Since 2017, Netflix has offered its subscribers series, films and documentaries on the opioid crisis which began to hit the United States in the 1990s.
If you are a Netflix subscriber and regular consumer of what the platform offers, then you have not missed this trend. In a few months, there are three films and series directly and indirectly linked to the opioid crisis which began to hit the United States in the mid-90s and which caused the death of more than 600,000 people.
However, this is not the first time that Netflix has tackled the subject. Since 2017, 7 productions on the subject have been made available to subscribers. The first, Heroin(e), was even presented at the Oscars.
This 40-minute documentary follows three American women, a fire chief, a judge and a charity leader, who fight the opioid epidemic in their city.
The following year, in 2018, a new documentary was released. Titled Recovery Boys: Rehab and Brotherhood, it takes us to the heart of the opioid epidemic, meeting four men who are trying to reinvent their lives and repair their relationships after years of drug addiction. A strong and moving testimony which shows the impact on the population of unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies.
It’s time to investigate
But how did we get there? This is the question posed in particular by the 4-episode documentary series The Pharmacist released in 2020. It focuses on the story of a pharmacist from Louisiana who will stop at nothing to denounce the endemic corruption at the heart of the opioid crisis after the death of his son. He gradually traces the trail to discover that his former doctor was corrupted by pharmaceutical companies to prescribe painkillers off-label.
In the same style, the last episode of the investigative series The Business of Narcotics focuses more particularly on oxycodone, one of the opiates indicted by the American authorities.
Place for fiction
Fiction then took over to depict this unprecedented health crisis from which certain countries such as France have protected themselves. It was the non-Netflix production Dopesick which launched the trend in 2021 on the small screen side.
Two years later, Painkiller with Uzo Aduba and Matthew Broderick will tell the same story, that of the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma and its controversial drug, Oxycontin. The family behind it, the Sacklers, will also be the inspiration behind the horror series The Fall of the House of Usher.
But it’s a film that’s making news today. Last week, Netflix added Merchants of Pain to its catalog, led by Emily Blunt and Chris Evans. This drama, sometimes flirting with comedy, is inspired by a true story and clearly deciphers the methods used by pharmaceutical companies to enrich themselves.