Dope Is Death

For over 50 years, alternative medicine practitioners have advocated the use of acupuncture as part of treatment for drug addiction. However, few people know that this practice evolved in large part thanks to the Black Panthers, radical liberation politics and Dr. Mutulu Shakur, Tupac Shakur’s stepfather. Dope is Death turns the clock back to 1970, at the height of the heroin epidemic in the South Bronx, where a group of political radicals—fed up with inaction—occupied New York’s Lincoln Hospital. Under the leadership of Shakur, the Lincoln Detox clinic became the first and only politically run drug treatment program funded by the US government. Inspiring and enraging in equal measure, the story of Lincoln Detox and the civil rights organizations that supported it testifies to the continuous need to explore this period in US history—a time that, until recently, has often been misrepresented.
(Aisha Jamal - Hot Docs)