Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about drugs. I want to rap
Speaker 2: to you about drugs.
Speaker 3: In that they have terrible effects on millions of Americans
Speaker 3: and an epidemic almost too horrible to comprehend.
Speaker 2: Man Michael Cha has more.
Speaker 4: The scourge of drugs has long ravaged this nation. Santa
Speaker 4: Clara Assistant County Council Danny Chu explains the toll drugs
Speaker 4: have taken on his district.
Speaker 5: The overdose tests are just the tip of the iceberg
Speaker 5: in Santa Clara County. It's resulted in skyrocketing medical costs
Speaker 5: and it's also resulted in rampant crime.
Speaker 2: So what are the drugs we're talking about?
Speaker 1: Crack?
Speaker 4: Heroin, Miley Ping Pong, black Flag, roach spray, Crisco.
Speaker 5: Opioids like OxyContin, vicodin, or percocet.
Speaker 2: Back pay medicine. Who commits crime would back back.
Speaker 5: These drugs are chemically similar to heroin, and the result
Speaker 5: has been millions of people that are now addicted to
Speaker 5: these drugs.
Speaker 4: Okay, but street drugs are one thing. Pharmaceutical drugs are
Speaker 4: there to help.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: There's no evidence that these prescription painkillers work well for
Speaker 5: chronic pain conditions. Really yes, Nonetheless, did drug companies market
Speaker 5: these drugs for those purposes? That's why we filed this
Speaker 5: saucer to hold these companies accountable.
Speaker 4: And they have a lot to be accountable for. Study
Speaker 4: show prolonged use of these drugs reduces their effectiveness and
Speaker 4: increases the risk of overdose. But oxy requires a prescription.
Speaker 4: So how are these companies to blame? It wasn't adding up.
Speaker 4: Then I got a visit from author and medical researcher
Speaker 4: Peter Gocci.
Speaker 1: I have a little secret for you.
Speaker 6: I can't hear you, dude, I have a little secret
Speaker 6: to tell you.
Speaker 2: I still can't hear what you're saying.
Speaker 1: A secret what I'm coming out.
Speaker 4: This deep throat insider informant told me how this epidemic
Speaker 4: got out of hand.
Speaker 7: Put you farmer high to the doctor and told them
Speaker 7: that oxycontent is less likely to lead to substance abuse.
Speaker 7: And this is not true.
Speaker 2: Wait, seriously, you can.
Speaker 7: Look at the lawsuits. Preiser was found guilty by a
Speaker 7: jury of conspiracy. Wow, merk Eli Lilly Johnson, and Johnson
Speaker 7: was fined more than one billion dollars. It's all the same.
Speaker 7: What they do is actually organized crimes. Pharmaceutical companies are
Speaker 7: like drug cartels.
Speaker 2: As a go on.
Speaker 7: It's not a joke, it's a fact.
Speaker 1: I have studied this.
Speaker 2: Listen, man, I'm a comedian. I know about jokes. Yes,
Speaker 2: all right, yes that's a funny joke.
Speaker 7: This medicine kills people. Do you still think it's a joke?
Speaker 2: But not that part? You got to learn how to
Speaker 2: get off on high note fortune.
Speaker 4: Five hundred companies behaving like drug cartels. It seemed hard
Speaker 4: to swallow. So I went to the heart of the
Speaker 4: oxy triangle to confront one of them face to face.
Speaker 4: I would like to speak to your don or who
Speaker 4: you're done with, the drug lord or whatever, the your
Speaker 4: top guy, like your Poblo Escobar, kind of goodbye, turn
Speaker 4: that off. Turns out nobody on the inside would talk
Speaker 4: to me. Then I got.
Speaker 8: Lucky behind the poor Michael.
Speaker 6: Who you?
Speaker 8: I'm doctor John Guapan, I used to be a pharmaceutical
Speaker 8: sens rep.
Speaker 4: Finally a whistleblower emerged to tell me how these companies
Speaker 4: are allowed to continue to operate so.
Speaker 1: They can buy anyone.
Speaker 8: They walk the FDA, that government, the researchers, they get payoffs.
Speaker 2: Aren't you scared that they're gonna come after you.
Speaker 1: Why do you think I live in Sweden?
