captioning funded by cbs and ford. we go further, so you can. >> so, overdoses have increased, just in the last, you know, 18 months. get you all hooked. >> mike moore helped engineer the historic 1998 settlement under which big tobacco had to pay out billions. now, he is taking on opioid manufacturers and distributors. >> if we win a verdict against these manufacturers and distributors, it could bankrupt them. it'd put them out of business. >> tonight, you'll hear evidence against the industry, which moore calls "damning." he believes a jury will, too. >> you know what those jurors are going to do? they're going to go in the back room, they're going to spend about 30 minutes thinking about it, going to come back out, and bam! >> take a look around. odds are, you're surrounded by plastic.

that water bottle we use once and throw away will be with us for generations. >> by 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. >> there are campaigns to limit this plastic plague, with bans on bags and straws, and yet around the world, it continues to pile up, seeping into our rivers and streams, and turning our oceans into a vast garbage dump. but one mop-haired young dutchman has come up with a plan which he says will save our seas. hi, boyan! >> hi. >> his name is boyan slat. he has no formal training, and his much-hyped, multi-million- dollar device has made him something of a sensation. we decided to see what all the fuss is about. >> i'm steve kroft. >> i'm lesley stahl. >> i'm scott pelley. >> i'm anderson cooper. >> i'm sharyn alfonsi. >> i'm bill whitaker. those stories, tonight, on "60 minutes."

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>> whitaker: mike moore says he's "just a country lawyer from mississippi." but this country lawyer has engineered two of the most lucrative legal settlements in american history. as mississippi's attorney general, he engineered the historic 1998 settlement under which big tobacco paid billions to address smoking-related health issues. in 2015, he convinced b.p. to settle multi-billion-dollar lawsuits over its huge oil spill in the gulf of mexico.

now, mike moore has taken aim at the manufacturers and distributors of opioid pain killers, claiming they should pay for the epidemic of addiction and death that has swept this nation. as you'll hear in a moment, he has powerful new evidence that he says proves that states like ohio-- among the hardest-hit by the opioid epidemic-- should collect billions from all the companies he's suing. >> mike moore: if we try the ohio case, if we win a verdict against these manufacturers and distributors there, it could bankrupt them. it'd put them out of business. >> whitaker: truly? these are huge, profitable, wealthy companies. >> moore: huge. well, you know, they can be as profitable as they want to. but, ohio is losing $4 or $5 billion a year from the opioid epidemic, and they're losing 5,000 or 6,000 people a year from overdose deaths. so when a jury hears the evidence in this case, they're not going to award just a couple hundred million dollars. it may be $100 billion. and whoever amongst these

companies thinks they can stand up to that? good luck. >> mike dewine: we are hurting now, in ohio. we need help now, in ohio. >> whitaker: ohio's republican attorney general mike dewine, who will be sworn in next month as governor, hired mike moore as soon as he decided to file suit against opioid manufacturers and distributors. >> dewine: they flooded the state of ohio with these opioid pills that they knew would kill people. >> whitaker: they knew would kill people. >> dewine: if they didn't know it the first couple years, they clearly would've seen it after that. you can't miss it. when, one year we had close to a billion-- a billion pain meds prescribed in the state of ohio. you know, 69 per man, woman, and child in the state. and that lies at the feet of the drug companies. they're the ones who did that. >> whitaker: ohio is one of four states mike moore formally represents, but he's coordinating with 30-plus states

that have filed suit, and with many of the local governments, nearly 1,500 cities and counties that also are suing. he is the unofficial commanding officer of the army that's attacking the opioid industry. this is where your war room is located? >> moore: that's right. >> whitaker: the unlikely "command center" for moore's legal war is the sleepy town of grayton beach on florida's panhandle. >> moore: you know, in a place like this, you're not limited with a bunch of tall buildings, and coats and ties, and that kind of thing. you can think outside the box a little bit, so. >> whitaker: when we were in grayton beach... >> moore: to me, that's how we win. >> whitaker: ...about a dozen lawyers from all around the country, some working on state cases, others on local lawsuits, had gathered for all-day strategy sessions, focused on an audacious goal. >> moore: success for me would be that we would find funding to provide treatment for all the 2.5 million opioid-dependent people in this country. >> whitaker: that would take many billions of dollars, of

course, but remember, mike moore has done it before. >> moore: look, when i filed this tobacco case in 1994, there was nobody that thought that we had a chance to win. we showed up for our first hearing. and in our first hearing, so there was three of us there. in the courtroom, on the other side, they had 68 lawyers. >> whitaker: despite that early mismatch, within four years, moore had all 50 states lined up against big tobacco. he did it partly by going to court, but mostly by going public. >> moore: a case in court is a case in court, and that's fine. but there's also the court of public opinion, and the court of public opinion is sometimes the most powerful court. >> whitaker: "60 minutes" played an important, and controversial, role in the public case against big tobacco. moore was interviewed for a segment that at first, cbs corporate lawyers refused to allow on the air.

