This movie is available for streaming in the ZDF media library:
Province on a high: the Palatinate in south-west Germany is characterised by picturesque forests, vineyards and castles. But here, too, it is striking that drugs such as Tilidine, Codeine and Xanax are increasingly becoming scene drugs among young people. The soundtrack to this comes from rappers such as Capital Bra (‘Give me some tilidine, yeah, I could use some’) or T-Low with his ‘Benzos Diaries’.
In ‘Drogen-Land - Provinz im Rausch - Pillen in der Westpfalz’, we meet Brian (24) from Pirmasens, for whom life without strong drugs is no longer possible. After years of addiction, he finally wants to make it through withdrawal. When he was 15, Brian came across ‘Lean’ on Instagram - a sweet purple-coloured drink made from lemonade, cough syrup containing codeine and a sedative. The result is the trendy drink of German rap, which T-Low (23) repeatedly poses with in his music videos and on Instagram, where he is followed by around 230,000 people. ‘I'm definitely aware that there are one hundred per cent of kids out there who probably have addiction problems these days because of me,’ admits T-Low openly in the interview. His own addiction is an integral part of his songs. 2.3 million people regularly listen to him on Germany's largest music streaming provider.
Since 1996, statutory health insurance expenditure on opioids, i.e. strong painkillers, has more than tripled in Germany. In some practices, ‘the GP is more of a dealer than a doctor’, criticises addiction expert and psychiatrist Dominikus Bönsch - and not just in the big cities. Access to medication in rural areas is good and those who don't have a prescription look for local contacts or go to online dealers. ‘More and more people [are] looking for oxycodone, Lean or Xanax,’ reports Telegram dealer “X”. Christine Straß at customs at Frankfurt Airport has also noticed that the illegal drugs market is booming. In 2023, she withdrew almost half a million opioid tablets from circulation. Trend: extremely strong increase.
On 19 November 2024, the ZDFinfo documentary ‘Drogen-Land - Provinz im Rausch - Pillen in der Westpfalz’ takes a close look at drug abuse in the Palatinate and in Germany.
