Heroin’s Children

The United States is going through the worst drug crisis in its history. In the last decade, heroin abuse has skyrocketed, and drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 50.

Heroin is stronger than any human tie. It is stronger than any compelling argument. It is stronger than a religious belief. It is the devil incarnate. It is evil. It's the black plague. It's like the zombie apocalypse. It's death.

by Dr John Gabis, coroner of Ross County, Ohio

As US President Donald Trump declares the country’s opioid crisis a “national emergency,” Fault Lines looks at the “invisible victims” of the epidemic – a generation of children who are being neglected, abandoned or orphaned by parents addicted to heroin.

So, how is the opioid crisis shaping the next generation of Americans?

Josh Rushing travels to Chillicothe, a small Ohio town at the centre of the drug crisis, to meet a teenager who lost both her parents to drugs, a mother whose heroin addiction led her to overdose in front of her young son, a grandmother unexpectedly raising four granddaughters, pregnant women struggling with addiction, and police and firefighters responding to harrowing overdose scenes.