>> moore: we're thinking to ourselves, "look, if '60 minutes' seems to be afraid of these guys for whatever reason, then what about us?" >> whitaker: "60 minutes" finally aired the segment in early 1996, after "the wall street journal" ran a story featuring the same tobacco industry whistleblower. you said this in that "60 minutes" story: "this industry," talking about this, the tobacco industry, "in my opinion, is an industry..." >> moore: "...who has perpetrated the biggest fraud on the american public in history. they have lied to the american public for years and years. they've killed millions and millions of people and made a profit on it." >> whitaker: those are pretty strong words. >> moore: well, it-- they were true. those words were true. >> whitaker: and you finally got big tobacco to cry uncle. >> moore: that's right. >> whitaker: they ended up paying, what, over $200 billion? >> moore: $250 billion, yeah. >> whitaker: so when you look back on what you did, what has been the impact? >> moore: we reduced smoking rates to a place that nobody

ever thought was possible. so, the number one cause of death in america has been reduced dramatically. that's pretty powerful. >> whitaker: now, going after the opioid industry, mike moore is using the same playbook he used against tobacco, and more recently, against b.p. for the gulf oil spill: build legal and public pressure until the companies see no choice but to settle, and fork over billions. >> moore: here's the deal: there's a huge pill spill in this country. it's huge. >> whitaker: pill spill? >> moore: pill spill. huge pill spill. it never should've occurred. everybody's got some fault. but we have 72,000 people dying every year. let's figure out a way to resolve this thing. you guys made billions of dollars off of this. take some of that money and apply it to the problem that you helped cause. >> whitaker: he's a long way from convincing the drug industry to do that, of course. that's why all the lawsuits. the first targets are opioid

manufacturers like purdue pharma, which makes oxycontin, the pill that fueled the opioid epidemic. >> moore: purdue pharma created an environment so that opioid use was okay. so, "if you prescribe your patients this drug, there's less than 1% chance they'll get addicted." that was a lie, a big lie. >> whitaker: can you prove that in court? >> moore: absolutely. >> whitaker: purdue pharma declined our request for an interview, but said in a statement that when the f.d.a. approved oxycontin in 1995, it authorized the company to state on the label that "addiction to opioids legitimately used is very rare." but as evidence of abuse mounted, the company admitted in federal court in 2007 that it had misled doctors and consumers about just how addictive oxycontin can be. >> moore: the purdue pharma case is an easy case. i hate to say it, but it's an easy case to prove.

you can prove that they told the lies that they told. >> whitaker: it has been considered tougher to build a case against mike moore's other targets, the huge drug distributors who've made billions delivering opioids from manufacturers to pharmacies. >> moore: the distributors are saying things like, "we're just truck drivers. we didn't know where the pills went." of course they did. there's a controlled substance act. controlled substance act. you're supposed to control these pills. and when you don't, you have a responsibility for it. it-- it's real simple. >> whitaker: it's also simple why moore is going after the biggest players in drug distribution-- because they have much deeper pockets than the manufacturers. purdue pharma, for example, had less than $2 billion in revenue last year. distributor mckesson, by contrast, had $208 billion in revenue. >> moore: mckesson, you're the sixth largest company in this country.

you're telling the american public you didn't have systems in place to adhere to the controlled substance act? seriously? >> whitaker: mike moore and his allies now have what they characterize as devastating evidence proving that distributors knew what they were doing. a huge confidential d.e.a. database called arcos tracks all transactions involving controlled substances. this spring, a federal judge in cleveland, who is hearing many of the local lawsuits, ordered all that data to be handed over to the plaintiffs' lawyers. >> burton leblanc: and i can actually tell you which distributor distributed to which particular pharmacy, by year, by volume, and where the pills came from. >> whitaker: wow. burton leblanc is a louisiana lawyer who regularly huddles with mike moore in grayton beach. his firm represents hundreds of cities and counties in their opioid lawsuits, and his team

