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Opioids - Business & Addiction - Part 2: Gold Rush

February 13, 2026

Purdue Pharma earned billions with OxyContin. The company also triggered a race, as dozens of pharmaceutical companies rushed into the market. One was Insys, which sold fentanyl, a drug fifty times stronger than heroin.

A hand holds a medical spray can in front of a woman's open mouth and sprays a medication under her tongue. The chemical formula for fentanyl is visible in the foreground of the image, superimposed on this scene.
Image: Seventine
Sarah Fuller was a victim of the criminal distribution of fentanyl. Her dose was increased without her consent. Image: Seventine

Profit was gained by any means necessary - from strippers seducing doctors to bribery, insurance fraud and massive dose increases without the consent of patients. Some did not survive.

Image: Seventine

In Florida, unscrupulous profiteers opened pain clinics that turned out to be "pill mills” - legal hubs for drugs. Chris George, head of the largest network, cynically reports on the system that made him rich before he spent 11 years in prison.

Image: Seventine

But by the end of the 2010s, the party was over: the justice system put a stop to the legal trade. Pharmacies stopped selling opioids. But the pills did not disappear. Mexican drug cartels took over the business. Members of the Sinaloa cartel explain in the documentary how they copied the methods of US pharmaceutical companies. To this day, they continue to flood the streets of America with fentanyl.
 

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