New mission for ‘The Pharmacist’ targets fentanyl

MANDEVILLE, La. ( WGNO ) — You may not know Dan Schneider if you see him driving around in his classic Mustang convertible. But you may know him by his occupation. Schneider is a pharmacist, and he’s the subject of the hit Nexflix documentary ‘The Pharmacist.’

Schneider’s story begins tragically with the death of his son who was killed while buying drugs in the Holy Cross area of the Lower Ninth Ward. Schneider made it his mission to find his son’s killer, even going door to door and calling every house in the area. And it worked. Schneider located a key witness whose testimony led to a conviction.

“I guess I was a little crazy, or driven, whatever word you want to choose.  But I was determined that we would at least get some justice,” Schneider told WGNO News.

Following the death of his son, Schneider began to learn more about addiction and drugs that are sold on the streets. Then, while working at his job as a pharmacist in the St. Bernard Parish community, he noticed something about the prescriptions he was filling. Schneider says that too many of the orders for powerful painkillers appeared to be for young people, like his son, who didn’t seem to be in any real pain at all.

“In solving my son’s murder, I took those skills and plugged them into going after pill mill doctors,” Scheider says. And his work paid off as he helped lead the effort to close pain clinics in the area that were prescribing opioids like oxycodone. It was the start of the opioid epidemic, and Schneider knew there was more work to do.

In the years that followed, Schneider helped open a recovery center in St. Bernard Parish as well as promote the distribution of NARCAN at an event in St. Tammany Parish. But now he has a new challenge, and it could be his most difficult one yet.

“That’s like an airliner crashing every day,” Schneider says of the 100,000 people a year who die from fentanyl deaths. This time, he says the key to beating the drug is the use of another drug, Suboxone.

Schneider admits the drug has its critics because it can be abused just like other opioids. But he says it also cuts down on withdrawals, allows people with addictions to function, and blocks the effects of other drugs on the body. And he says Suboxone is much cheaper than paying for patients to stay at rehabilitation facilities.

“The cost (of rehab) is $30,000 to $60,000 thousand dollars. But with these drugs (Suboxone) that a doctor can write, then the cost is about, maybe no more than $500 a month,” he said.

Schneider says that the nation needs to treat the opioid epidemic and specifically the threat of fentanyl, like it did the pandemic, using billboards, printed appeals, and television and radio public service announcements. He also says that word is beginning to spread of the drugs’ dangers.

“A little bit of good news here that I can give you, he said. “In 2023, overdose deaths went down 3 percent.  Now that’s a big deal. Because it almost never goes down.  It’s almost always gone up.

While Schneider’s mission isn’t over, it might be slowing down. “It’s maybe time to pass the torch somewhat,” he said.

As he looks back on the years of his life since his son’s death, he’s just hoping that those who follow and continue his fight are just as driven as he is.

“Almost everything I did, that I accomplished, at one point in time, I almost gave up on.”

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