has taken the lead in analyzing the arcos data. >> leblanc: in terms of the wholesale distributor's duty, to report suspicious orders, we can immediately look at volume and detect patterns with the data that we currently have. >> whitaker: so, you can see that for every pharmacy in the, in the country? >> leblanc: i have it for every transaction in the united states. >> whitaker: what's the most important thing that it has shown you? >> leblanc: that the stories that you've heard from some of the d.e.a. investigative agents concerning the large volumes of pills going into certain parts of our country are absolutely true. >> whitaker: one of those stories concerned kermit, west virginia, a town of just 400 people, where nine million opioid pills were delivered in just two years to a single pharmacy. did the companies have access to this information? >> leblanc: it was their data. that data has now been shared >> whitaker: that data has now

been shared with state attorneys general, including ohio's mike dewine. >> dewine: i'm not allowed to talk about the specifics. but i will simply tell you, it's shocking. anyone who was looking at those numbers, as those middlemen were, as these distributors were, clearly, clearly should have seen that something was dramatically wrong. >> whitaker: like purdue, drug distributors declined our request for an interview, but in a statement from their trade association, said, "it defies common sense to single out distributors for the opioid crisis. distributors deliver medicines prescribed by a licensed physician and ordered by a licensed pharmacy." but mike moore insists that does not let the companies off the legal hook. >> moore: if you've got walking- around sense and you care, you're going to check before you send nine million pills to a little, bitty county in west virginia, or mississippi or louisiana or ohio. you're going to check, if you care. >> whitaker: you think they don't care? >> moore: i don't think they cared enough.

and if they cared enough, maybe we would not have lost 500,000 lives from this problem. it's-- it just-- it appalls me. >> whitaker: trial dates have been set for next year in a few of the state and local cases. but rather than go to trial-- and just as he did with tobacco-- mike moore hopes to force a mega-settlement, to fund drug treatment, prevention, and education. you had to have thought about how much money you would need to do the projects that you foresee? >> moore: oh, i've seen all the models. to be effective, we need at least $100 billion to start off with. >> whitaker: and i know you've heard the criticism, that with all these lawyers involved, that this is just a bunch of trial lawyers looking for a great, big payday. >> moore: right. i don't care one whit about any money in this case. not one whit whatsoever about

it. >> whitaker: nobody's going to believe that the attorneys are not going to make any money. >> moore: no, no, no. no, no, and i'm not saying that. i was talking about-- all i can speak for is me. >> whitaker: you made money off tobacco. >> moore: nope, not a penny. >> whitaker: that's because, for all the years of the tobacco litigation, and many years after, moore was working for a modest state salary as mississippi attorney general. >> whitaker: you made money off of the b.p. spill. >> moore: i made some money on helping resolve the case, yeah. >> whitaker: moore has made enough money to be comfortable. at age 66, this may be his last big case, and he believes the arcos data gives him the ammunition he needs to demolish the opioid industry's argument that it should not be blamed. >> moore: nobody in the world's going to believe that. and-- and don't go try to tell that to 12 jurors in mississippi or ohio, who've lost people from this. you know what? you know what those jurors are going to do? they're going to go in the back room, they're going to spend about 30 minutes thinking about it, going to come back out, and bam!

>> cbs money watch sponsored by capital one. welcome to banking reimagined. >> good evening. the federal reserve on wednesday is expected the raise the benchmark interest rate. carnival, general mills, and pier 1 imports report earnings this week, and los angeles public schoolteachers are demanding a new contract and threatening to go on strike next month. i'm elaine quijano, cbs news.

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and they pay you cash in just one day. see how aflac helps cover everyday expenses at aflac.com. >> alfonsi: take a look around. odds are, you're surrounded by plastic. it's in our kitchens, and in our bedrooms. it keeps our food fresh, and our medicine safe.

