Video Series Outline (17 Videos)
1. Welcome and Series Overview
2. Introduction
3. The Longest War: America Launches Drug Fight with Supply Control, Propaganda, and Prejudice
4. Coked Up: Building Up the Drug War in the Crack Cocaine Era
5. Prescription for Disaster: Purdue Pharma’s Crime of the Century
6. Fatal Errors: Pushing Rx Drug Users into the Illicit Drug Market
7. The Real Treatment Gap: Why So Few Enter Treatment
8. The Real Treatment Gap: How to Increase Voluntary Entry Into Care
9. Deep Recovery: Creating a Recovery-Friendly America
10. Precision Impact: Controlling Retail Drug Markets Without Mass Incarceration or Racial Bias
11. True Justice: How Drug Users Respond to Losing Their Dealer
12. True Justice: Turning Courts, Jails, and Police into Pathways to Care
13. Defense in Depth: Smart Border Security and International Supply Control for Today’s Synthetic Drug Era
14. Maximizing Impact: The Costs of Spending Too Little, Too Late
15. Maximizing Impact: Building Cost-Effective Initiatives
16. The Fentanyl Generation: Protecting Youth from Today’s Dangerous Drug Threats
17. Series Conclusion & the Final Hard Lesson
America’s Opioid Crisis: How It Happened — and What to Do Now
A Public Education Video Series by Richard J. Baum
About This Course
This 17-part public education course examines how America’s opioid crisis unfolded — and what it will take to correct it.
Drawing on decades of national drug policy experience, Richard J. Baum distills the central arguments of Inside America’s Opioid Crisis: 12 Hard Lessons for Today’s Drug War into concise, structured video lessons.
The series traces the historical origins of modern drug policy, examines institutional decision-making and unintended consequences, and outlines practical reforms to strengthen prevention, treatment, recovery, and enforcement strategies.
Each video builds sequentially, forming a guided course designed for students, policymakers, journalists, and citizens seeking a clear, evidence-informed understanding of one of the most consequential public health crises of our time.
The series also encourages viewers who want to drive change in their communities to advocate for local implementation of the book’s recommendations — strengthening prevention, expanding treatment and recovery systems, increasing direct outreach to people who use drugs, improving justice–health collaboration (including “treatment-first” drug courts and police-assisted deflection to treatment without arrest), and pursuing innovative strategies to dismantle drug markets.