Alex Gibney, welcome to The Daily Social Distancing Show.
(chuckles) Thanks, Trevor.
Um, the last time you were on our show was in 2018,
and you were on with, um...
It was your documentary Dirty Money.
Now you are back with another documentary
about a topic that...
I-I can't even explain to you
how infuriating it makes me as a person
because, "A," of what was done to people,
"B," of what the ramifications have been,
and "C," why it feels like almost nothing
is going to happen in the way of justice.
And that is all about the opioid epidemic.
Tell me a little bit about your documentary.
It's a two-parter on HBO.
It's a two-part doc, four hours,
called The Crime of the Century.
And the reason I called it The Crime of the Century
and the reason I was interested in doing it
was it seemed like the opioid crisis
was being presented to us almost like a natural disaster,
like a hurricane or a flood.
As if it just happened.
Um, but upon examination,
it seems clear that it was manufactured.
Manufactured by a number of key corporations.
And so there's a crime there,
and, therefore, there are people to be held to account.
And, therefore, there are things that were done wrong
that hopefully get set right.
And what's really interesting in this story--
I didn't know some of these parts--
was how these drug companies, Purdue in particular,
said, "You know what? We're going to make sure
"we get these drugs to the people.
"We're going to trick everybody
"from the government through to the consumer
"and make sure that they take
as much of these pills as possible."
The question I have for you is
how on earth do they trick the FDA?
We got our hands on a document
that seems to indicate that, actually,
they got to a person inside the FDA.
It was actually the medical officer
examining the application.
And they turn him.
And, in fact, he cooperates with them
in terms of reviewing their own application.
-It's like... -Wow.
Um, and then, a year after leaving the FDA,
lo and behold, he gets a job with Purdue
for about... close to $400,000.
-Wow. -Uh, coincidence?
(chuckles): I think not.
This is one of the saddest crime stories for me
because it does not end with a sense of justice.
It does not end with a sense
of "the world is in a better place"
because the company itself doesn't suffer,
and neither does the family who's made all of the money.
That's right.
And, now, you're referring to Purdue.
Now, in a few rare occasions,
some executives have been committed
and have gone to prison.
In the case of Insys, for example.
But we see more often it's the mid-level dealers
who get nabbed.
Uh, the Walter Whites who get nabbed.
And the people at the tippy top,
the Sackler family, for example,
or the key executives at-at Purdue,
didn't do any time.
And it's worse than just them getting off scot-free.
We-we got our hands on a 120-page prosecution memo
which was prepared by federal prosecutors
that argued strongly that top executives at Purdue
should be charged with felonies.
Mysteriously, thanks to the intervention of people
like Rudy Giuliani and others,
a deal was cut at the Department of Justice,
and there was a bargain whereby Purdue would pay a fine,
the executives would plead guilty to misdemeanors.
They would never serve a day in prison.
Purdue would pay their fines.
And the most important thing was
that all the evidence that was collected
over the course of a four-year investigation would be buried.
-Wow. -And in the years after that decision happened,
hundreds of thousands of people died,
because nobody could see the damage done.
And, even worse, all--
uh, you know, a ton of other companies
then rush into the market.
They see that Purdue got off with a traffic ticket,
so now they're gonna rush into the market
and really exploit this opioid situation for their own profit.
When I saw that part of the documentary,
one of the things I found myself thinking was
it's amazing how, if you kill a person in America,
you-you can go away for the rest of your life.
But if you kill hundreds of thousands of people,
somehow, it's just a statistic.
-You know? -That's right.
And the ultimate irony on top of it is
they are now paying the fines
that they've been required to pay
not from their personal wealth
but rather by selling more opioids.
(laughs) Yes. You're referring to a recent decision,
um, by, um, the Department of Justice.
Another criminal admission of guilt by the Purdue company,
and Purdue agrees to pay an $8 billion fine.
You think, "Wow, that's great. $8 billion.
What a-- what a tremendous punishment."
And then you discover, oh, wait a minute,
Purdue Pharma is bankrupt.
The Sacklers have taken all their money out of the company.
And how are they gonna pay that $8 billion fine?
Well, it turns out,
the way to pay that fine, because Purdue is bankrupt,
is actually to sell more OxyContin.
(chuckles): How-- Who makes-- You-you can't make that up.
When you are-- when you're a filmmaker,
you're trying to tell us a story. You know?
That's what you do in all of your documentaries.
And-and, oftentimes, those stories
make people want to do something.
In this case,
I felt helpless.
I was like, "Well, I mean, the Justice--
"you know, the-the Justice Department did its thing.
Justice had run its course."
And yet there-there is no justice out there.
As a storyteller,
you're-you're shining a light on this.
But what would you hope that A) people can do
and B) people can change
in what we're experiencing in the world today?
Okay, so that's a really good question.
And the last thing I want to, um,
inculcate in people is a sense of hopelessness.
'Cause one of the things that I got out of this was that in--
as big as the opioid crime is--
500,000 people dead, you know, many peop--
millions of people addicted--
it pales in comparison to the larger problem,
which is...
the unholy mixture
of this turbo-charged 21st century capitalism
-and health care. -Mm-hmm.
Last time I read the Hippocratic Oath,
it didn't have anything to do with supply and demand
-or market share. -Mm-hmm.
It had to do with protect the patient, do no harm.
So I think all of us, as citizens,
have got to insist now and admit
that our-our health care system is broken
and we got to fix it.
We've got to rebuild it in a way
that it focuses on the health of patients,
rather than the profit motive of corporations
who are servicing it.
Well, I will say this-- hopefully,
I genuinely hope that as many people as possible watch this,
and that could be the catalyst for change
that so many people desperately need in this country.
Alex Gibney, thank you again for your time.
Thank you again for your work, I'll see you again on the show.
Great. Thanks, Trevor.