it is, in many ways, a miracle product, cheap to produce and virtually indestructible. yet plastic's blessings are also a curse. that water bottle we use once and throw away will be with us for generations. there are campaigns to limit this plastic plague, with bans on bags and straws, and yet around the world, it continues to pile up, seeping into our rivers and streams, and turning our oceans into a vast garbage dump. but one mop-haired young dutchman has come up with a plan which he says will save our seas. his name is boyan slat. he has no formal training, and his much-hyped, multi-million- dollar device has made him something of a sensation. so, we decided to see what all the fuss is about. ( ship horns ) in an old naval base just outside san francisco, engineers have spent months assembling a curious contraption, the

brainchild of a driven 24-year- old dutchman named boyan slat, who dropped out of college to take center stage in a grand new venture. >> boyan slat: so how many of those clamps do we have? >> engineer: 200 clamps. >> alfonsi: it's just 2,000 feet of plastic piping, affixed to a ten-foot nylon screen. but slat's lofty promise? that he can clean up the world's oceans. his idea, as he lays out in this animation, is to tow his device out to an area known as the great pacific garbage patch, the largest of five ocean whirlpools where much of the world's plastic accumulates. despite what you may have heard, the garbage patch isn't an island, and it's even difficult to see with the naked eye. it's a vast soup of floating debris, much of it tiny and below the surface. if all goes according to plan, it's designed to use the wind,

waves, and water currents to skim the plastic, and corral it into an area where it can be removed, the first phase of an ambitious goal. >> slat: i hope to deploy, say, around 60 of these cleanup systems in the-- in the next two to three years. >> alfonsi: 60? >> slat: yeah, which, if we are successful with that, we should be able to remove half this great pacific garbage patch every five years. >> alfonsi: and what about the other half? >> slat: so, of course we don't stop after five years. the eventual goal of this cleanup is to get to a 90% reduction by the year 2040. >> alfonsi: that's pretty aggressive. >> slat: yeah. >> alfonsi: hi, boyan! we first joined slat in early september, just before he was due to take his system out to sea. it's fitted with an array of gadgets, to alert ships to its presence, and to allow slat and his team to monitor its progress in the middle of the pacific ocean. critics were already calling slat's multi-million-dollar moonshot "misguided." there are a lot of people, as

you know, who said, "oh, this can't work, it won't work. it's a waste of time." is there a part of you that is waiting for that "i told you so" moment? >> slat: i try not to lower myself to that level. >> alfonsi: how's that going? ( laughs ) >> slat: yeah, it's going all right. >> alfonsi: slat came up with the idea as a teenager eight years ago, on a diving trip off the coast of greece. he was horrified by how much plastic he saw in the water, and began collecting and analyzing it, and thinking of ways to clean it up. >> slat: once, there was a stone age, a bronze age. and now we are in the middle of the plastic age. >> alfonsi: he laid out his vision to clean up the ocean at a ted-x talk when he was 18. it went viral, and a self-styled "savior of the seas" was born. >> slat: we can now actually clean up 50% of the patch in just five years' time. ( cheers and applause )

>> alfonsi: a slick, silicon valley-style roadshow followed, and slat raised more than $30 million for his ocean cleanup-- money he used to market his message and carry out research, including an aerial survey to map the great pacific garbage patch. for the past five years, a team of engineers and scientists have been feverishly modeling, testing and revising slat's idea. but can technology solve a complicated problem like this? >> slat: i think it's pretty much the only thing that ever has. thanks to human ingenuity and the human ability to work together, we do have a good shot at solving it. >> alfonsi: ingenuity? well, maybe. but for many researchers, it's downright fanciful, given that eight million tons of new plastic flows into the ocean every year, mostly from places that have no way of dealing with their trash.

this is a fetid river in manila. these are the shores of the dominican republic. but the problem is everywhere. this is los angeles last month. over time, that plastic disperses, disintegrates into smaller pieces, and often gets eaten by fish, making its way up the food chain. scientists still aren't sure what all that means for human health, but it's tightening its grip on marine animals and their habitat. >> denise hardesty: on the most remote, most pristine beach, in the middle of the ocean, on a little, tiny island, you will find trash there, too. >> alfonsi: denise hardesty is a research scientist for the australian government, and a leading authority on ocean plastics, who studies the problem around the world. >> hardesty: i was even just in antarctica a couple years ago, and even there we're finding the refuse of human society. >> alfonsi: and what does that

tell you? >> hardesty: the ubiquity of plastics has really made its mark. you know, humans are really good at creating things, and, we're really good at making things that last forever, clearly with plastics. and they are everywhere. >> plastics take the stage at an international exhibit in amsterdam. >> alfonsi: and that's been the case ever since plastic filled our homes in the 1950s. >> the women-folk washing dishes made of plastic-- dishes that bounce when they drop to the floor. >> alfonsi: it was revolutionary. >> when the rain comes down on tomorrow's brave new world, you'll put on your plastic raincoat, put up your plastic hood. >> alfonsi: television commercials billed it as the material of the future. >> see these two portable radios? well, watch this. let her go, betsy! >> susan freinkel: i think the flood of plastic products in the years after world war ii helped make the, sort of, american dream possible for people. >> alfonsi: susan freinkel is a san francisco-based science writer, whose book, "plastic: a

