The Pharmacist on Netflix: The Harrowing Tale of OxyContin in Small Town America
Written by Zachary Franck
Documentaries are meant to provoke thought while educating viewers on a specific subject in an entertaining way, The Pharmacist on Netflix does just that. It’s a harrowing tale of OxyContin in small town America. Told through the eyes of a grieving father, the story is riveting and raw. It captures the pain of one family while slowly expanding the scope to show a much bigger picture. If you went to high school in the early to mid 2000’s like I did, you are familiar with the word “OxyContin”. Depending on how and where you grew up, there’s a good chance that you knew somebody who got addicted to it, and you may even know somebody who died from it.
After Dan Schneider’s son got murdered in the 9th Ward of New Orleans during a drug deal gone wrong, he dedicated his life to finding the killer and bringing him to justice. He became a private investigator, and a pretty damn good one at that. Using his resources, and tools such as wiretaps, he was able to find the killer. He truly believes that the New Orleans Police Department wouldn’t have solved the case if he didn’t do what he did. What he didn’t realize, at the time, was that his life’s mission had only just begun.
Being a pharmacist in St. Bernard’s Parish, a suburb right outside New Orleans, he was on the frontlines of America’s opioid epidemic at the very beginning. He started to see kids his son’s age come into his pharmacy with prescriptions for OxyContin. It didn’t take long for him to realize what was happening. As days turned to weeks and weeks turned to months, a staggering amount of people came in to fill prescriptions. The biggest red flag was that one doctor was writing 95% of the prescriptions. He watched as the high-powered painkiller decimated his community. Young people started to overdose left and right, and he felt an unwavering need to do something about it.
The events that transpired led back to the source, Purdue Pharmaceuticals in Stamford, CT. The company started selling OxyContin in 1996, marketing it as a less-addictive option for pain management. Since it hit the market, the company has generated more than $35 billion off OxyContin. Using analytics that only they had access to, they targeted territories with doctors that were prone to overprescribing. In turn, they basically engineered the worst drug epidemic that America has ever seen. It’s a dark story of pain and suffering maximized by greed.
The Pharmacist draws you in the emotional turmoil of Schneider. The man dedicated his pursuit for justice to his son. No matter what the authorities did or didn’t do, he was not going to stop until he saw a change. He was courageous and driven, but because he became so obsessed, some people looked at him like he was crazy. But if people would’ve listened to him, the reckoning that OxyContin had on his community could’ve been minimized. He first started speaking about the opioid epidemic in 2001, since then over 400,000 Americans have died from overdoses. Remember, this docuseries is one piece to a much larger puzzle. Please go watch it.
