October 25, 2017

Heroin's Children: Inside the US opioid crisis - Fault Lines

25 minutes

The United States is going through the worst drug crisis in its history. It now claims more lives than gun deaths, tears families apart - and shows no signs of abating.

As US President Donald Trump declares America's opioid crisis a "national emergency," Fault Lines looks at the "invisible victims" of the epidemic - a generation of children who are being neglected, abandoned or orphaned by parents addicted to heroin.

So, how is the opioid crisis shaping the next generation of Americans?

Josh Rushing travels to Chillicothe, a small Ohio town at the centre of the drug crisis, to meet a teenager who lost both her parents to drugs, a mother whose heroin addiction led her to overdose in front of her young son, a grandmother unexpectedly raising four granddaughters, pregnant women struggling with addiction, and police and firefighters responding to harrowing overdose scenes.

Heroin's Children: Inside the US opioid crisis - Fault Lines

25 minutes

The United States is going through the worst drug crisis in its history. It now claims more lives than gun deaths, tears families apart - and shows no signs of abating.

So, how is the opioid crisis shaping the next generation of Americans?