A ‘Good Day’ to talk addiction
Fox TV show talks about Signal video series on opioid epidemic
Los Angeles television station KTTV featured The Signal’s new micro-documentary series “Addicted,” Tuesday morning.
Chief Multimedia Journalist Austin Dave and addiction specialist Cary Quashen made an appearance on the morning show to take part in a live dialogue with Fox anchor Elex Michaelson on “Good Day L.A.” about the video series exploring the nation’s opioid crisis and its impact on Santa Clarita.
“Addicted” is an eight-episode series chronicling how Los Angeles County’s thirdlargest incorporated city grapples with the nation’s drug crisis. Since its debut Aug 1, more than 50,000 people have viewed the first two episodes.
“The Santa Clarita Valley has been known as a collection of bedroom communities with good schools and safe streets,” Michaelson said at the start of the televised segment. “Today, the valley is also facing a opioid crisis.”
Dave explained how the series came to fruition after Santa Clarita experienced a bout of drug overdoses in one night in April 2017.
“We heard one after another after another, which is very unusual,” he said of the incidents. “I followed up on all these calls and found out that they were all related to opioid addiction.”
“It’s an issue in Santa Clarita, but it’s not just Santa Clarita,” Quashen said. “If you look at where we’re at right now, 1 out of every 6 Americans is going to have a drug problem in their lifetime.”
More than 72,000 people across the United States died of a drug overdose in 2017, up from about 35,000 in 2007, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. About 48 percent of the increase is related to the introduction of fentanyl and synthetic opioids, the institute’s research shows.
The interview touched upon California’s prison reform legislation and its collective impact on local drug issues.
In 2014, California voters passed Proposition 47, a ballot initiative aimed at both reducing drug possession felonies to misdemeanors and lessening penalties for petty theft, receiving stolen property and forging or writing bad checks when the amount involved is $950 or less, according to the state’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
“What you found is essentially that because they were going to jail they were forced to be sober because they had no choice,” Michaelson said, “and now that they’re not going to jail, they’re still high and committing more crimes.”
Quashen shared his experience with habitual opioid drug users and their tendencies to steal and commit other crimes to feed their habit.
“When you’re using drugs, you want to commit crimes,” he said. “They’re getting arrested and they’re out before the process is even over.”
Michaelson ended the 6-minute interview by examining what a micro-documentary is and how the series bodes with the format of shorter online video.
“We had many choices in how we were going to deliver the story,” Dave said. “Was it going to be just a newspaper story? Was it going to be just an online story?”
Dave made the decision to combine multiple storytelling elements including a traditional filmmaking look with an edgy news feel.
“It’s typically about 10 minutes. We don’t want to go too long and we don’t want to go too short,” he said. “We want people to walk away with information that could save their lives.”
For more information on The Signal’s new multimedia offers, visit vault.signalscv.com.