The team behind hard-hitting drama Dopesick have described it as a warning to the world about the danger of opioids, after a big pharma company misleadingly marketed a powerful painkiller as less addictive than other opioid painkillers.
The thought-provoking series, which premiered on Hulu this month, follows the launch and later investigation into OxyContin from several different perspectives, including a small mining town and the boardrooms of Purdue Pharma.
The medication was aggressively sold to doctors with the claim that less than one percent of patients would become addicted, but this proved to be a complete falsehood and the effect has been devastating for the United States.
Dopesick includes a heartbreaking depiction of the damage caused by Purdue’s actions, focusing on miner Betsy (Kaitlyn Dever), who is first prescribed OxyContin after suffering a serious injury at work.