Speaker 2: Wait? What you live in Sweden? Probably hard for you
Speaker 2: to hide as a brown dude in Sweden.
Speaker 1: This is one evening and they're not gonna get me.
Speaker 4: Great, so the only people who would talk to me
Speaker 4: are hiding in Sweden. This was starting to sound like
Speaker 4: a real conspiracy. Thankfully, former FDA is so sh'd Commissioner
Speaker 4: Peter Pitt straightened everything out.
Speaker 9: I think pharmaceutical companies are extremely straightforward and honest about
Speaker 9: the benefits and the risks of their products paid.
Speaker 4: I'm so glad that you can calm me down, man,
Speaker 4: because I was freaking out. So why do pharmaceutical companies
Speaker 4: have such a bad rep?
Speaker 9: Michael? Statistics are like a bikini. What they show you
Speaker 9: is interesting, but what they conceal is essential China.
Speaker 2: They concealed with the china.
Speaker 9: Well, I think people who make these unsubstantiated claims need
Speaker 9: to visit their doctor and perhaps have their medication changed.
Speaker 2: And obviously no one's paying you to say that.
Speaker 9: No, do we accept donations from pharmaceutical companies? We most
Speaker 9: certainly do.
Speaker 2: Oh no.
Speaker 4: So according to these guys, pharmaceutical companies market dangerous drugs,
Speaker 4: mislead doctors and pay people off, which raises the question
Speaker 4: why am I with them? These pharmaceutical companies have billions
Speaker 4: of dollars, They can get away with anything they want,
Speaker 4: and I'm with them on national TV.
Speaker 2: And you're not worried about that at all.
Speaker 7: I wouldn't say it doesn't bother me, but well, it
Speaker 7: bothers me. Well the pharmaceutical company is. They don't kill
Speaker 7: people directly, They kill them with pills.
Speaker 4: I don't want to be killed with anything. I want
Speaker 4: to live till I'm eighty nine years old, like you. Oh,
Speaker 4: could Fresh Face Michael J.
Speaker 2: Really be in danger?
Speaker 4: It seemed like everywhere I turned there they were everywhere else.
Speaker 4: If only there was something to relieve my anxiety.
Speaker 3: Tired of another sleepless night?
Speaker 9: Do you feel overwhelmed?
Speaker 3: Anxious, nervous, sadness, despondent.
Speaker 1: Distress at work, insomnia?
Speaker 9: Your mind is racing and you're scared.
Speaker 1: Now there's help.
Speaker 3: Ask your doctor about celebs, symbal tic zol off, invocana
Speaker 3: and being the bilifi.
Speaker 6: Just talk to your doctor.
Speaker 4: Thanks pharmaceutical companies.
Speaker 10: Side effects include nausea, rhymeouth diarrhea, and death.
Speaker 6: Alrightber Rabbi, let's get to the big story of the day.
Speaker 11: If you're watching the news, this is probably all you
Speaker 11: heard this morning.
Speaker 12: There's a big development in the opioid crisis.
Speaker 13: A new chapter in the fight against opioid addiction.
Speaker 10: America's opioid epidemic, the opioid epidemic, the opioid.
Speaker 14: Crisis, the opioid crisis, our nation's opioid crisis.
Speaker 11: Yes, the opioid drug crisis. Now, when a lot of
Speaker 11: people hear about drugs, they don't think of prescription drugs,
Speaker 11: all right. People think of weed or LSD or mushrooms,
Speaker 11: you know, fun drugs, the ones that make the music
Speaker 11: better and the dancing worse. But today the abuse of
Speaker 11: prescription opioids like oxy or percocets is devastating America. These
Speaker 11: drugs are so widespread that they're now even in the
Speaker 11: hook of rap songs Purposes Marley Purposes, Yeah, percoset, Marley, percoset.
Speaker 6: Back in the day, it was cocaine. Now it's like
Speaker 6: prescription drugs. Prescription drugs.
Speaker 11: And by the way, future makes opioids sound cool in
Speaker 11: that song.
Speaker 6: But don't forget kids. In real life, opioids aren't.
Speaker 11: Just addictive, they also cause severe constipation.
Speaker 6: Yeah, which is the one thing Future.
