This BBC program investigates the increasing number of opioid painkillers being prescribed at family doctor level, with one leading pain specialist now seeing patients at pain clinics on doses well above the amount believed to be effective. The rise in the use of these painkillers, which come from the same chemical family as heroin, could be putting these patients at higher risk of side effects - including addiction - with potentially little effect...

Prescription drug use in America has increased tenfold in the past 50 years, and over-the-counter drug use has risen just as dramatically. In addition to the dozens of medications we take to treat serious illnesses, we take drugs to help us sleep, to keep us awake, to keep our noses from running, our backs from aching, and our minds from racing. Name a symptom, there's a pill to suppress it. Modern drugs can be miraculously life-saving, and many illnesses...

Drawing comparisons to the Tuskegee syphilis atrocities, this program describes experiments performed at Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison over a period of decades, during which inmates were subjected to frequently dangerous medical procedures without their informed consent. The video explores connections between major pharmaceutical companies, an indigent and semi-literate prison population, and an ambitious dermatologist named Dr. Albert Kligman...

Young, privileged people are dying of overdoses in record numbers in Orange County, California. Many of these tragic deaths are from pain medication drugs like Opana, OxyContin and Hydrocodone. Kids are experimenting as young as age 10 and many find their first dose right in the family medicine cabinet. Is this phenomenon caused by online bullying and social networks? Peer pressure? Low self esteem? Is it easier to find drugs if you have money? And...

Chronicles America's more than twenty-year struggle with opioid addiction, from the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, through the spread of addiction in distressed communities in Central Appalachia, to the current national crisis.

Americans have come to accept that the accidental killing of innocent civilians, and soldiers because of friendly fire, is just one of the sad realities of war. But what if we were told that those ill-fated casualties were the direct result of relentless military drug pushing? In this damning investigation, award-winning journalist Jamie Doran explores the allegation that U.S. air crews are being fed amphetamine pills "like candy." The Pentagon introduces...

Taking a tour through the world of pharmaceuticals, this program reveals that drug advances have as much to do with serendipity as science-and that they frequently produce as many questions as solutions. Viewers learn about the shifting purposes behind some medicines-as in the case of Ritalin, which was designed to treat adult depression, and Viagra, the sexual benefits of which are actually a side effect. The film also asks why male contraceptives...

"A shocking, hilarious and strangely tender novel about a young woman's experiment in narcotic hibernation, aided and abetted by one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature. Our narrator has many of the advantages of life, on the surface. Young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, she lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like everything else, by her inheritance. But there is a vacuum at the heart...

The snack bowl at a "pharm party" includes a mix of prescription drugs-from Adderall to Oxycontin to Xanax-and most of them come directly from the household medicine cabinet. This ABC News program examines a disturbing and rapidly growing trend in teenage drug abuse: getting high on legal drugs, often obtained through parents' prescriptions or from questionable sources over the Internet. Presenting studies showing a rapid spike in pharmaceutical abuse...