toxic love story," chronicles its history. >> freinkel: it's kind of a technological miracle. i mean, we've created this family of materials, and figured out how to make them do pretty much anything that we want them to do, you know? you want it to be bendy, you want it to be transparent, you want it to be squishy? you want it to keep lettuce fresh for two weeks? >> listen, to the sounds of freshness. >> alfonsi: there are a lot of things that are made of plastic that we don't really think of as plastic. where is plastic in our lives? >> freinkel: ( laughs ) how long have you got? i mean-- i did a thought experiment at the start of my book, where i said, "okay, i'm going to go a day without touching anything plastic." i thought it was a great idea, until i walked into the bathroom and looked down at the plastic toilet seat, and my plastic toothbrush, and-- so i said, "okay, i'm going to spend the day writing down everything that's plastic." and by the day's end, i had this, you know, enormous list. >> alfonsi: you look back at some of those old commercials, and it's really-- you know, plastic is sold as something that is life-changing. >> freinkel: yes.

>> alfonsi: i mean, one of the things you see in these early ads is, "it will last forever." >> freinkel: yes, yes, it will last forever. and-- unfortunately, nobody really thought about what that meant. >> alfonsi: there are really only three things you can do with plastic. put it in a landfill, burn it, or recycle it. for decades, we thought recycling was the best answer, and we were told to throw our plastic, our paper, and our aluminum cans into those familiar bins, to be picked up and carted away. but according to roland geyer, an environmental scientist at the university of california, 90% of the plastic we used never made it into one of those bins at all. the other 10% ended up in places like recology, a recycling facility in northern california. >> here, lots of milk bottles. >> alfonsi: but you'll be surprised to hear what they, and many other plants across the country, have been doing with that plastic.

>> roland geyer: until recently, in california, and probably much of the rest of the u.s., two-thirds of the plastic went straight to china. >> alfonsi: china. why china? >> geyer: china was accepting it, and it appears that china found a way to recycle it economically, which the, the u.s. has trouble with. >> alfonsi: but last year, all that changed, when china decided it didn't want to be the world's trash dump, and shut the door to our plastic, leaving plants like recology scrambling. where is all that recycling going now? >> geyer: a lot of the plastic has been diverted to other countries, like vietnam, indonesia, malaysia, bangladesh, thailand. >> alfonsi: and of those countries, do we know that what

we're sending to them is ultimately being recycled? >> geyer: we hope it gets recycled. >> alfonsi: we hope? but do we think? >> geyer: we, we don't know. there's no real audit trail or anything like that, so it's very difficult. and we know that a lot of plastic in southeast asia and other countries ends-- ends up in open dumps. >> alfonsi: this is discouraging, i think, to most people. is the idea of recycling a myth? >> geyer: i wouldn't call it a myth. >> alfonsi: but it's not working. >> geyer: for plastic, it's currently not working. so we need-- we need to change it. we need to try different things. >> by 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. >> alfonsi: there are campaigns across the country to ban straws and bags, and try to reduce the amount of plastic we consume in the first place. but susan freinkel says it's simply not enough. >> freinkel: i know all the problems about plastic, and if you open my kitchen, you know, cabinets, i've got a box of ziploc baggies there, because it's easier. so, you know, we have to really

wrestle ourselves with, what conveniences are we willing to give up, what kind of cons-- consumption are we willing to, sort of, pull back on, in order to change? >> plastics. plastics everywhere. >> alfonsi: it is a big ask, that would require a major overhaul in the way we live our lives. which may be why boyan slat and his big idea have been getting breathless coverage from the world's media... >> slat: we start with one system, because we proof the technology and learn as much as possible. >> alfonsi: ...nearly all of whom seemed to turn up for the spectacle this september, as his system was towed under the golden gate bridge, 1,400 miles out to the great pacific garbage patch. >> slat: well, it's five years of work and planning coming together, in one nice shot. it's overwhelming, exciting to see. going through the golden gate bridge right now. it's a beautiful sight. >> alfonsi: but since its deployment, its performance has

been... less enchanting. the plastic it has managed to corral ends up floating right back into the pacific-- a major design flaw slat's trying to fix. but even if he does get the device working, scientists we spoke to have serious doubts about just how effective it can be. for one thing, its ten-foot screen can only skim the ocean's surface, missing plastic that's much deeper. it could also end up trapping marine animals. but their biggest criticism is that it's pointless to spend millions of dollars trying to clean the middle of the ocean when more and more plastic is flowing into it from the coastlines. for researcher denise hardesty, slat's device is certainly no silver bullet. you're skeptical? >> hardesty: i would love to be wrong. what i'm suggesting is that we use our resources wisely and focus on the items close to source, where we can clean them up. >> alfonsi: get it earlier? >> hardesty: get it early.

