Dopesick, the addictive story of the 190 people who kill opiates every day in the United States

• Health Opiates: the silent cancer that devours the United States

The data

volumes:

.

Every day in the North American country there are more than 190 people who lose their lives due to the consumption of a substance that since the end of the 90s has already taken more than half a million lives and converted a couple of million citizens into addicts.

And a name that resonates between them:

.

This is the painkiller that sparked what is now called the opioid crisis in the United States, which forced Donald Trump in October 2017 to declare a health emergency. Much of the story that led the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma to create this substance is told in

a fictional but terrifyingly real story that Hulu has turned into a series and that every Wednesday has a new chapter on Disney +.

"There's such an effective and impressive large-scale manipulation that I felt like I had to do a series about it because it's fascinating and horrible and people deserve to know about it."

It is

, creator of

inspired by the eponymous book by

.

"This story is an amazing hoax, how they took a highly addictive drug and marketed it as a miracle drug that was hardly addictive trying to redefine the nature of pain treatment."

One of the scenes from 'Dopesick'Disney +

Specifically, Purdue, at the beginning of its sales, placed the level of addiction below 1%. Nothing could be further from the reality that has been revealed over time. Those levels have skyrocketed especially in working-class, precarious and, above all,

, supposedly to ease the pain of hard physical work. "That was part of his marketing campaign - targeting low-income people who might be more receptive to his marketing techniques in regions that were more easily susceptible to them," says Strong.

What caused that was that the doctors in those most vulnerable areas threw themselves into the arms of the pharmacist and prescribed OxyContin without control. The economic over the sanitary. "

and, therefore, their deception lasted so long because there was not so much publicity about the suffering of these areas that were attacked for the first time by Purdue", details the executive producer of the fiction that stars Michael Keaton.

In 1999 there was already talk of this analgesic, but the dimension of the problem did not begin to be addressed until a few years ago when deaths and addictions were already unstoppable.

Almost 20 years of silence until it became world news, best-selling books and even a television series that is going around the world.

"In 2000, OxyContin was already famous and in 2001, after 9/11,

" says Strong.

Michael Keaton, in the role of country doctor Disney +

"The story was much discussed at the time, but it had no effect and they were able to keep selling and cheating for years. That has always been the big mystery to me: how in 2000 was OxyContin famous and big news and yet could they go on? ", wonders the creator.

And it is he himself who comes up with the answer so that this system has been consolidated for so long: "corruption." "This series is a gruesome example where you see that this company can maneuver through lawsuits, the prosecution, news ...

. It's an amazing achievement in corruption and a certain fearlessness on their part, they didn't care about anything, they just wanted to sell everything they could. "

All these perspectives are those that are addressed in

which centers its story on working class families destroyed by drugs, a rural doctor who prescribed drugs for workers, the judicial system and even the United States anti-narcotics agency. All of them under a fictional story articulated with very powerful real events that have led, for example, in Purdue declaring bankruptcy in 2020 and assuming its guilt in the opioid crisis.

"The prescription of opioids was so frequent and prolific that all the important news was needed to reduce it in the United States," says Strong, who points out that the use of this substance "was poorly regulated" in the North American country and even today the administrations they are not being "active enough" to stop the effects it causes. In fact, the fact that Purdue declared bankruptcy considerably delays the arrival of compensation to those affected even if the pharmaceutical company as responsible for the crisis reached an agreement of 8,300 million dollars with the State Department.

"I really don't understand why they are not more active because I think it is not only good for the country, but also for politics.

and for the politicians who be willing to try to approach it in a truthful way ", concludes the creator.

But meanwhile the United States continues to endure its 190 daily deaths.

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