Australians are among the world's biggest consumers of ecstasy, but where does MDMA actually come from? This investigation follows the drug from clandestine laboratories and chemical suppliers to international trafficking networks and the people who consume it. Travelling from Australia to the Netherlands, reporters examine MDMA production, precursor chemicals, the dark web, and the criminal networks supplying the global market. The investigation also explores Dutch drug policy and harm reduction, revealing a very different approach to drug education while examining the risks surrounding one of the world's most popular party drugs.
What can the United States learn from Canada’s approach to the overdose crisis? ABC7 News reporter Tara Campbell travels to British Columbia to examine harm reduction and the services designed to keep people who use drugs alive and connected to care. Through personal stories and expert perspectives, the documentary explores supervised consumption, fentanyl, homelessness, trauma, stigma, and barriers to treatment. It also looks inside Insite, North America’s first legally sanctioned supervised consumption site, while examining the broader debate over whether similar approaches could help communities struggling with overdose in the United States.
Fentanyl has transformed Ontario’s opioid crisis, affecting people who use drugs, families, healthcare workers, law enforcement, and communities across the province. This three-part series combines personal stories with expert perspectives to examine fentanyl, prescription opioid addiction, overdose, and the challenges people face when seeking treatment. It also explores harm reduction, public education, law-enforcement responses, and efforts to prevent further deaths. Along the way, people directly affected by addiction share their experiences, showing why understanding the crisis requires looking beyond the drug itself to the people and circumstances behind it.
Parents who lost their children to fentanyl share deeply personal stories of addiction, overdose, and grief as the crisis takes a growing toll on young people in Fresno, California. Alongside their experiences, medical professionals, law enforcement, and frontline workers discuss the dangers of fentanyl and the challenges of responding to overdoses within their communities. The film also examines how substance use can remain hidden from families until it is too late, while emphasizing the need for greater awareness, education, and support for young people and their parents.
Through personal stories and community perspectives, the film examines the stigma surrounding addiction and the damage caused by shame, judgment, and misunderstanding. People in recovery, health-care professionals, law enforcement, and advocates discuss prescription opioids, heroin, overdose, and the barriers that can prevent people from seeking treatment. It also explores decriminalization and different approaches to recovery while challenging the idea that addiction is simply an individual problem, asking communities to reconsider how people with substance use disorders are treated and what meaningful support should look like.
Fentanyl has transformed the overdose crisis in St. Louis, where the synthetic opioid has become a leading contributor to drug-related deaths. Through people in recovery, families, advocates, and treatment professionals, the film explores the human impact of fentanyl while examining where the illicit supply comes from and how the opioid crisis reached this point. It also looks at medications for opioid use disorder, naloxone, relapse, racial disparities in overdose deaths, and local efforts to expand treatment and recovery support throughout the community.
Canada’s toxic drug crisis is examined through families who have lost loved ones, people who use drugs, frontline workers, and harm-reduction advocates. The program looks at the growing presence of fentanyl in the unregulated drug supply and visits overdose prevention and drug-checking services working to reduce deaths. Produced for an Australian audience, it also considers what Canada’s experience could mean for Australia as debates continue around supervised consumption, safer supply, decriminalization, treatment, and how governments should respond to an increasingly unpredictable drug supply.
This documentary traces New York City's opioid drug history from the late 1800s to the present day, exploring how changing attitudes toward opioids have shaped addiction, medical treatment, public policy, and criminalization over generations. Through historical accounts, expert interviews, and personal stories, journalist Christopher Booker examines the recurring patterns that have defined each wave of the opioid crisis, culminating in today's unprecedented fentanyl epidemic.
This documentary explores how Orange County, Florida has responded to the opioid crisis through the experiences of people in recovery, grieving families, healthcare professionals, law enforcement, and community organizations. Alongside personal stories of addiction, overdose, and recovery, it examines the role of prescription opioids, heroin, and fentanyl in the evolving epidemic while highlighting the collaborative efforts being made to reduce stigma, expand treatment, and save lives.
This documentary explores the open-air drug market in Kensington, Philadelphia, through the perspective of local outreach worker Buddy Osborn. As he guides Peter Santenello through the neighbourhood, he discusses the devastating impact of addiction, drug trafficking, and public disorder on residents, families, and especially children growing up in the community. The film also highlights the work of grassroots organizations providing outreach, treatment referrals, and support while examining the difficult balance between compassion, accountability, recovery, and public policy.