>> alfonsi: get it closer to the shore? >> hardesty: get it close to shore. and if you really want to focus it, be smart, have these big trash booms near the city centers. because that's where we lose much more of it, as well. and if you want to be even smarter, stop it before it gets to the coast. you know, have some rubbish traps at rivers that feed out into the mouth of the ocean, or further upstream, even. you know, i think the analogy that you hear often is, "if you've got a flood in the bathtub, you're not going to go just get a bunch of towels and try to keep cleaning it up, because it's still flooding over. you really need to turn off the tap," right? >> alfonsi: people that we spoke to said, "this is like trying to mop up a flooded bathroom, but leaving the tap on." >> slat: i think humanity can do more than one thing at the same time. and, you know, if your bathroom is over-flooding, i'm still pretty happy that the mop exists. and eventually we need to mop it up, right? >> alfonsi: to show you just how far this plastic plague has reached, we'll take you to one

of the most remote places in the world, when we come back. >> cbs sports hq is presented by from guessive insurance. i'm james browns with scores from n.f.l. today. tennessee and washington both win to keep their playoff hopes aaye. dallas is shutout for the first time since '03. chicago clinches its first n.f.c. north title in eight years. pittsburgh prevails and stays atop the a.f.c. north. the 49ers snap their nine-game losing streak to seattle. for 24/7news and highlight, visit cbssportshq.com. just hit me on the old horn. man: tom's my best friend, but ever since he bought a new house... tom: it's a $10 cover? oh, okay. didn't see that on the website. he's been acting more and more like his dad. come on, guys! jump in! the water's fine! tom pritchard. how we doin'? hi, there. tom pritchard. can we get a round of jalapeño poppers

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♪thisi'm gonna let it shine. ♪ it's energy saving time, ♪ i'm gonna reduce mine. ♪ californians all align ♪ to let our great state shine. ♪ let it shine, ♪ the power's ours to let it shine! ♪ >> alfonsi: plastic is everywhere. it's not unusual to see water bottles or grocery bags wash up on our beaches. but surely, if you traveled far enough away from people and cities, you might be able to find a pristine beach, untouched by the plague of plastic, right? well, we decided to find out. this summer, we traveled to midway atoll, a small group of islands, mid-way between the u.s. and asia.

it's an american territory best known as the site of one of the most important battles of world war ii. today, the islands are closed to the public, and home to a host of exotic animals, including a charismatic sea bird called the laysan albatross. it's not easy to get to midway. visiting involves a long permitting process, and a chartered plane from honolulu to the middle of the ocean. >> we're almost mid-way to midway right now, from oahu. >> alfonsi: after three hours, tiny slivers of light appear, a postage stamp in the vast pacific. as soon as we landed, it felt like we'd tumbled down the rabbit hole, into a curious wonderland. there are so many birds on the atoll, we could only get here after dark, once they'd settled down for the night. as we made our way inland, the albatross chicks were oblivious to our caravan.

but, by daybreak, it seemed like we'd found paradise, a tiny atoll surrounded by turquoise waters. spinner dolphins patrol the coastline. endangered monk seals and giant sea turtles bask on its white beaches. and, of course, the birds. so many birds. over a million flapping, snapping, chattering laysan albatross, the largest colony anywhere in the world. and they just don't get out of the way. ( laughter ) >> amanda boyd: some are friendlier than others. just like people. >> alfonsi: amanda boyd works with the u.s. fish and wildlife service, which oversees midway. every day, its beaches are the scene of small acts of courage, and clumsy crash and burns.