Speaker 11: Didn't put in that song A constant pake my pooh
Speaker 11: is constant pake take a dumb I cannot take a
Speaker 11: dumb pooh hard, Yeah.
Speaker 6: Pooh hard. It's left out of the song.
Speaker 11: But the reality is opioids are now responsible for over
Speaker 11: thirty four thousand deaths a year in America. Thirty four
Speaker 11: thousand deaths right. In fact, since the year two thousands,
Speaker 11: the number of overdose deaths involving opioids has quadrupled. And
Speaker 11: that doesn't count the people who go on to od
Speaker 11: on heroin after first getting addicted to prescription pills. So
Speaker 11: how did this crisis get out of control? Well, A
Speaker 11: big part of it is that for decades a lot
Speaker 11: of doctors were freely prescribing opioids to treat almost any
Speaker 11: level of Doctors would just give out pills for everything
Speaker 11: back pain, toothaches, fomo, whatever, And once people were addicted,
Speaker 11: they were desperate to get their pills, and the pharmaceutical
Speaker 11: industry was more than happy to keep selling them.
Speaker 3: Jim Geldoff, a forty year dea veteran ran pharmaceutical investigations
Speaker 3: from DEA's Detroit field office, they saw distributors shipping thousands
Speaker 3: of suspicious orders. One example, a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia,
Speaker 3: a town of just three hundred and ninety two people,
Speaker 3: ordered nine million hydrocodone pills over two years.
Speaker 11: Oh, nine million pills for four hundred people. Even if
Speaker 11: one of those people is Charlie Sheen, that.
Speaker 6: Still leaves.
Speaker 11: Eight million pills on accounted fall. Now, now you would
Speaker 11: think this would be an easy problem to solve, right,
Speaker 11: you just get the DEA in to shut down the
Speaker 11: pill distributor that's flooding the market with all these drugs.
Speaker 11: The problem is, last year those bitch ass was in
Speaker 11: Congress unanimously posted the law. Yeah, I said, unanimously unanimously
Speaker 11: post the law, greatly cutting the DA's power to go
Speaker 11: after these shady pill distributors. And if you're wondering, what, Trevor,
Speaker 11: why would Congress past the law helping to protect drug
Speaker 11: companies in the middle of a drug crisis, Well, it's
Speaker 11: because of the thing that they're addicted to money.
Speaker 13: If we wanted to find out just how much the
Speaker 13: pharmaceutical industry spends lobbying members of Congress. Draughtmakers and their
Speaker 13: advocacy groups spent close to two hundred and fifty million.
Speaker 6: Dollars last year.
Speaker 13: That surges to nearly two and a half billion dollars
Speaker 13: over the past decade. The industry consistently ranks at the
Speaker 13: top when it comes to money spent on lobbying. Gun
Speaker 13: rights lobbying last year totaled about ten and a half
Speaker 13: million dollars. That is just about four percent of what
Speaker 13: the pharmaceutical industry spends.
Speaker 11: That's right, The pharmaceutical industry spends so much money lobbying
Speaker 11: Congress that and this is true. They got to write
Speaker 11: the law that the DEA, which is insane two hundred
Speaker 11: and fifty million dollars.
Speaker 6: And you can write your own law.
Speaker 11: You don't think that we all want to write our
Speaker 11: own laws.
Speaker 6: Huh.
Speaker 11: You don't think I want to write my own laws.
Speaker 11: The no speed limit for people with Dimple's law, you don't.
Speaker 6: Think I think that should be a thing. Ha ha.
Speaker 6: So the opioid.
Speaker 11: Crisis is huge, and the pharmaceutical industry isn't really interested
Speaker 11: in helping. But fortunately, my friends, as we saw in August,
Speaker 11: there's one man who gets it.
Speaker 15: The opioid crisis is an emergency, and I'm saying officially
Speaker 15: right now it is an emergency.
Speaker 6: It's a national emergency.
Speaker 5: We're going to spend a lot of time, a lot
Speaker 5: of effort, and a lot of money on the opioid pressI.
