The Pharmacists Mission to End the Opioid Epidemic

until april 14 1989

i was living american dream i happily

married

son and my daughter nice cars went on

vacations

we had a 17-foot christmas tree every

year uh

you know people call this the griswolds

until that fateful morning at 2 a.m

okay our lives changed forever there was

a loud knock at the door

okay police stepped into our house and

said sit down

okay they said i heard them say your

son’s been shot

i said what hospital is he at they said

no he’s dead

my wife screamed no she said he’s in his

room

his sister ran to his room she said he’s

not here

we then had a contemplate that our son

had died

while attempting to buy drugs how did

this happen

well we’re really good parents to lose

our son this way with the stigma

attached to drug use

we considered suicide okay

but we had to carry on uh we had a

daughter

uh we had a barrio son and we had to

there was a killer loose on the street

okay

we are not alone hundreds of families

have tragedy such as this and this loss

were on drugs

i initially lost my faith in god

but later we would cling to our faith

and after our son’s funeral we met with

the new orleans police

to offer support and help

we quickly realized that his the stigma

of his drug use

was making him a criminal along with his

killer

okay motivating these police was going

to be difficult

if not impossible i then bargained with

god

if you can help me get this killer off

the street and no one gets hurt

i will go on a mission for you i had

changed

we had to do something to prevent these

tragedies

and we were going to educate parents and

kids

i walked the streets in dangerous areas

putting up posters

and questioning anybody who would listen

my wife family and friends

warned against me doing this on sunday

we went to churches

and asked them to pray for us and help

us

i met a reverend who walked the streets

along with some drug addicts

with the offer support and uh protection

okay i did everything i i wound up

taping the police

uh uh taping witnesses and i even take

my own family

uh the tape recorder became my friend

about five months in the little the

police had

done they had ruined just about any

chance of making a prosecution

i was asked by my wife to give it up i

said i would in 30 days

okay i went to my son’s grave where my

mother was buried with him

it was her birthday september 1st i

prayed to god and my son

to let me accept giving up or else get a

breakthrough

i went home and i made cold calls on the

last call a lady picked up

and she said i saw it all okay i i

know the killer i had babysitting i knew

his mother

okay she named the young man that the

police had told me was a witness

after eight months of investigating more

investigating an effort to get her to

testify

she did he pled guilty we got some

justice

she’s the real hero she took the risk

and stepped up

i doubt if she hadn’t stepped up that

this story would be towed

she motivated me to take action to make

a difference

now it’s time for me to fulfill my

mission i started the schools educating

about

addiction through videos and speeches

however in my drugstore i saw something

frightening that was emerging people

were coming in with

high powered oxycontin prescriptions

most of these people were young

okay they reminded me of my son

it was almost always oxycontin and

always by the same doctor

i couldn’t look the other way somebody

had to stop this

i asked rason should i stop educating

and investigate

in january 2001 i got a sign from god to

pursue this doctor

okay my wife saw that sign so we went

out that night

and videotaped the office at two o’clock

in the morning

the new orleans police were on her

doorstep securing that office

i then went to the dea and fbi and they

resisted

the information that i was trying to

provide

i continued my investigation i left my

job

but eventually the fbi said you have to

stop you’re interfering with our

investigation

you know how could i stop kids were

dying

eventually i returned to work and uh

it was horrible i attended funerals of

those who overdosed and died

i had a drive through the trees at a

tunnel of trees near my work

that i designated the tunnel of hope

after providing the prosecutor with

videos tapes and information

he told me that the medical board

wanted to summarily suspend her he said

they needed a smoking gun

days later a young girl walked into our

store

and her mother followed and she was

carrying four prescriptions for that

young girl

and one of them was oxycontin 80

milligrams okay

i looked at this and i thought to myself

jesus these grips

this grip here would kill this girl if

she took it

and so uh i actually questioned the

mother

and i uh we copied the prescriptions

and then i uh and then the mother

actually took the scripts

and left okay so then i i i

knew that i was gonna have to get the

doctor

to uh admit that she wrote these

prescriptions okay so i

i called the doctor and put her on a

speakerphone i said

doctor did you write this prescription

for this young girl and she said you’re

effing right i did

okay and then i asked i said well doctor

i said uh

but i think the dose on this thing would

kill this young girl

she said who made you an effing doctor

okay

and so uh when i think back on it i

think that was the smoking gun

because we presented this information to

the medical board

they summarily suspended her and she

would never practice again

she tried to appeal at the deposition

her attorney asked me

he said mr snyder what would you have

done how much would you have spent to

persecute this doctor

