TELUS released the first installment of its new TELUS Health Originals documentary series, a heartbreaking look at the public health emergency devastating North America through a new documentary: Painkiller: Inside the Opioid Crisis. Available on YouTube and on the TELUS Optik TV Healthy Living Network on channel 346 in western Canada, the film illustrates how the ravages of opioids are felt far beyond heavy drug users revealing how they are now devastating families and communities across every race, gender and socio-economic status.
Directed by award-winning filmmaker, Matthew Embry (Living Proof), the documentary takes an inside look at this complex epidemic fueled by legal and illegal activity, exacerbated by well-intentioned drug policies and annihilated by fentanyl. Featuring interviews with every day families who share their personal stories of how their lives have been devastated by the opioid crisis, this film sheds light on a topic that knows no bounds of discrimination and initiates necessary conversations to help remove the stigma of addiction. In 2017, there were nearly 4,000 opioid-related deaths in Canada. Between January and March 2018 alone, 73% of accidental apparent opioid-related deaths involved fentanyl, compared to 54% in 2016 and 72% in 2017.
Painkiller: Inside the Opioid Crisis features interviews with frontline responders, border services and addiction specialists who share their perspective on the underlying problem of the ongoing opioid crisis and try to answer the question: how can our society treat pain without causing more?
The film can be viewed in English on YouTube and the TELUS Optik TV Healthy Living Network on channel 346 in western Canada; a French subtitled version of the film will be released on YouTube in the coming months.
To help fight the opioid crisis, TELUS will donate $5 for every view of the documentary, up to $50,000, to organizations providing critical care to those impacted, such as TELUS Health for Good, our Mobile Health Clinics providing primary healthcare to over 30,000 homeless Canadians.
For more and to watch, visit: www.telus.com/painkiller