The Atlantic

<em>Warning: This Drug May Kill You</em> Offers a Close-Up of the Opioid Epidemic

The HBO documentary by Perri Peltz looks at four families devastated by addiction to prescription pills.
Source: HBO

The most affecting and enraging moment in Warning: This Drug May Kill You, an documentary about the opioid crisis that airs on HBO Monday, is its opening montage, spliced together from camera-phone footage. Scene after scene shows addicts nodding off, collapsing onto the ground, or being revived by paramedics. In one case, the most heartbreaking, a woman lies motionless on the floor of the toy aisle in a grocery store while a toddler tugs at her arm and wails inconsolably.

The sequence is followed by clips from a

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