For 6 years, this theme has obsessed Netflix, and it continues in Merchants of Pain.

If you’re a Netflix subscriber and a regular user of what the platform has to offer, then you won’t miss this trend. In the space of a few months, there are three films and series that directly and indirectly relate to the opioid crisis that began in the United States in the mid-90s and has killed more than 600,000 people.

However, this is not the first time that Netflix has addressed this issue. Since 2017, 7 products on this topic have become available to subscribers. The first, Heroine(e), was even nominated for an Oscar.

This 40-minute documentary follows three American women, a fire chief, a judge and a charity leader, as they battle the opioid epidemic in their city.

The following year, in 2018, a new documentary was released. Entitled Boys in Recovery: Rehabilitation and Brotherhood, it takes us to the heart of the opioid epidemic, following four men who try to reinvent their lives and mend their relationships after years of addiction. A powerful and moving testimony showing the impact on the population of unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies.

Time to explore

But how did we get there? This is the question posed by the 2020 4-episode documentary series The Pharmacist. It focuses on the story of a Louisiana pharmacist who doesn’t stop posthumously to denounce the endemic corruption at the center of the opioid crisis. of his son. He gradually follows the trail and discovers that his former doctor has been bribed by pharmaceutical companies to prescribe painkillers.

In the same vein, the latest episode of the investigative series “Drug Business” focuses more specifically on oxycodone, one of the opiates that US authorities have been accused of.

A place for fiction

Fiction then took over to depict this unprecedented health crisis, from which certain countries, such as France, protected themselves. It was the non-Netflix production Dopesick that started the trend on the small screen in 2021.

Two years later, Painkiller, with Ouzo Aduba and Matthew Broderick, tells the same story about the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma and its controversial drug, Oxycontin. The family behind it, the Sacklers, would also be the inspiration for the horror series The Fall of the House of Usher.

But this is a movie that makes news today. Last week, Netflix added Merchants of Pain to its catalog, led by Emily Blunt and Chris Evans. This drama, which sometimes flirts with comedy, is inspired by a real story and clearly encodes the methods that pharmaceutical companies use to get rich.