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