Speaker 11: Now we want to laugh, but that was huge. Declaring
Speaker 11: the opioid crisis an official national emergency. That is a
Speaker 11: big step because when the president does that, the government
Speaker 11: can start using money from a multi billion dollar fund
Speaker 11: to fight the problem. Donald Trump getting it done. Yeah,
Speaker 11: we had to do or sign the paperwork, which he
Speaker 11: took care of this afternoon. Effective today, my administration is
Speaker 11: officially declaring the opioid crisis a national public health emergency
Speaker 11: under federal law. That's right, people, Trump finally came through.
Speaker 11: Give me a run of flaws. Don't be hate this, give
Speaker 11: a run a clause. Stop hating, give him run a clause.
Speaker 6: He did it.
Speaker 11: He declared the opioid crisis a national public health emergency,
Speaker 11: which I just realized is not a thing. God damn,
Speaker 11: he got us again.
Speaker 6: No, no, because it's subtle. But they're two different things.
Speaker 11: There's a national emergency and there's a public health emergency.
Speaker 11: It's a small word change, but it makes a big difference.
Speaker 11: It's like saying twelve inch versus twelve inches.
Speaker 6: You see, a.
Speaker 11: National emergency means the government would have had access to
Speaker 11: twenty three billion dollars to help fight the opioid epidemic.
Speaker 6: That's what Trump promised.
Speaker 11: What Trump actually signed was a public health emergency, which
Speaker 11: gives the government access to a fund that currently has
Speaker 11: fifty seven thousand dollars in it. That's a huge difference. Yeah,
Speaker 11: put it this way, if you had to go to rehab,
Speaker 11: who would you want funding it? The CEO of Verizon
Speaker 11: or Craig who works at Verizon. Now, now you know what,
Speaker 11: this isn't even one of those days where I'm angry
Speaker 11: at Trump. I'm just I'm disappointed because what he delivered
Speaker 11: was very far from the promise. You know, it's vaguely similar,
Speaker 11: but it's not the same thing. It's like if Trump
Speaker 11: stood at the border in a few years and was like,
Speaker 11: ladies and gentlemen, I'm proud to announce my.
Speaker 6: Big, beautiful wall greens.
Speaker 15: No Mexicans allowed, and guess who paid for it? Mexico's neighbor, America.
Speaker 11: The words change everything. So once again President Trump did
Speaker 11: not fail to disappoint. But you know what, there's really
Speaker 11: nothing to worry about because we've already seen that Donald
Speaker 11: Trump can't handle the drug crisis all by himself.
Speaker 1: Traise your hands, kids. I promise Donald J. Trump, Donald J.
Speaker 6: Troft, that I will never take drugs.
Speaker 13: Trump.
Speaker 9: I don't want to say no alcohol, but take it
Speaker 9: easy on the alcohol, right.
Speaker 6: And you know what else, no cigarettes.
Speaker 11: He's the best American Trump presidents ever.
Speaker 6: We'll be right back the opioid crisis.
Speaker 11: Over the course of two decades, millions of Americans have
Speaker 11: become addicted to these painkillers, and after years of people
Speaker 11: demanding that someone be held accountable, the drug companies are
Speaker 11: finally starting to pay a price.
Speaker 12: There is word tonight of a settlement involving thousands of
Speaker 12: lawsuits tied to the opioid crisis. Cotton maker Purdue Pharma
Speaker 12: has reached an agreement with twenty two states at about
Speaker 12: two thousand local governments over its role in the deadly epidemic.
Speaker 12: The company will pay up to twelve billion dollars over time,
Speaker 12: with three billion coming from the Sackler family. They own
Speaker 12: Purdue Pharma, and will also give up control of the company.
Speaker 6: You know I'll be honest with you, I'm torn about
Speaker 6: the story.
Speaker 11: You know, yes, I'm happy that the opioid companies will
Speaker 11: have to pay. But at the same time, they misled
Speaker 11: sick people about how addictive their drugs were. Right they
Speaker 11: also lobbied to lift limits on how many opioids doctors
Speaker 11: could prescribe. And then now that they've made billions of
Speaker 11: dollars off an epidemic that caused countless debts, they just
Speaker 11: get to be like, ah, how about we give you
Speaker 11: some of that money back and we call it even
Speaker 11: I think it's bullshit.
Speaker 2: I'll be honest.
