Heroin addiction in the USA

In East Liverpool, Ohio, police officer Jacob Talbott fights a ferocious battle against drug dealers and illegal narcotics. Every day, overdoses plague the community, and on his patrols, Officer Talbott finds former schoolmates turned addicts. Drugs have destroyed the community, and entire regions are being inundated with opioids like heroin and designer drugs such as fentanyl. In a documentary produced by DW-Reporter, Alexandra von Nahmen accompanies the police on the front lines of America’s war on drugs.

The opioid epidemic is a phenomenon ravaging the country, affecting millions of Americans, especially those in the rural white middle classes. The abuse of drugs claimed the lives of over 64,000 people in 2016 alone, which meant that more than twenty people per 100,000 died drug-related deaths. Through the documentary, Alexandra von Nahmen rides with East Liverpool’s police officers as they struggle to contain the opioid epidemic ravaging the community.