Opioid Crisis & Netflix’s ‘The Pharmacist’: Newspaper Story Is Better

You should really experience the story of Dan Schneider, the Louisiana pharmacist who solved his own son’s murder at the hands of a crack dealer and shortly thereafter helped to shut down a “pill mill” that was flooding the area with OxyContin in the early stages of the opioid epidemic.

But you have two options for doing so. One is The Pharmacist, the new Netflix series that lasts about three and a half hours in total. The other is “Justice for Danny,” the 2017 article from the New Orleans Times-Picayune (now the New Orleans Advocate/Times-Picayune) that the documentary is based on, which you can read in maybe half an hour. As a print journalist with a soft spot for local papers, I’m proud to say the latter is the better use of your time.

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Robert VerBruggen

Robert VerBruggen is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

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You should really experience the story of Dan Schneider, the Louisiana pharmacist who solved his own son’s murder at the hands of a crack dealer and shortly thereafter helped to shut down a “pill mill” that was flooding the area with OxyContin in the early stages of the opioid epidemic.

But you have two options for doing so. One is The Pharmacist, the new Netflix series that lasts about three and a half hours in total. The other is “Justice for Danny,” the 2017 article from the New Orleans Times-Picayune (now the New Orleans Advocate/Times-Picayune) that the documentary is based on, which you can read in maybe half an hour. As a print journalist with a soft spot for local papers, I’m proud to say the latter is the better use of your time.