The Pharmacist — a documentary about one man avenging his son by bringing a killer, a Doctor and a giant corporation to justice!
Small-town pharmacist and doting dad Dan Schneider, his wife, their daughter and their son Danny Jr. are an ideal picture of how families could be, they adore one another, each moment they spend together is pure bliss! And then one night, Danny Jr. is shot in a drug incident and the Schneiders’ world comes crashing down!
Unable to cope with why his seemingly perfect child would need drugs, Dan Schneider, a deeply religious and irritatingly perseverant man, makes it his life’s mission to reflect and act. So when the New Orleans Police Department meander dismissing Danny’s death as ‘possibly something that drug addicts deserve’, Dan sets out to find his son’s killer. He goes on to do everything within reach and beyond, things like dialling 50 new families, every single night, in the vicinity of the crime-scene, asking them if they knew anything that could help. Miraculously, he finds the killer and is shocked by who it is.
Happy but not content, Dan who works as a pharmacist, all of a sudden begins taking conscious note of every drug-related incident that occurs around him. He begins realizing that their pharmacy is selling a legally-prescribed opioid named OxyContin manufactured by one Purdue Pharma. OxyContin is not only deeply-addictive, it is resulting in the opioid-overdose deaths of hundreds of people, especially young boys and girls. Spurred by the memories of Danny, Dan makes it his focus to conduct advocacy and shut down the one Doctor that is giving out the most opioid prescriptions in his area — Dr Jacqueline Cleggett.
But he still isn’t done (“irritatingly perseverant”, remember?). He moves on to take on Purdue Pharma, a Company owned by the Sackler Family, worth 13 Billion Dollars, made largely from the sale of that one deadly OxyContin drug.
‘The Pharmacist’, a four-part documentary mini-series on Netflix is an extraordinary tale of one ordinary citizen’s maddeningly inspiring fight against multiple forces of evil. Working alone for years, painstakingly recording thousands of interactions he has with people, climbing an ever-changing plan of action step-by-painful-step, he single-handedly mobilizes the Police, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI, the Medical Board, the Judiciary, Schools and even ordinary people on the streets to first take on his son’s killer, then one murderous Doctor and then a gigantic death-raining corporation! Even his family is put off by his obsession but he is unrelenting, choosing to channelize his grief for his son into action that manifests in mammoth struggles of unforeseen proportions!
‘The Pharmacist’ is not the most engrossing documentary you’ll ever watch, the recent ‘Killer Inside — The Mind of Aaron Hernandez’ (also on Netflix) takes that cake. However for Dan’s sheer unrelenting audacity and commitment to avenge the loss of his son not with hate or violence but with justice, this is amongst the most inspiring pieces of content you shall watch.
Big credit to the makers for choosing to make this, for openly taking on behemoths, possibly at great personal risk and for doing all of this while retaining the craft that makes for engrossing viewing! Sitting in India and aspiring to make documentaries of my own, I cannot help but envy the width and depth of documentation available in the United States.
Dan first spoke out about the opioid epidemic in 2001, a decade before it was declared nationally. Since he began his private investigation, more than 4,00,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses. Multiple gigantic agencies combined couldn’t do what one man did by himself, a man spurred by the loss of his child and what better tribute could a father have given to his deceased child!
