i said, tell me, eddie's dead. what did he do? he did an oxy. an oxycontin. what the hell is an oxycontin? >> before covid-19 changed everything, america was grappling with a different kind of epidemic. >> the opioid crisis. >> killing without regard to geographic, economic or racial

line lines. >> this epidemic was manmade, delivered by relentless pursuit of profits. >> when you see huge amounts going to pharmacies, doesn't that raise a red flag? they had to no all the bad things going on with it, yet they didn't care. >> the opioid epidemic has claimed more american lives since all the wars since world war ii combined. since the covid-19 pandemic hit, it's only gotten worse. it's made a few people rich. >> aaron shamo. >> at 26 years of age, almost overnight, he's able to spawn this incredible empire. >> and it's devastated families from coast to coast. >> it's pretty gut wrenching and you go out to the cemetery and there's a headstone with your

kid's name on it. >> how did it start and how did it spread? >> cases are on the rise in 43 states. >> how will families cope and how will communities survive a scourge that shows few signs of relenting? >> all especially kicks from a point of origin. the opioid epidemic probably started in a rural coal mining town in appalachia, like lee county, virginia. >> lot of very good folks live around here. there's a lot of wonderful folks. people know each other.

and there's a lot of extended families. >> art van zee is a soft-spoken family doctor who moved to pendleton gap 40 years ago. >> in its heyday it was the biggest town in the county, 14,000 men working up here in the coal field. >> beginning in the late 1990s, troubling number of people visiting his clinic, seemingly addicted to a painkiller called oxycontin. >> a lot of these young people, we had seen them grow up from babies. so many of them were very good kids with bright, promising futures. completely kind of caught me off guard about the extent of the proble problem. >> a young woman overdosed. her friends dropped her off at the emergency room and drove

way, which in lee county was very unusual. and i just remember talking to her, and she was describing oxycontin and i was like, where did this come from? that's the first time i had heard about it. and naively, i thought that might be the last time i hear about it. >> we were getting people walking into our facilities, and they were talking about oxys and ocs, which didn't mean a thing to either one of the counselors there. so i called the local pharmacist and i said, greg, what is this? and all he said to me, beth, this is going to be the worst disaster that has ever hit lee county. mark my words. >> patients quickly understood that if they put the pill in their mouth and let the coating melt off, they could then wipe it off on their shirts and then they could snort it, or inject it and get that full nuclear bomb of oxy contin.

once that time release mechanism is gone, it's basically taking heroin in a pill. and that, of course, leads to addiction. >> there were more and more people coming in, and more and more desperate people. and a lot of desperate families, because they didn't know what happened. they didn't recognize their loved one, you know. and they were desperate. you know, what is happening to my husband, to my wife, to my son, daughter? >> every night, if you drove down into pennington or anywhere around, you could see kids out on the street, selling drugs, using drugs, high. how hard it would be trying to get him sober and trying to get him out of jail. >> the things i saw were family members who loved their family. loved their grandson, son, daughter. and they were stealing them blind. they were robbing them, taking everything they had. >> people were stealing lawn mowers in broad daylight.

they were stealing wide screen tvs from walmart. a night manager of a grocery store was making a night deposit. somebody killed him to get his money to go buy more oxy cconti. it was crime on a level never seen before. >> then came the deaths, so many overdoses that the local funeral parlor were overcome. >> there were times we attended funerals twice a day, and miss some. all of a sudden, there was a balloon of all these children put into foster care, and their parents were in the hospital or on the street, or dead from this dru drug. >> this was the most devastating thing not only in our community but in our region that i've seen in 33 years of medical practice here. >> what happened in pennington gap, and towns like it, looked a lot like an infectious disease,

spreading rapidly through the population like a virus. but this epidemic differed in a crucial respect. it was manmade. in large part, a product for a hunt for profits by the american drug manufacturers, including one called perdue pharma. in the mid 1990s, perdue already had a drug called ms con tin that contained morphine and was resolved for the sickest of patients. oxycodone would release its medication gradually into patients' bloodstreams. >> i see the possibility of marketing high-string opioid and creating a market for it amongst people who were living with everyday, chronic pain. they worked out that they could

market a pill that they would claim would last all night. and the way that they would do that, they would pack this pill with very high levels of opioid, and they would coat it in what they said was a slow release protection. and essentially this pill would drip the painkiller into your system over 12 hours. >> in 1995, perdue asked the food and drug administration to approve its new painkiller called oxycontin. they claimed because of its slow release, it was perfectly safe and of great benefit to patients with chronic pain. >> they realized that this was key, not only that the drug was more effective, but they needed to market it as safer. essentially what you see is that they go to the fda and persuade them of this, and the fda allows them to put it on the label. >> literally the words were "it is believed that the time-release mechanism reduces the risk of addiction." the guy at the fda who approved

