One Nation, Overdosed
In Harrison Township, Ohio, the community is bonded by death. Everyone seems to know someone who has perished from a drug overdose. Entire families have suffered extermination by addiction. The bodies housed in the local morgue overwhelmingly represent drug-related fatalities. MSNBC travels to this small town hell and others in "One Nation, Overdosed", and exposes a stark reality that curses countless communities across the country.
In Montgomery County, overdose cases are expected to double over last year. On a per capita basis, the county ranks as the top region in the country in overdose deaths. Like many similarly hard hit communities, Montgomery County has suffered tremendous economic woes in recent years, and unemployment continues to blanket the community like a plague.
Law enforcement, social workers, and medical personnel are stretched beyond their limits as they struggle to contain this epidemic. "This is a mass casualty event," says one mortician. Many of them lack the resources they need to make significant gains in this battle; they utilize all the manpower they have just to keep track of the dead.
The main culprit behind these deaths is fentanyl, a narcotic that's many times more potent than heroin or morphine. The drug is especially fatal when taken in a high or pure form dosage by an unsuspecting user. The bulk of the supply originates from China, funnels through Mexico and is delivered into the state by savvy traffickers who have a gift of blending in with the native population.
The filmmakers embed themselves with the forces who stand on the frontline of our modern drug war. Police officers hunt down dealers on the street, customs agents inspect suspicious packages as they arrive from overseas, and treatment counselors go door to door as they plead with users to accept their help. Viewers also witness the horrors of addiction through the eyes of an addict in withdrawal, and observe the ease with which someone can shop for illicit drugs through the internet.
"One Nation, Overdosed" is an uncompromising and multi-faceted look at an epidemic that continues to claim tens of thousands of lives on a yearly basis, and the efforts of those who are determined to reverse this troubling trend.
This is racist
To the media who have failed to help and you have no clue! We’ve got folks who understand it that know the answer to the ignorant questions you are asking the family members personal questions that you media don’t even care the answers! The government most cops and all you journalists haven’t done sh*t in the past so stop acting like you give a damn!
Drugs need to be legalised. Diamorphine (heroin) prescribed to addicts and dosed in licensed outlets in sub lethal doses. It will save lives and take the money away from the Chinese government and Mexican drug lords. People will use. Prohibition is not the answer
There is a bit of disinformation around fentanyl in this film. "A couple of grains" of straight pharma fentanyl will not kill you. Absorbing through he skin is not really a risk. Carfentanil and other stronger fentanyl analogues however can be much more powerful and are pretty risky if encountered in their pure form. It is rare for law enforcement to come across uncut fent analogues, it is found mixed often with inferior heroin.
The reporter is also an uninformed douche, likes his sunnies aye.
...aaaaand yet the gov. still allows a free for all system for pharmas to advertise drugs on TV during commercial breaks. F***ing ridiculous country.
OK, the drug is available then people will get it. If it is not available people will not get the drug. It does not take a common brain to know where the money, resources, man power and local, state and federal goverment should be aiming their energies and money. STOP the drug from being available. That should be number 1. Dealers and addicts are already in place just waiting with hands out. If they can't get the drug, dealers can't sell it and addicts can't use it. I know everyone out there is doing everything they can but the dyke needs to be plugged and then people won't get drowned.
Easy to make a decree in which the resources to accomplish are unlimited. Decades of drug prohibition have witnessed the steady increase in drug use, and the resultant availability. When demand is great enough, no force on earth can staunch the supply. The problem is societal; the only answer, if there is an answer, is to address the desire for the escape that users are seeking. Drugs replace experience. Modern society is presented with too much free time. Gone are the days when all members of the family are required to work from the time they rise in the morning, until bedtime at night. We think we are overworked, but we soon forget how much harder our ancestors worked to survive.
I think, too, that the dichotomy of legal alcohol/illegal other drugs (alcohol is a potent and dangerous drug) leads to a cognizant dissonance in young people. Growing up, many have seen, as I did, the brutal effect on lives by alcohol abuse, all within the confines of the law. For young minds especially, to prohibit other drugs while allowing, even extolling, the use of alcohol, does not make sense.
I missed an investigation into the demand side of the equation. I mean, there's a large supply of dog meat in China, but it's not being exported to the US because there's no demand for it. There's a passing mention near the beginning of a loss of jobs and a prevalence of low paying jobs. Is this documentary saying that that's all it takes for people to turn to potentially life-threatening drug use?
It's really difficult to know where to begin to describe the tragedy that is engulfing America today, but to imagine that there are no valid reasons and no entrenched history behind the systemic use of hard drugs in that country is to live an illusion. In the first instance, as quoted by arguably one of the leading authority's on addiction, articularly heroin addiction, Dr. Gbor Mate states "Heroin is not the problem heroin is an attempt to solve a problem that of childhood psychic trauma." When a society is driven to such despair, where the needs of the least fortunate, the widow, the orphan the poor are not given absolute priority as being in need of help, then the inevitable result is one of family breakdown, including physical, emotional and particularly child sexual abuse is it any wonder that people turn to self medication? Not to get high, just to be normal! These poor unfortunate people are what they are victims of a brutal society which locks them up by the tens of thousands in jails for which investors get good returns on their investments. Instead of acknowledging them for what they are, sick patients in desperate need of deep psychological and emotional healing, they have even more suffering heaped upon them by classing them as criminals!!
Ya we all love having those borders open?
horribly enough it shows the kind of reality... but has nothing to do with a documentary.
sorry but it's bullshit, doesn't address the core problem. this only victimize the average Joe.
Look at it, demand meets the supply nobody addresses how it got to this point...
The lowest point of it is to blame it on China or Mexico, BS It's not a documentary pure Propaganda. The guy it's just an Idiot not a reporter...
In some Canadian cities, groups are offering to test fentanyl potency for users at street level which seems to be helping somewhat...not a solution but it may stop the deaths until users can get help.
In USA, I heard some police departments are offering to test for potency as a desperate measure to slow the death rate....
Sadly, an option is to have the Govt. distribute regulated heroin , needles and an antidote. It would probably reduce the death rate.