Speaker 11: I imagine someone broke into your house stole a bunch
Speaker 11: of their stuff, and then when you busted them, they're.
Speaker 6: Like, all right, all right, you got me. How about
Speaker 6: I break you off one hundred and we call it
Speaker 6: even yeah. Yeah, And you're like, that's my wallet.
Speaker 11: It's like, okay, one twenty one, twenty, but I got
Speaker 11: to keep the library card.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 11: And even though even though this opioid crisis has been
Speaker 11: in the news for the past few years, the family
Speaker 11: who profited most from a lot of this devastation has
Speaker 11: managed to remain fairly anonymous. But now we're finally meeting
Speaker 11: the men behind the curtain.
Speaker 6: For the first time.
Speaker 14: We're now seeing and hearing from doctor Richard Sackler, the
Speaker 14: former chairman and president of Purdue Pharma, respond to questions
Speaker 14: under oath.
Speaker 11: Do you know how much the Sackler family has made
Speaker 11: off the sale of oxycon?
Speaker 14: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Do you know if it's over ten billion dollars?
Speaker 14: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: You know, if it's about five billion dollars, I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's fair to say it's over a billion dollars.
Speaker 3: It would be fair to say.
Speaker 11: That, yes, really, really, this guy's gonna act like he
Speaker 11: doesn't know if he made a billion dollars.
Speaker 6: Cut the fuck out of here.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 11: You see him acting like he's thinking about it. Did
Speaker 11: I guess you could say he's acting like he has to.
Speaker 6: Count up all his change. Well, I did get that
Speaker 6: ten dollars from Grandma. I made one fifty from the
Speaker 6: odd sale.
Speaker 11: Oh yeah, there's a billion dollars from killing thousands of
Speaker 11: Americans by lying to them about they painingcares.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, I almost forgot that part. Oh and I
Speaker 6: got the library card. Yeah, the library card.
Speaker 11: And the cycle is they aren't the only ones facing
Speaker 11: consequences for their role in fueling the opioid epidemic. Right,
Speaker 11: everyone's favorite baby shampoo company has also been told it's
Speaker 11: time to pay up.
Speaker 10: Yesterday, in Oklahoma, judge ruled that opioids ravaged the state
Speaker 10: and order Johnson and Johnson at paid five hundred and
Speaker 10: seventy two million dollars. The judge said that the company
Speaker 10: intentionally misled the public about the dangers of its drugs.
Speaker 5: Johnson and Johnson stock was up as much as five
Speaker 5: percent since.
Speaker 14: The company was ordered to pay far less than many
Speaker 14: investors expected.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you heard that right.
Speaker 11: Johnson and Johnson's stock actually went up after they were
Speaker 11: fined five hundred and seventy two million dollars because they
Speaker 11: expected the punishment.
Speaker 6: To be much worse. They expected the punishment to be worse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that.
Speaker 6: Tells you something.
Speaker 11: It's like a guy coming out of the shower and
Speaker 11: his girlfriend is like, uh, you've got some explaining to do.
Speaker 6: I was looking through your phone and who is this
Speaker 6: puppy you met? It is adorable? You know, I love puppies.
Speaker 6: Why didn't you tell me? And the guys are like,
Speaker 6: oh yeah, oh.
Speaker 11: The puppy that I'm totally not having sex with yeah,
Speaker 11: the puppy. So as it stands, these drug companies are
Speaker 11: going to pay a bunch of fines, not even admit responsibility,
Speaker 11: and no one seems to be going to jail, which
Speaker 11: is insane when you think about it, right, Like, just
Speaker 11: think about the levels here. Prosecutors want Felicity Huffman to
Speaker 11: go to jail for cheating in a college admission scandal.
Speaker 6: They want to go to jail for that, but.
Speaker 11: The people responsible for thousands of American deaths get to
Speaker 11: walk away with a slap on the wrist. These people
Speaker 11: are basically very formal drug dealers who are now protected
Speaker 11: just because they're a corporation. But if you look at
Speaker 11: someone like El Chapo, what's the major difference, right, be like, oh,
Speaker 11: it's more violent, yes, but fundamentally he's a drug dealer.
