(AllHipHop News) America’s growing opioid crisis will be addressed in an upcoming MTV documentary Prescription for Change: Ending America’s Opioid Crisis.
The one-hour special will feature an in-depth conversation between President Obama and Seattle rapper Macklemore (executive producer) discussing the drug’s impact on the nation, and will also highlight three young women on the road to recovery from the substances.
Macklemore can certainly relate to some of the challenges presented by the drugs.
“I was on Percocet. All of a sudden I’m doing it every day to the point where I have this dependency,” the rapper told AllHipHop.com in a statement.
He then continued: “And I remember the guy that I was getting them from didn’t have any more. And he said but I have this other thing. It’s called OxyContin. Within a week I was isolated in my room doing this drug just to stay alive in a way.”
In the documentary, Obama really puts the crisis in proper perspective with some startling statistics.
“I had a lot of close friends who ended up going through the recovery process. But the reason that we’ve been really focusing on this opioids issue is that this is an area where the incidents of people dying from overdoses are actually spiking. 2014, we saw more people die of drug overdoses than die of car accidents,” explained President Barack Obama.
The 44th president then went on to state that the drug’s growing prominence in suburban regions is really pivotal to the growing epidemic being brought to light.
Obama said: “The good news is that awareness is starting to rise and I’ll be honest with you, part of what is starting to change is the opioids crisis is getting into communities that are suburban, that are relatively well to do, rural communities, white communities and people’s kids who are being affected are folks who have a voice…”
Prescription for Change is set to air tonight (October 11) at 9pm on MTV.
The documentary will be immediately followed by True Life: My Parent’s Addicted to Opioids, which will follow two young people who’s parents are in a battle with addiction to the substances.
Check out a clip from Prescription for Change below.