‘American Pain,’ Premiering on CNN Tonight, Documents Twin Brothers Who Became Florida’s Opioid Kingpins

deadline.com:

The Sacklers of OxyContin infamy have become indelibly tied to the opioid crisis in America. But the truth is they were far from the only contributors to a drug epidemic that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in recent years.

Take Chris and Jeff George, for instance. The steroid-jacked twin brothers opened their first pain medication storefront in Florida in 2007 and before long, as they put it, “We were the Disneyland of pain clinics.” Their exploits are told in the CNN Films documentary American Pain, directed by Darren Foster, which premieres on CNN tonight. “The George brothers did not start the opioid crisis,” retired FBI agent Kurt McKenzie notes in the film. “But they sure as hell poured gasoline on the fire.” Foster, an Emmy-winning filmmaker, first crossed paths with the Georges more than a decade ago.  “In 2009 I went down to Florida to report on the pill mills.

One pain clinic had a reputation above all the others as being the biggest, the most liberal dispensers of oxycodone. And that was [the George Brothers’] American Pain,” Foster tells Deadline. “So, I knew I had to go there and film it.

Little did I know that I would only be able to get one shot off of the clinic before I was surrounded by Chris George and a couple other very big employees… They chased me down I-95 for quite a bit of time.” There was a veneer of legality around the George pain clinics – the brothers hired licensed medical doctors through Craigslist who were willing to write endless numbers of pain prescriptions after cursory examination of patients.