Speaker 6: They were drug dealers. The Feds took his money, and
Speaker 6: he's spending the rest of his life in prison.
Speaker 11: So if you think about it, El Chapel really only
Speaker 11: made one big mistake. He shouldn't have been a drug lord.
Speaker 11: He should have been the CEO of L. Chapel Inc.
Speaker 6: We'll be right back.
Speaker 11: My first guest is the Emmy and Oscar winning filmmaker
Speaker 11: Alex Gibney. He's here to talk about his powerful new
Speaker 11: HBO documentary about the opioid crisis. Alex Gibney, Welcome to
Speaker 11: the Daily Social Distancing Show.
Speaker 16: Thanks Trevor.
Speaker 11: The last time you were on our show was in
Speaker 11: twenty eighteen and you were on with it was your
Speaker 11: documentary Dirty Money. Now you are back with another documentary
Speaker 11: about a topic that I can't even explain to you
Speaker 11: how infuriating it makes me as a person because a
Speaker 11: of what was done to people, b of what the
Speaker 11: ramifications have been, and see why it feels like almost
Speaker 11: nothing is going to happen in the way of justice.
Speaker 11: And that is all about the opioid epidet tell me
Speaker 11: a little bit about your documentary. So two parts are
Speaker 11: on HBO to two part.
Speaker 16: Doc four hours called the Crime of the Century. And
Speaker 16: the reason I call it the Crime of the Century
Speaker 16: and the reason I was interested in doing it was
Speaker 16: it seemed like the opioid crisis was being presented to
Speaker 16: us almost like a natural disaster, like a hurricane or
Speaker 16: a flood, as if it just happened. But upon an examination,
Speaker 16: it seems clear that it was manufactured manufactured by a
Speaker 16: number of key corporations, and so there's a crime there,
Speaker 16: and therefore there are people to be held to account,
Speaker 16: and therefore there are things that were done wrong that
Speaker 16: hopefully set right.
Speaker 11: And what's really interesting in this story I didn't know
Speaker 11: some of these parts, was how these drug companies Perdue
Speaker 11: in particular, said you know what, we're going to make
Speaker 11: sure we get these drugs to the people. We're going
Speaker 11: to trick everybody from the government through to the consumer
Speaker 11: and make sure that they take as much of these
Speaker 11: pills as possible. The question I have for you is,
Speaker 11: how on earth do they trick the FDA.
Speaker 16: We got our hands on a document it seems to
Speaker 16: indicate that actually they got to a person inside the
Speaker 16: FDA who's actually the medical officer examining the application, and
Speaker 16: they turn him and in fact, he cooperates with them
Speaker 16: in terms of reviewing their own application.
Speaker 1: It's like, wow.
Speaker 16: And then a year after leaving the FDA, Low and behold,
Speaker 16: he gets a job with Purdue for about close to
Speaker 16: four hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 16: Coincidence, I think not.
Speaker 11: This is one of the saddest crime stories for me,
Speaker 11: because it does not end with a sense of justice.
Speaker 11: It does not end with the sense of the world
Speaker 11: is in a better place because the company itself doesn't suffer,
Speaker 11: and neither does the family who's made all of the money.
Speaker 16: That's right, and now you're referring to Purdue. Now, in
Speaker 16: a few rare occasions, some executives have been committed and
Speaker 16: have gone to prison in the case of Insists, for example.
Speaker 16: But we see more often it's the mid level dealers
Speaker 16: who get nabbed, the Walter Whites who get nabbed, and
Speaker 16: the people at the tippy top, the Sackler family for example,
Speaker 16: or the key executives at Purdue didn't do any time,
Speaker 16: and it's worse than just them getting off scott free.
Speaker 16: We got our hands one hundred and twenty page prosecution
Speaker 16: memo which is prepared by federal prosecutors that argued strongly
Speaker 16: that top executives at Purdue should be charged with felonies. Mysteriously,
Speaker 16: thanks to the intervention of people like Rudy Giuliani and others,
Speaker 16: a deal was cut at the Apartment of Justice, and
Speaker 16: there was a bargain whereby Purdue would pay a fine,
Speaker 16: the executives would plead guilty to misdemeanors. They would never
Speaker 16: serve a day in prison. Purdue would pay their fines,
Speaker 16: and the most important thing was that all the evidence
Speaker 16: that was collected over the course of a four year
Speaker 16: investigation would be buried. And in the years after that
Speaker 16: decision happened, hundreds of thousands of people died because nobody
Speaker 16: could see the damage done. And even worse, all you know,
Speaker 16: a ton of other companies then rush into the market.
