“Crime of the Century”: How Big Pharma Fueled the Opioid Crisis That Killed 500,000 and Counting

As the U.S. continues to deal with the fallout from the devastating opioid epidemic that has killed over 500,000 people in the country since 1999, we speak with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, whose latest documentary;

The Crime of the Century, looks at the pharmaceutical industry’s methods in promoting and selling the powerful drugs.

“I realized that the big problem here was that we had been seeing it as a crisis, like a natural disaster like a flood or a hurricane, rather than as a series of crimes,” says Gibney. “You had these terrible incentives, where the incentive is not to cure the patient.

The incentive is to just make as much money as possible.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says U.S. drug overdose deaths skyrocketed to a record 93,000 last year — a nearly 30% increase. It is the largest one-year increase ever recorded, with overdoses rising in 48 of 50 states.

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