this was aa fellow by the name of curtis wright, who left the fda shortly thereafter and took up a six-figure position at perdue. >> even with fda approval, there was still a big hurdle in the way of perdue's plans for oxycontin, skeptical doctors. >> went to the management and said even if you get this drug approved, these doctors aren't going to prescribe it. they're not convinced it's safer. in fact, they're convinced it's more dangerous. >> most doctors understood that the prescription painkillers like oxy are almost identical chemically to street drugs like opium and heroin, all derived by a milky fluid produced by the poppy plant, and all classified as opioids. doctors' reluctance to prescribe opioids stretch back to the civil war. >> the civil war contributed to

the medical demand for morphine, because there were a lot of debilitating injuries, particularly in the south where a lot of the fighting took place and a lot of the greatest devastation happened. you had increases in opium use after the civil war. >> in the chaos of rebuilding the country, few noticed the army of addicted veterans. morphine was seen as a quick and easy way to address a whole host of ailments. >> using morphine itself as a medicine, physicians described it at the drop of a hat for many things. >> heroin was introduced by the bayer pharmaceutical company an over-the-counter cough suppressant. it was routinely used for teething infants. >> large part of numbers of people there was lack of awareness of these drugs.

creating backlash in the 20th century, it's become a crisis in america. >> the crisis of addiction led to a crackdown. no longer would doctors prescribe them or pharmacies stock them, pushing opioids into an elicit black market. >> from the 1920s through really the early 1990s, there is a strong, restrictive consensus about opioid use among physicians, pharmacists, and the federal government really enforces it among pharmaceutical companies. so how does it come to pass that perdue comes out with an opioid in the 1990s and suddenly it's a great time to be sell iing opio? >> how did it go from the black market to behind the pharmacy counter? although it's a complex story, it's come to be told through a single family, the sachlers.

their genius for marketing earned them billions and helped to precipitate the opioid epidemic. epidemic some hot cocoa? mom, look! are you okay? head home this holiday with the one you love. visit your local mercedes-benz dealer today for exceptional lease and financing offers at the mercedes-benz winter event.

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very good evening to you. i'm richard lui in new york city. breaking news for thank you hour, 14 mibs aftnutes after 8: president trump signing congress' stimulus bill releasing $900 billion of covid relief and averting a monday night shutdown. the president was at one of his resorts golfing today.

let's go straight to nbc's josh letterman, who was with the president this weekend. josh, what is the news we're getting? >> reporter: president trump has now signed in to law the covid relief bill, as well as the government spending measure, richard, meaning that the government shutdown we had been awaiting possibly happening when we start tuesday has now been averted and that covid relief, some $900 billion of relief measures passed overwhelmingly by both chambers of commerce will now be headed to the american people. this came after many days of delays, after the president suggested he was not going to sign it, because after the deal was done, negotiated by his own brokers in congress, the president decided he actually wanted something different, $2,000 payments as opposed to $600 payments to americans that was included in that bill. now tonight, a spokesman for the

president, judd deere, said he has signed it and is passing ago a statement from president trump that reads "as president i told congress i want far less wasteful spending and more money going to the people in the form of $2,000 per adult and $6 h00 r child. the president going on in this message to say he's sending a strong message that makes clear to congress wasteful items need to be removed. he is sending back to congress a red line version, item by item, basically telling congress things that he wants removed from the bill. we'll have to see how that is actually going to work out, because once this bill is signed in to law, it's law and that money is going to be going out the door. there has been a lot of speculation today, and over the last few days, that the president might ultimately cave from this threat not to move forward with this relief in exchange for some promise from leaders in congress that they would take up a measure to add more money to these direct payments and these other demands

that the president has been making over the last few days. we'll have to see whether the president has extracted some type of commitment from majority leader mitch mcconnell, to put on the floor of the senate the bill we expect to pass the house early this week, authorizing payments at a $200 level. for now, the president has signed this measure into law that will restore these unemployment benefits, stop the evictions that were going to be facing americans starting january 1st. we should say the president's gambit over the past several days is not without real pain for americans across the country, richard. the fact that the president waited until now means a full week of unemployment benefits that americans have been counting on, they will no longer have. >> so, josh, folks listening are thinking, what is the reds? are they big red lines, small red lines? any indication what those

