Rat Park

Could the secret to solving the world’s drug crisis lie in a forgotten psychology experiment from the 1970s involving rats and heroin? Almost four decades later, RAT PARK shows us how the experiment’s radical findings might be applied today. Following three stories worlds apart, RAT PARK examines the complex issue of drug laws and addiction exploring why the problem may not be about the drugs themselves, but the environments and “cages” we live in. In Portugal, where drugs are legalized, a ceramics artist lives and struggles with a lifelong heroin problem. On the other side of the world in the Philippines, where drugs are criminalized, a grieving woman and a hardened photojournalist grapple with government sanctioned extrajudicial killings of drug users. And in America, an outlaw recovery worker fights for drug users living in ground zero of America’s opioid crisis. RAT PARK examines the impact of drug policy – both the criminalization and legalization – in the world’s war on drugs.