once they're off, the albatross can spend months at sea, venturing thousands of miles, but returning to the same spot and the same partner. a relationship that begins with more preening and chest-pumping than a miami nightclub. >> boyd: oh my gosh! to watch them dance. and as they're court-shipping. when you find a pair that has actually been together and they're in sync, it's mesmerizing. they know each other's cues. and it's like art. it's beautiful. it's inspiring to watch that. >> alfonsi: inspiring, and loud. honking lovers... ( honking ) ...who are mostly ignored by their neighbors. if any place should be unspoiled, it's midway. the atoll is blissfully isolated, off-limits to the

public, and protected as part of one of the largest marine reserves in the world. geeze. so it was disturbing to see this. what are those orange and yellow things? >> kevin o'brien: harbor booms. >> alfonsi: kevin o'brien oversees marine debris removal in the region for the national oceanographic and atmospheric administration. hundreds of tons of plastic have been retrieved from midway in the last two decades. he showed us this year's pile, a veritable department store of discarded debris. >> o'brien: here, an intact c.r.t. tv screen here. >> alfonsi: a whole screen. >> o'brien: yeah. >> alfonsi: oh, look at this. so, you got enough things, you can sort it, i guess. >> o'brien: toothbrushes. we find an incredible amount of toothbrushes. >> alfonsi: tires. >> o'brien: tires. these can be dangerous, because the young monk seals often will get curious and stick their snout into these eel cones. sometimes we'll find jugs full of chemicals, with the lid still on, which we have to treat pretty carefully, because we're

never sure what-- what's in it. >> alfonsi: what's in there. >> o'brien: you know, the label's gone and... we found car bumpers, motorcycle helmets, firemen's helmets, golf clubs, bowling balls. >> alfonsi: all this trash ends up here because midway sits at the edge of the great pacific garbage patch, a vast ocean whirlpool that draws in plastic from coastlines around the world. kevin o'brien has been coming to midway for a decade to survey and retrieve the debris. this is some of what he hauled away last month. >> o'brien: these nets are almost always made of some sort of plastic. once they've been weathered in the environment, they can become very brittle. >> alfonsi: whoa. >> o'brien: and can easily break down into... >> alfonsi: little-- >> o'brien: ...microplastics. >> alfonsi: wow. so this looks like it's breaking apart and going away. >> o'brien: right. >> alfonsi: but it's not. >> o'brien: but it's not. ( war sounds )

>> alfonsi: long before plastics invaded midway, u.s. forces repelled a japanese assault in the second world war. the japanese had hoped to use the islands as a bridge to the mainland. the american victory there in 1942 was a turning point. today, there's a monument to the americans who died in the battle of midway. and if you tour the islands, you find relics everywhere. decaying artillery, derelict hangars, and beneath the water, the rusting skeletons of old warships. and, of course, evidence of the new battle underway here. >> o'brien: we've been cleaning it up for years. >> alfonsi: and it keeps coming. >> o'brien: and it keeps coming. >> alfonsi: on a walk along one of the beaches, we found a shoreline strewn with bottles and buoys, crates, and canisters. is this a problem that's unique to these islands?

>> o'brien: it's really not. there are beaches like this all over the world. what is unique about midway is that none of this plastic you see on the beaches here originates here. it's a problem that doesn't know borders. >> alfonsi: i think a lot of people see this on their beaches, and it kind of looks like sea glass at first. >> o'brien: yeah, it looks like a mosaic. it's really colorful, actually kind of beautiful. >> alfonsi: yeah, but what is it really? >> o'brien: but, a lot of this is really plastic. you know, and we can-- we can sift it here and see what we come up with. little pieces of-- >> alfonsi: sure. this is a bottle cap, you can see. and what's the harm with this? are fish eating this? >> o'brien: yeah, the smaller the piece of plastic, the smaller the animal that can consume it. >> alfonsi: do we know that they definitely have effects on fish? >> o'brien: we don't know that for certain. these plastics become a magnet, essentially, for toxic chemicals that are found in the environment: p.c.b.s, pesticides, fire retardant chemicals. and so, the longer a piece of plastic stays in the environment, the more toxic it becomes. >> alfonsi: studies have found

these microplastics in everything from supermarket seafood to drinking water. but scientists don't yet know what all that means for our health. >> kelly goodale: when an adult comes in, they'll make a couple of noises, saying, "hey, i'm back." >> alfonsi: but the effects on birds are easier to see. kelly goodale, a u.s. fish and wildlife biologist, took us on a ride around midway to show us the impact all this plastic is having on them. >> goodale: so the adults have been coming back, every few days to a couple of weeks, to feed them. >> alfonsi: what's happening right now? >> goodale: it's-- it's regurgitating up more food. >> alfonsi: dinner time here might make you lose your appetite. oh! >> goodale: did you see that squid? >> alfonsi: yeah. ( laughs ) that was a whole squid! >> goodale: yeah. >> alfonsi: that ought to keep you happy for a while. for all the fish and squid they catch, the albatross bring back plastic, too, from that great pacific garbage patch. goodale showed us their nesting grounds. >> goodale: and so here, we do