caveats may be? it's very, very early, way early, if you will, in terms of getting those details. >> so it sounds like what the president is doing, and literally his smokesman is tweeting out this statement sentence by sentence, as we are speaking right now. but it looks like what the president is going to do is sign this bill, but then send congress basically a list of things that he wants them to remove and congress could try to pass another law if they chose to do so that would meet the president's demands. what this appears to be is basically a way out for the president, who got himself into this mess, apparently not totally understanding the full ramifications of not signing this measure and is now looking for a way to back out of it, allow that funding to go forward, but without looking like he lost a fight or simply caving. this is what seems to be a kind of fig leaf where the president could say he's still going to be able to work with congress to

get what he's demanding. meantime, that relief so badly needed by millions and millions of americans will not be held up. >> josh, stand by. let's bring in washington correspondent for business insights, author of "piety and power: mike pence and the taking of the white house." what do you know of this moment, tom? what have you heard in terms of what the president has signed and what those red lines might be? >> you know, i'm hearing behind the scenes, from folks close to the white house and close to the president is interesting, a bit of a realization that he has lost the race to hold on to the white house. and, you know, you see this in conjunction -- i heard from my sources earlier, look at this in conjunction with, say, campaign rally for kelly loeffler and david perdue in georgia, just before that run-off race in a week from now. you put those two things together and look at it.

it's sinking in for him. i'm hearing that this may be one of the last things he's remembered for on his way out the door. the other thing that's happening, frankly, is he has bad staff work, staff is leaving, looking for new jobs. number of things happening. the whole thing looks slap dash, more slap dash than usual for the trump administration, but reality seems to be sinking in for him. >> josh, as we look at the timing, the president had until monday midnight. we're on a sunday. some might say if he wanted to stay in the headlines and get the most attention, extract the most value, if you will, out of this deal, he might have waited until monday. do we know why he decided today? >> we don't, other than the fact that the political pressure was quickly mounting on the president as unemployment benefits expired last night, heading into today. so the consequences were quickly

adding up. and, really, democrats and republicans were demanding that the president not hold this up any longer. we're getting now a chance to look at the full statement from the president, and it's giving us a little bit of a clearer sense of what exactly he has gotten in exchange for relenting here. the president's statement talking about this vote on monday in the house where we do expect those $2,000 payments may be passed by the house. the president saying the senate will start the process for a vote that increases checks to $2,000, repeal section 230, which is a reference to this social media company liability protection that the president wanted added to the national defense bill. he also says the senate will start an investigation into voter fraud. so the president seems to have gotten, at least according to his statement, some promise from leaders in congress that they are going to take up some of these things on the president's wish list. whether or not those actually ever happen is another story.

so, the president may not ultimately get those things, but at least this gives him the fig leaf of being able to say that he's getting a commitment to move forward on the things that are his priority. we also have a statement from senate majority leader mitch mcconnell, who says he applauds the decision of president trump to sign this into law and thanks him for signing it, along with the government funding bill that will avert that massive government shutdown. mcconnell saying i am glad the american people will receive this much-needed assistance as the nation continues battling this pandemic. >> josh, go back and restate the detail around what the president is saying that he has been able to extract in this deal, one of which is to have the republican-led senate now take up this very issue. it was much reported that regardless of what would happen in the house, on the up or down on the $2,000 number of the checks as opposed to $600, the senate was just going to look

the other way. >> basically, what we understand at this point in time, and this is all developing very quickly, and not in the normal order this works. the president has signed this into law but is going to push for this vote, first in the house, then likely in the senate for them to approve we can add any to that. last minute decided he didn't want government spending money on, foreign aid programs. it appears what the president was going to do is ask congress to use something called the impoundment control act, essentially claug back money not spent by the government. since it's too late for the president to do anything about this bill that he signed, he will ask congress to make back the money that he no longer wants them to spend. in addition, the president insists that he has gotten some

type of commitment for congress to take up a look into the voter fraud that the president maintains took place in the election but, as we know, is no evidence that actually occurred. >> nbc's josh lederman with the breaking news with the president, that he has signed that covid bus, that very large bill that was so important to avert a shutdown. thank you as well to tom livio from business insider. breaking news right here. stay right here with us. we return to regular programming after a short break. to regular g after a short break. we're going skating. we're going to nana's. wherever you go this holiday, chevy can help you get there. which is why we're making our chevy... ...employee discount available to everyone. the chevy price you pay... ...is what we pay. not a cent more. so wherever you go, happy holidays from chevy. use the chevy employee discount for everyone to get over six thousand eight hundred dollars below msrp on this equinox. get the chevy employee discount for everyone today.

