‘Warning: This Drug May Kill You’
Alex Gibney’s two-part, four-hour-long documentary on the opioid epidemic premieres on HBO Max on May 10, but this 2017 doc on the same channel focuses on the more personal aspect of this horrific national addiction. Clocking in at just under an hour, Warning: This Drug May Kill You follows individual families as they tell the harrowing stories of loved ones who were prescribed this legitimate drug for everyday pain relief, and never found a way out. This heartbreaking journey collides with the current spotlight on the Sackler family, which unleashed OxyContin pain killers on an unsuspecting public and blatantly misrepresented its addictive properties–all while making billions of dollars in sales. A reminder of how anyone can be pulled into the spiral of addiction, as well as how greed got the better of the pharmaceutical community, these tales may help us all better come to terms with this devastating epidemic.