have a chick that did die. and, as you can see-- if you want to take a look at it. >> alfonsi: oh my goodness. oh, geeze. >> goodale: in here, you see there are so many pieces of plastic-- >> alfonsi: plastic. >> goodale: look at the amount of-- >> alfonsi: plastic bag. and they eat the plastic bags, why? >> goodale: you know, these can look like food sources. it can look like a squid to them. >> alfonsi: so they think this is food? >> goodale: they do think it's food, and, you know, flying fish, they can lay eggs on floating debris. and so they will absolutely lay eggs on pieces of floating plastic. so if the adults are out there foraging, they pick up those eggs as well as pieces of plastic in there. >> alfonsi: so it's the serving dish for the egg. >> goodale: yes. >> alfonsi: and of the birds that you end up looking at and dissecting, what percentage of them has-- have plastics in them? >> goodale: every single bird has plastic in it. >> alfonsi: every bird? >> goodale: yes. >> alfonsi: u.s. fish and wildlife scientists estimate the birds carry five tons of plastic

back to midway in their stomach every year. some of it, kelly goodale collects and catalogues. >> goodale: a comb. >> alfonsi: a comb? >> goodale: this one is probably one of the most disturbing ones. this was-- >> alfonsi: oh my goodness! >> goodale: you have bottle caps in here. >> alfonsi: this looks like trash from a drugstore. >> goodale: it pretty much is. >> alfonsi: okay, all this was inside one bird? >> goodale: yes. >> alfonsi: parts of this atoll can look like the site of a disaster. and while goodale says it's impossible to pinpoint the cause of death in every case, there's no question plastic can be fatal to these birds, either by filling up their stomachs and leaving little room for food, or by tearing up their insides. as these photos from fish and wildlife show, that plastic, which scientists say can take a hundreds of years to decompose, is often the only thing left after the birds have gone. >> o'brien: everyone, no matter

where you live, has a role in this problem. even someone in south dakota, for instance, who has a river near their home and doesn't dispose of their plastic bottle appropriately, might be contributing to this problem. >> alfonsi: all the way out here? >> o'brien: all waterways lead to the ocean. and once this stuff gets into the ocean, the ocean currents can take it anywhere. >> alfonsi: anywhere and everywhere. it's hard to find a place not plagued by plastic. just then, we got a reminder of what else is at stake, as an endangered monk seal paddled by. what's this guy doing, you think? is he coming in to eat, or is he going to-- >> o'brien: he's coming in, he's checking it out. these are the locals. and, whether or not you care about all of these incredible species that live up here in this very remote place, it doesn't necessarily matter. because there are so many other things that rely on the ocean. people rely on the ocean for their livelihood. fishermen. people rely on the ocean for recreation, tourism. and right here, we have an indicator of the health of our

ocean. >> alfonsi: you say this is an indicator. what does it tell you? >> o'brien: it tells us that the scale of the problem is massive, and it's global. >> meet wisdom. at 67, she's the oldest known bird in the wild. >> she has seen it all! >> including a world before plastics. go to www.60minutesovertime.com. metastatic breast cancer is trying to stop me, but not today. today, there's a new treatment for women like me who won't be held back. learn more at treatmbc.com. feveryone on your list will love, a lot.25 pier 1. this is me.

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>> stahl: now, an update on a story we called "a dose of greed." last month, we reported on the high price of evzio, an auto-injector for the drug naloxone, the antidote for

opioid overdoses. while the actual drug costs pennies, drug-maker kaleo charged over $4,000 for a pack of two injectors-- a pack that cost them about $80 to make, and was originally priced at $575. company c.e.o. spencer williamson defended raising his price. >> stahl: you jacked the price from the $575-- >> spencer williamson: lesley, i... stahl: --to $4,000! $4,000! >> williamson: lesley? >> stahl: what? >> williamson: i don't love that word. we raised the price to improve access to this product. >> stahl: this week, following our story and a senate investigation, kaleo announced it will reduce the price of evzio by 95%, offering a generic version for $178 for two injectors. i'm lesley stahl. we'll be back next week with another edition of "60 minutes."

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