Documentary series The Pharmacist is now streaming on Netflix
Louisiana pharmacist Dan Schneider investigates the murder of his son while also uncovering an opioid pandemic among local teenagers in Netflix’s newest documentary The Pharmacist, now streaming.
For many years, Netflix has featured ample documentary series profiling the stories and minds of murderers–or alleged murderers–from Making a Murderer (2016) and The Keepers (2017), to I Am a Killer (2018) and The Ted Bundy Tapes (2019). But the recently released docu-series The Pharmacist, now streaming on Netflix, focuses on a father from Louisana who attempted to solve his son’s murder and, at the same time, end a secret opioid pandemic in his home town.
Long-time pharmacist Dan Schneider lives in St. Bernard Parish just outside of New Orleans. In 1999, Dan’s teenage son was shot and killed while buying drugs and, in 2001, Dan solved the case by taking investigative matters into his own hands.
While his son’s murder is the backbone of the series, during the two years he spent trying to solve the case, Dan also uncovered and exposed a corrupt pharmacist who was abusing her license to sell opioids to teenagers.
As the series follows Dan’s recordings with community members and officials about his son’s murder, it also highlights how a local pharmacist risked everything to take down what became known as the “Pill Mill” and save his community from suffering the same fate as his son.
The Pharmacist is a welcomed change to the Netflix arsenal of true-crime documentaries. Getting into the minds of killers certainly has an edge and took the streaming service by storm for many years. But now, The Pharmacist brings a welcomed change to Netflix, taking a more community-oriented and family-focused approach to the grizzly subject of drugs and those who are killed because of them.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, while the misuse of all prescription opioids among 12th graders has dropped dramatically in the past 15 years–from 9.6 percent in 2002 to 2.0 percent in 2017–drug overdose deaths and opioid-involved deaths continue to increase in the United States. Deaths from drug overdose are up among both men and women, all races, and adults of nearly all ages.
With the opioid and drug crisis in the U.S. being far from resolved, Netflix’s The Pharmacist is here to shed an eye-opening light on the broad reach of drug abuse, the licensed individuals who sell them on the sly, and the community members who are willing to do anything to save the kids in harm’s way.