By Kirby Adams | Louisville Courier Journal
An in-depth documentary that sheds new light on how the opioid crisis has impacted America — including in Louisville — will soon make its television debut.
On Sunday, investigative journalist Darren Foster’s acclaimed documentary, “American Pain,” airs at 9 p.m. on CNN.
The film follows the deep reporting of Foster, who ended up in Greenup County, Kentucky, in 2009 while working on a story about prescription drug abuse.
“The sheriff in Greenup opened a desk draw in his office that was full of pill bottles with an address for American Pain, a clinic in Florida,” Foster remembers. “He believed that the majority of opioid drugs coming into Kentucky at that time were being driven up from that location in Florida. So I took a drive.”
Told through undercover surveillance video, gripping phone tap audio and interviews with nearly every major player who profited from Florida’s “pill mills” or worked to take them down, “American Pain” is a riveting account of the rise and fall of Floridians Chris and Jeff George, identical twins who are believed to be America’s most prolific opioid kingpins.
“The George brothers were the biggest players among a colorful cast of characters who made millions during Florida’s pill mill boom,” Foster said. “Together with their trusty suppliers — a pharmaceutical industry pumping out billions of powerful and addictive pills — they fueled the worst drug epidemic in American history.”
In “American Pain,” Foster documents how the George brothers were able to traffic more than $500 million in opioid pills, and with their drug driven fortune, lead opulent lives that included multiple homes, sports cars, boats and beautiful women.
The illegal fairytale came crashing down in spectacular form in the mid-2000s, all of which is documented in heart-pounding detail in Foster’s film.