The Pharmacist on Netflix - Watch It

I finished watching this last night and if you haven’t watched it, I strongly recommend it.

It’s a documentary, and it’s four episodes each about one hr. It focuses on Dan Schneider, a pharmacist in St. Bernard Parish. Apparently, Mr. Schneider made news in NOLA a few times, but I was unaware of anything about him until this documentary.

His son was murdered during a crack deal in the Lower 9th Ward in the late 90s. The NOPD was disinterested in finding the killer and the neighborhood wasn’t saying anything. He knocked on doors in the 9th Ward to solve it.

Mr. Schneider had never really considered drug addiction as something that touched his profession before. After the crime involving his son was solved, he started trying to get back to life.

He went back to work. In the early 2000s He started noticing that he was filling prescriptions for OxyContin to very young people and went on a crusade against pill mills and the opiate epidemic in his son’s memory. This was probably 15 years before it became a constant topic of conversation.

It was very well done. It literally and figuratively hit very close to home.

It made me think (and I believe I’ve mentioned this before on PT), that if I ever ran for office, treatment of mental illness and addiction would be my pet issue. There’s so much opportunity for actual and good government action on this topic- in terms of law enforcement and public health. I wish we would work it out.

This issue is why the homelessness crisis in lefty coast land pisses me off so much. And New Orleans for that matter (there’s a freaking tent city under the interstate right in downtown). These people aren’t living under bridges and shitting on the street because they can’t afford a house. They’re living there because they’re drug addicts and these cities are enabling their disease by allowing this behavior to continue. If you’ve ever known or loved a drug addict, excusing addictive behavior is about the worst thing you can do for them. Drawing that line is hard as hell, but you have to do it for your own protection and theirs. Addicts are screaming at the top of their lungs for someone to do this.

Worse to me, is that these leftist idiots who are looking the other way while drug addicts are living in their parks and public spaces, are trying to score virtue signal points to get elected. They think they appear “compassionate” to these homeless addicts for failing to enforce the public laws designed for the protection of these addicts. Assholes. You aren’t doing them a favor by giving them a place to shoot up. You’re killing them slowly. And exploiting them for your own political gain and you make me want to vomit.

The crack epidemic decimated black American neighborhoods. It gave them drug addiction, crime, violence and misery. Prior to crack, these communities were a tinderbox of poverty and despair that crack just lit a match to. NOLA was wrecked and 30 plus years later still hasn’t recovered.

Opiates affected people of every race and socioeconomic status, and it has spread misery equally across the country. I had a divorce lawyer tell me over 10 yrs ago that most of the divorces in my generation and social class were related to opiate abuse.

This epidemic (unlike crack which has always been an illegal drug), was injected into American life by people and institutions who were ostensibly there to care for our health. To me, it makes it even more egregious than crack dealers making it in a kitchen somewhere or wherever you make crack, and it also made opiates more devastating than the crack epidemic was. It started with people who were in positions of trust. I cannot think of a more foul breach of trust than addicting someone to heroin.

I once deposed a “pain management doctor” (who I can only hope no longer has a license). I asked this woman why she refilled her patient’s prescriptions after they had been “stolen” on multiple occasions. She told me in this patronizing fricking smug tone that: “the point of the medication is to get patients addicted to it. Then we manage it.” I felt Physically sick.

I know we have some Trump haters on here, but I do love the fact that he’s at least explored some ways to address this situation. I firmly believe it’s because he lost a brother to addiction. It’s why he’s a teetotaler and a workaholic. He has compassion for the issue and knows letting people live in tents isn’t helping them.

But ultimately. I thank the good Lord for people like Dan Schneider (not to mention Chris the Purdue Pharmaceuticals Rep who is awesome and hilarious), who actually put themselves on the line to help their the people affected by this problem, and ultimately our community, state, and nation.

This is a way bigger problem than whether people get another kind of flu before the weather warms up.

And BTW - frick Purdue Pharmaceuticals. I hope you people go to jail. I hope my sexy unsexy old boyfriend files a RICO action on your arse and you go directly to jail and you die penniless in an orange jumpsuit.