Editor’s Note: Darren Foster is an Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker and journalist. His latest documentary, “American Pain,” about twin brothers Chris and Jeff George who ran one of the nation’s largest pill mills, premieres at 9 p.m. ET February 5 on CNN. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
CNN
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In September 2022, a 15-year-old girl was found dead of an overdose in the bathroom of Helen Bernstein High School, which sits in the shadow of Netflix’s shiny headquarters in Hollywood and a couple of miles from my home.
After more than a decade covering the opioid epidemic, I’m admittedly a bit emotionally calloused when hearing about overdoses, but the story of Melanie Ramos got to me.
About a week after her death, the Los Angeles Times reported that Ramos was one of at least seven teenagers in the Los Angeles Unified School District who had overdosed from possible fentanyl-laced pills that month. Across the nation, there has recently been an alarming increase in the overdose mortality rate among teens, a shameful sign that we’re failing yet another generation as the opioid crisis enters its third decade.
A further reminder of just how poorly we’ve managed the crisis can be found in the details of the drugs found when they arrested the boy they allege sold the pill that resulted in Ramos’ death. The Los Angeles Police Department chief described finding what were believed to be counterfeit “crude blue M30 pills” containing fentanyl.
In recent years, these counterfeit pills have been flooding across the southwest border by the millions, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, and fentanyl is the primary force behind an increase in overdose deaths.
For those who have witnessed the evolution of the opioid crisis, the cartels’ latest marketing scheme feels either like a cruel joke or some twisted homage to the players who gave birth to the market they now seem to control.
According to the DEA, the counterfeit M30s are fashioned after a generic 30-milligram oxycodone pill manufactured by Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals.
Mallinckrodt may not be a household name like Purdue Pharma, which patented and marketed OxyContin, but it…
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