Speaker 16: They see that Purdue got off with a traffic ticket,
Speaker 16: so now they're going to rush into the market and
Speaker 16: really exploit this opioid situation for their own profit.
Speaker 11: When I saw that part of the documentary, one of
Speaker 11: the things I found myself thinking was, it's amazing how
Speaker 11: if you kill a person in America, you can go
Speaker 11: away for the rest of your life, but if you
Speaker 11: kill hundreds of thousands of people, somehow, it's just a statistic.
Speaker 11: And the ultimate irony on top of it is they
Speaker 11: are now paying the fines that they've been required to pay,
Speaker 11: not from their personal wealth, but rather by selling more opioids.
Speaker 16: Yes, you're referring to a recent decision by the Department
Speaker 16: of Justice, another criminal admission of guilt by the Purdue company.
Speaker 16: And Purdue agrees to pay an eight billion dollar fine.
Speaker 16: You think, wow, that's great, eight billion dollars, What a
Speaker 16: tremendous punishment. Then you discovered, oh, wait a minute, Purdue
Speaker 16: Pharma is bankrupt. The sacklers have taken all their money
Speaker 16: out of the company, and how are they going to
Speaker 16: pay that eight billion dollar fine. It turns out the
Speaker 16: way to pay that fine, because Purdue's bankrupt is actually
Speaker 16: to sell more oxyconton who makes You can't make.
Speaker 2: That up.
Speaker 11: When you are when you're a film maker, you're trying
Speaker 11: to tell us a story. You know, That's what you
Speaker 11: do in all of your documentaries, and oftentimes those stories
Speaker 11: make people want to do something.
Speaker 6: In this case, I felt helpless.
Speaker 11: I was like, well, I mean the justice you know,
Speaker 11: the Justice Department did its thing, the justice had run
Speaker 11: its course, and yet there is no justice out there.
Speaker 6: As a storyteller, you're.
Speaker 11: Shining a light on this. But what would you hope
Speaker 11: that A people can do and B people can change
Speaker 11: in what we're experiencing in the world today.
Speaker 16: Okay, so that's a really good question. And the last
Speaker 16: thing I want to inculcate in people is a sense
Speaker 16: of hopelessness, because one of the things that I got
Speaker 16: out of this was that as big as the opioid
Speaker 16: crime is five hundred thousand people dead, you know, many
Speaker 16: millions of people addicted, it pales in comparison to the
Speaker 16: larger problem, which is the unholy mixture of this turbosarage
Speaker 16: twenty first century capitalism and healthcare. Last time I read
Speaker 16: the Hippocratic oath, they didn't have anything to do with
Speaker 16: supply and demand on share. It had to do with
Speaker 16: protect the patient, do no harm. So I think all
Speaker 16: of us as citizens have got to insist now and
Speaker 16: admit that our healthcare system is broken and we've got
Speaker 16: to fix it. We've got to rebuild it in a
Speaker 16: way that it focuses on the health of patients rather
Speaker 16: than the profit motive of corporations who are servicing it.
Speaker 11: Well, I will say this hopefully, I genuinely hope that
Speaker 11: as many people as possible watch this and that could
Speaker 11: be the Cantilus will change that so many people desperately
Speaker 11: need in this country. Alex Gidney, thank you again for
Speaker 11: your time, Thank you again for your work. I'll see
Speaker 11: you again on the show.
Speaker 16: Great thanks Trevor.
Speaker 11: Alex Gibney's two pot HBO documentary, The Crime of the Century,
Speaker 11: debuts May tenth on HBO and HBO Max.
Speaker 14: Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by
Speaker 14: searching The Daily Show wherever you get your podcasts. Watch
Speaker 14: The Daily Show week nights at eleven ten Central on
Speaker 14: Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on fairmounth plus.
Speaker 2: This has been a Comedy Central podcastow