300 appreciate it all the best coming up uh my message to you all just ahead of christmas

01:31:29.900 before we go i wanted to say a few words about connection we all need it whether through

01:31:39.860 partners children friends colleagues pets and i think for most of our history we have needed to

01:31:45.820 feel connected to our fellow americans too to the to the very idea of america itself feels like that's

01:31:53.160 waning these days doesn't it as we become more tribal more political more judgmental less for

01:31:59.900 giving it seems like we are dividing into two groups in this country these days those who love

01:32:05.360 america and those who loathe it but you gotta stop and wonder every once in a while is that real does

01:32:12.580 half of the country actually hate it or is a dour misguided subsection driving that narrative

01:32:20.500 a subsection who most of us see as lost a little sad and a group either to be ignored or defeated

01:32:28.080 peggy noonan had a wall street journal column out after the 9 11 anniversary this year captioned

01:32:34.040 america has lost the thread i recommend it to you she was right after the met gala and they were

01:32:39.620 supposed to be wearing these patriotic outfits and they didn't get it because hollywood uh but the

01:32:44.860 column was about how it feels like we no longer live in the america that came together after the 9 11

01:32:49.620 attacks we're so divided now we're so mean to one another unlike back then quote following the trauma

01:32:58.180 and drama of 9 11 she wrote we started discovering in some new way our nation's meaning what it was in

01:33:05.980 history meant in history meant to us we talked about it we saw the first thing the firemen did after the

01:33:15.300 towers fell was put up the flag exactly i remember those those days so vividly don't you when we were

01:33:24.960 quicker to hold doors for one another to cede the cab to someone else to let somebody else go in front

01:33:30.840 of us at the grocery aisle there was a sense that we were going through something together and that

01:33:36.260 we would get through it together these days there's loose talk of secession constant constant

01:33:43.480 demonization of whole groups of americans based on the most pernicious of reasons skin color gender

01:33:50.260 background political party beliefs that differ from our own when it comes to hard work tenacity mental

01:33:56.360 toughness and so on but then you put down the tv remote or the newspaper or the smartphone and you step

01:34:04.860 out into the real world where you are still free to hold a door for someone to smile at a stranger

01:34:12.540 to cede your place in the grocery aisle and when you do you find kindness abounds it's everywhere

01:34:19.980 blue and red america that's who we are if you live in a predominantly red or blue city state town maybe

01:34:30.920 you don't get to spend a lot of time with people who disagree with you that is an advantage i have had

01:34:35.840 living the past 20 years in new york city and now in connecticut as a center right person

01:34:40.080 i am surrounded by democrats tons of them everywhere virtually all of them who i absolutely happen to

01:34:47.640 love even my mom i don't necessarily agree with most of their politics but i socialize with them i cry

01:34:54.660 with them i celebrate the babies with them and i mourn them when they pass like my sweet neighbor stew

01:35:00.700 this month you don't think about politics in those moments you don't think about who somebody votes

01:35:05.880 for these folks want what most people want they want safe neighborhoods good schools an end to the

01:35:12.460 pandemic grace for themselves or for their kids if they screw up a healthy environment a good job

01:35:19.700 good health care the ability to save a little maybe take a vacation here or there they are not running

01:35:26.000 around trying to cancel people defund the police enter trans girls and girls sports irrespective of the

01:35:31.240 unfair advantages force kink on young kids segregate classes or divide children by skin color that is a woke

01:35:40.100 problem it's not necessarily a democrat problem and it's important to understand the difference there

01:35:46.060 i speak here of little d dems not the party itself big d dems have proven they are beholden to the loudest

01:35:54.100 cruelest most insane voices in their party they actually did push in city after city to defund the

01:35:59.540 cops and put criminals back on the street they actually do favor x-rated books in schools and radical

01:36:04.240 trans and race messaging that is unhinged i do not have a friend and again most of my closest pals are

01:36:09.980 lifelong democrats who favors that nonsense so i am thinking about the non-woke left this holiday season

01:36:17.620 and how we can all come together back together on the things we share the things we all love how they

01:36:27.320 and you and i can find a way to save this country to defeat the angriest lot among us the ones who hate

01:36:35.280 america who don't want to be here who don't see this country as the shining city on the hill elections yes

01:36:42.780 that is one important way keep them out of power it is also important to speak out against their

01:36:49.380 madness when we can right if when we see it if we can i realize it requires a lot in certain professions

01:36:57.400 in particular but in whatever way you can find it is important to speak out but also remember not to do

01:37:05.280 what they do and dismiss half the country because they wear a different jersey what if huge swaths of

01:37:12.460 these democrats were on the side of america and due process and the first amendment they are would you

01:37:19.120 want to chase them into the arms of your opponent by calling them names and treating them rudely and

01:37:23.140 always assuming the worst about them that's what you fall into in right-wing media right the left is

01:37:28.900 horrible well it's not all the left it's not don't divide the army you don't have to a recent survey

01:37:37.600 done by real clear politics investigations showed that 85 percent of americans say they are patriotic

01:37:44.480 believe themselves to be patriotic nine out of ten voters believe the u.s. continues to do a lot of

01:37:52.020 good in the world and 90 percent of voters reject the notion that america does more harm than good

01:37:59.060 globally this holiday season think about that 85 percent of our patriotic countrymen and how we can

01:38:06.540 find our way back to one another maybe for a stint we can just be extra kind hold the doors allow the

01:38:14.820 merges give the wave make small talk at the store right when they're checking you out scanning your items

01:38:21.440 smile say something stupid kind take a shot right and for those of you who remember 9 12 like i do

01:38:31.200 right 9 11 and 9 12 those two days together the devastation and the beginning of the rest think

01:38:39.860 about that feeling you got when in the midst of our darkest hour in lower manhattan the firefighters

01:38:45.460 still in harm's way made sure that our flag went back up and america all of us cheered

01:38:55.160 merry christmas happy holidays happy new year

01:39:00.420 thanks for listening to the megan kelly show no bs no agenda and no fear

01:39:08.400 so

01:39:16.960 you

01:39:18.160 okay

01:39:19.600 you

01:39:19.860 okay

01:39:20.100 you

The Megyn Kelly Show - December 24, 2021

＂Dopesick＂ - The Sackler Family： A Megyn Kelly Show True Crime Special ｜ Ep. 229

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