Points is delighted to welcome Christopher Booker, journalist, special correspondent and producer for PBS NewsHour & Weekend program, about his recent documentary, New York City's Opioid Drug History: A Relentless Cycle. The documentary is available through PBS Thirteen.
What inspired you to make New York City’s Opioid Drug History?
This film was the result of an interview about harm reduction. In 2022, I produced a short video series and a 30-minute podcast for WNET/PBS about the way New York was expanding its harm reduction tactics following the allocation of millions of federal dollars from the Biden administration. This included the widespread distribution of the overdose reversing drug Naloxone to the expansion of needle exchange programs. Meeting with a broad group of people - from the states Office of Addiction Services and Supports, to researchers, to the police and individuals in recovery - the series was an attempt to understand how, if it all, Harm Reduction might help help the city and state turn the tide on a relentlessly tragic situation. As part of that, I met NYU professor Don DesJarlais. Professor DesJarlais has long been a leader in the field of Aids and injection drug use. I was speaking with him in order to understand where this current moment may fit within the history of use in NYC. As we were wrapping up, he mentioned some of his earliest work - an oral history project called Addicts Who Survived that he coauthored with David Courtwright and Herman Joseph. The book was a compilation of interviews with some of NYC’s longtime addicts…and there were audio tapes. The interviews are extraordinary and paint of picture that extends well beyond what I had long believed…opioid use disorder was nothing knew…and the city’s relationship started well before/
Can you provide us with a brief summary of the documentary?
Pain relief drugs in the form of opioids have a long history in New York City, where they were introduced as unregulated medicine: doctors began prescribing morphine pills to housewives in the 1880s. New York City's Opioid Drug History: A Relentless Cycle explores the city’s history with opioids – from plant-based morphine, opium and heroin to lab-produced drugs like fentanyl –and just where this current crises fits in the city’s history.
Describe your research process for New York City’s Opioid Drug History, particularly how you engaged with primary (archival) and secondary (monographs and articles) sources.
This was a team lift…the film was written and directed by me, but not possible without producer Mori Rothman and producer/researcher Sheila Kumar. Start to finish, the process took just six weeks, but started with Sheila spending an intense week creating a rapid research brief. From there, we plotted our characters and started searching for archival material. We had a quick production schedule, so as Mori and I were out filming the interviews, Sheila was chasing the archival material. Once we were done filming, Mori and I tackled the edit.
What was your favorite discovery (document, story, or fact) from your research?
I have so much respect for Don DesJarlais and David Courtwright. Their oral history work is such a gift - and provides so much insight into the city and perhaps more importantly, the human brain’s unrelenting appetite for drugs. Additionally, Professor DesJarlais work in the early 80’s - helping to recognize the connection between HIV infection and needle sharing - invariably helped save countless lives.
The concept of cycles in American drug policy was arguably first put forth by the legendary drug historian David Musto, and it has since been reiterated by many in the field (including me!) More recently, scholars have begun to call this framing into question. Can you explain why you chose to tell the story of New York City’s opioid drug history as a “relentless cycle”?
Hmm…that’s tricky…I can’t help see it as a cycle…with ebbs and flows….truth be told, I wanted people to recognize that in some ways, we have been here before…and we need to recognize and learn from our past experiences….history may not repeat, but with drugs, it certainly rhymes.
You interviewed quite a few historians for this documentary! (David Courtwright, Nancy Campbell, David Herzberg, Samuel Kelton Roberts, Jonathan Jones, to name a few…) What did you learn from recording so many different perspectives on drug history and New York City?
Just as above really. It seems the baseline appetite for opioids has never really changed…but our response is political…and often crafted to treat the symptoms and not the disease. While there are many reasons for this, I do believe messaging plays a critical role, but this can be very, very difficult to change. Recently, 60 minutes ran a piece about Fentanyl….U.S. "losing a generation" to fentanyl as agents fight Mexican cartels supplying the drug, DEA head says The report profiles a grieving mother and father…whose son died from a mixture of drugs that included fentanyl. The junior in college was home for Thanksgiving break and had purchased some cocaine, which - seemingly unbeknownst to him - included fentanyl. There was a quote from the mother that really struck me though…and I think sheds light on how difficult policy is for our country…she said the following: “We were so naive to fentanyl. We thought fentanyl, you hear about it, but you think 'Oh that's just affecting people on the streets, homeless people, drug addicts.' No. It is so insidious.” I have such immense sympathy for this family and what they are going through, but the truth of the situation is, it is (and really always has) been affecting all of us - regardless of geography. I don’t know how we can all get on board though…
Do you have any suggestions for how alcohol, drug, and pharmacy historians might use New York City’s Opioid Drug History in the classroom?
Widely… :) There is obviously so much more to the story, but hopefully this quick history serves as a helpful inspiration for bigger brains…
If you could make a sequel to this documentary, what would it be titled and what would you include?
I would love to create a follow up that looks at the history of narcotic enforcement. From policy to media, how enforcement changes…and what this does or does not do to our appetites. This has been researched extensively, but I believe we could create a talking head documentary with a vast repository of archival materials that might help fill out a compelling history. From Harry Anslinger to Ice-T, drug enforcement in America includes a disparate set of characters. Why would I want to make this? Well I think the enforcement game is going through the most dramatic rethink since prohibition…while I believe this is driven in part by the scale of the consumption crises, I think the arrival of synthetics is particularly difficult to disrupt…organic opioids - those grown from poppy….is a huge ordeal…you need land, water, transport and more importantly, people. Given the scale of the operation…there are many entry points for enforcement. With Synthetics, raw materials from China make its way two guys in a lab in Canada or Mexico and then cross a border where 60 minutes reports that only 8% of cars are searched….. …..As for a title….hmm….any suggestions?