i thought about it i said what’s a life

worth he said no mr snyder you don’t get

to ask the questions here

i said that wasn’t a question that was

my answer

but you know the problem is bigger than

just this one doctor

okay in this one town next i set my

sights on purdue former maker of

oxycontin

i talked to a pharmacist vice president

at purdue

and suggested that they add naloxone to

oxycon

creating something called oxycontin nx

another company had done this and it

made it a lot less deadly

okay but she said they’re really weren’t

concerned

about overdoses but they’d actually work

on that problem

okay actually years later they

would create a deterrent version okay

but only it took them eight years to

develop it and they only did it because

their power their their patent was

expiring it was all about the money

so again eight years later okay after

hundreds of thousands of deaths

okay purdue continued on pain clinics

were popping up everywhere

other doctors chimed in and uh you know

the problem just continued continued to

get worse

40 50 60 000 deaths a year sad

but how do we stop this so slow it

gathering support

with the police and the government of

issues we established a pain clinic

moratorium

a pain clinic regulation law and a

prescription monitoring program to stop

doctor shopping

april 14 2004 five years later

after my son’s death i started writing

articles in the newspaper

i’d had enough i got to try to get the

message across

okay i would educate about drugs

and i would make people aware of the

problem and what we can do about

it and so i uh i called it an epidemic

okay i started hosting town halls i

wanted to develop a local

movement to to to bring about uh

pressure on the politicians so that we

could affect change and reduce the

problem

okay i uh in

2005 i gave a proposal to a senator

uh to tax the opioids to to provide for

for treatment in recovery

and this this senator said you know the

reason why we’re not getting any action

on this

is because not enough people are dying

and that hurt because in our community

i knew that only one-third of the

overdose deaths were being reported

parents because of the stigma didn’t

want to admit that their child died by

overdose

then in late august of 2005

i was putting together a town hall where

we could actually register people for

this movement

and then katrina hit

my life changed okay my

house had 10 feet of water but my videos

and my tapes survived by just inches

and i had to rebuild my life okay but

still

while i would drive to work i would

drive through those trees and i would

pray

and i was driving through what i knew

was the tunnel of hope

in 2012 ods had exceeded

traffic fatalities to combat this

i reconnected with the saint bernard

sheriff

newly elected okay he had also had a son

that had

some addiction issues and so we had

something in common and in fact

he had actually when my son was murdered

he had been my emissary to try to help

my family

uh through that struggle and uh and

and now we got together and we formed

what we call a saint bernard community

coalition

then all of a sudden in 2015

i turned 65 i had my first grandchild

my god my wife said please retire

we have to focus on our family

so i said okay i will all right

and sadly another thing happened

during that interval where i was people

say retired the sheriff’s son

that uh had his addiction had actually

been found dead in his pickup truck

of an overdose not far from where my son

was murdered in his pickup truck then in

late 2017

i was approached by a guy named jed

lipinski

he was a reporter for the townspikeyou

nola.com

okay he uh he wanted to do

an article on on the opiate situation

what they were finally calling the

opiate epidemic

jed contacted leaders in our community

he also contacted the medical board

uh concerning the opiate story okay they

all said you got to talk to dan

schneider he was a pharmacist that was

all over this

after months of research and interviews

jed

uh finished the story it came out in the

tom speaker young nolan.com

titled justice for danny it was a big

hit

okay comments of a appreciation came

from everywhere

netflix picked it up and produced the

pharmacist

uh in february of 2020 and it was

mentioned in time magazine

we will compete with big pharma not with

money but with people power

okay we are bringing together advocacy

members

okay millions who are in treatment and

recovery family members of those who

have lost loved ones

and uh who are struggling with addiction

uh and also

parents who say my child might be next

okay

and then millions of parents and

grandparents and

brothers and sisters who have lost loved

ones in the past

20 years since my son died

what will we do with this power what

will we ask for

okay we are now looking at the portugal

model which prioritizes

uh well spending on uh

treatment as opposed to incarceration

okay

uh we need to shift the dollars that we

spend

from incarceration and enforcement to

education prevention

research and and uh recovery

they have reduced overdose deaths by 90

percent

while in america we have increased hours

by 400 percent

we need to jail the drug dealers and

treat the users

oregon just voted on and passed an

americanized version

of decriminalization similar to that of

portugal’s

with god’s help i hope to fulfill that

mission that i imagined in my dream

okay a national movement and the opiate

and addiction pandemic

in 2001 i named my mission and nonprofit

tunnel of hope after the trees that i

drove through while praying for

solutions

people joining the pharmacist people’s

lobby become

light at the end of that tunnel