The Young Turks network has launched a new documentary and television group and their
first film is about to premiere at the South by South film festival. Next week, the film
is called The Oxy Kingpins' and it tells the story of how opioids helped, basically spread
throughout the entire country. Alex Dimattio is the focus of the film with his personal
experience driving the narrative to tell us the story. Also featured in the movie is our
own Mike Papantonio host of America's Lawyer. This documentary and the others that will
be coming forward from TYT help to tell stories that the corporate media has continued to
ignore, stories that would otherwise not get told. So let's go now to Alex. Alex, tell
us about how the opioid crisis has impacted you personally, and how your experiences shaped
this documentary. The opioid crisis, the impact. I, uh, I wound
up doing five years in federal prison, so that was, uh, that was the end of the impact.
I, I grew up in the beginning of it. So from 99 til 06, I was there from the, I guess the
very beginning of it. On top of that, I was addicted to the pills for awhile and, so I
know every aspect of it. So what's, what's your role that's featured
in this film? What do we see you do throughout this film?
I mean, I guess, for lack of a better word, I'm the, I'm the kingpin. I'm the guy, well,
I mean, the Kingpin of the people who actually own the companies that made this, but I was
the one that was depicted as the Kingpin. I, I ran a crew back then and, uh, we brought
Oxycontin from Miami to Boston and Connecticut. So essentially that's what we've heard about
the, the Oxy express, right? Going all up and down that Eastern seaboard there.
Yeah, that was us. So we've, we've seen the opioid litigation,
you know, sweep headlines over the past couple of years, but this film isn't actually focused
on the drug manufacturers. So tell us about the distributors because that's, that's really
where this film is, is focusing, is not on the, the makers, but on the distributors.
My interaction, the way, the way we got these pills was through all the pharmacies. Um,
and it was either through fake prescriptions through some of them and then it was others
where there was a pain management clinic connected to the pharmacy. And then, uh, all those were
just pharmacies that were just cashing any script. So, I mean, it's, that was my, that's
my interaction with the distributors is just pharmacies, pharmacies and their technicians.
So, how did you get approached for this film? How did you end up being the focal point here?
I am now sober and, um, we run a meeting in our, in my store. So one of the, one of our
friends just said he was doing a documentary for it, and we started talking and then as
the conversation got deeper, we reached out to some of the guys I used to work with and
we put together my old crew. And so it just slowly built that way.
Well, I did want to get your, your take on something here, because right now we're about
a year into this pandemic, a year into the lockdown, people are feeling stressed, they're
feeling disconnected. You know, does any of that, do you think, you know, that is affecting
the rate of opioid use here in the United States with, with everything going on with
this pandemic? I do feel that access to it was trimmed down
a lot, but, um, yeah, I wouldn't, the pandemic is not a drug addicts friend. I mean, the
only thing that possibly could have happened is that the supply chain could got messed
up. But other than that, the worst thing you want to do for a drug addict is just give
them idle time with nothing to do. Absolutely. I mean, that's, you know, it's,
it's, it's a recipe for disaster too, but that's why as a country here, you know, we,
we saw a little bit of it. You know, the Trump administration started working on their, their
opioid programs, hoping to make a dent in this. So far as far as I have seen, we haven't
seen any real, I guess, conversations about it from the current Biden administration,
but hopefully we do. You know, we, we have a lot of people going through a lot of suffering
right now and unfortunately that creates this environment where you're looking for an easy
escape and, and far too many times turning to something, something like opioids can be
that escape. Alex Dimattio, the film is The Oxy Kingpins'. It premieres next Tuesday at
the South by Southwest film festival. Thank you very much for talking with us, Alex.
Thanks for having me.