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by the mid 1990s, perdue pharma had convinced the medical community that oxycontin was safe. to drive their message further into america's heartland, they hired an army of pharmaceutical reps, taught them a sales pitch and directed them to doctors most likely to prescribe. >> he had data that they had purchased. they gave them to the reps and sent them everywhere in the country but paid particular attention to places like pennington gap where there were already larger than average percentages of people on opioids because there were a lot more workplace injuries because of coal mining and factory work. they targeted those doctors and went to them with a message that this drug is safer. look, the fda allows us to say

it. >> in pennington gap, dr. art van zee was on the receiving end of perdue's sales pitch. >> this was in the early days of the marketing campaign that they had these kinds of things. one of them was this oxycontin beach hat that physicians could get. and then they had this cd with swing is alive, swing in the right direction with oxycontin, a lot of the great swing tunes down here. that's a distraction, a way of trivlizing what you're doing. you wouldn't give out hats that have heroin on it, but it has the same addiction potential. >> one of the early mugs with the oxycontin logo on one side and on the other side, it says the one to start with. the one to stay with. that's really clarifying. they wanted you on that drug. they made more money when you were on that drug and, of

course, they knew most people, once they were on that drug for any amount of time, were going to have to stay on that drug. it's a great business model. >> it's a very practical, data-driven marketing decision to go in and hit those places. now, as it turned out, when things started to dw wrogo wronn addictions rose, those were also the places to easier to stigmatize and easier, in many cases, to hide a drug epidemic in. >> huge amounts of oxycontin were ship ped out of perdue's warehouse to ft. lauderdale, florida, kentucky or tennessee, these different places they sent it to. there were towns in west virginia where they had more medication than the number of residents, and the whole town could have taken it. every single man, woman and child were on oxy contin, they couldn't have gone through the

amount of oxy contin there. doesn't that raise a red flag? >> by the fall of 2000, van zee and a few colleagues had seen enough crime, misery and death in their small community. they decided it was time to act. >> i was very concerned that we were the only ones that knew about this. in my naivety, i said we need to let purdue pharma know. they're going to be absolutely thankful we contacted them and told them about the problems we're seeing, because i thought they didn't know. >> dear dr. haddox i am writing you as medical director at purdue pharmaceuticals to give you further information on the growing abuse of oxycontin in a number of areas around the country. i'm sure you are already -- >> they didn't move. they didn't respond. and, because of that, we just knew we were going nowhere with

purdue. we're on our own and we have to do what we can to stop them. >> van zee and his colleagues decided to call an emergency meeting at the local high school. more than 800 people showed up. >> people wanted something done. they wanted a resolution to what they were seeing with their childr children, what they were seeing with their parents, what they were seeing with their neighbors. the crime, the addiction, the suffering that they were going through, the neglect of children. >> at the meeting, a petition was circulated, demanding that purdue recall oxycontin until it could be made in a less abusable form. within weeks the petition had thousands of signatures. >> that really got the attention. that's really when purdue kind of woke up to what was happening. this community is not keeping quiet. >> the company reached out to request a meeting. three high-level executives

travelled from purdue headquarters in stanford, connecticut, to meet with health officials at a local motel. the group from pennington gap included a businessman who had lost his son to an overdose. >> they wanted to put a face on the suffering. so we thought if we brought this farth father, and this father was in desperate pain, it was awful to listen to him. maybe putting a face on it, might grab them a little bit. >> purdue executives refused to recall oxy, instead offering to cut a check to the community for $100,000. >> i felt helpless. and to have someone come to you and say, oh, it's not our problem. it's your problem, you know, and we'll help you out by giving you $100,000, and we were supposed to be impressed by that. i kept thinking, how can they expect us to be that dumb?

but they did. >> soon, stories about the addictive potential of oxycodone, the active ingredients in oxycontin would spread from towns like pennington gap to the rest of the country. pennington gap to the rest of the country. may your holidays glow bright and all your dreams take flight. visit your local mercedes-benz dealer today for exceptional lease and financing offers at the mercedes-benz winter event.

richard lui with breaking new this is hour. president trump signing congress' stimulus bill releasing $900 billion of covid relief. this averts a monday night

government shutdown. the decision comes less than a week after the president demanded changes to that bill, suggesting he would refuse to sign it into law if they were not met. the president says he has added some red lines to it. we don't know exactly what those are. nbc working to confirm those items and how it might affect future support for the bill itself. it is law as of this hour. now back to "the forgotten epidemic." by the early 2000s, purdue knew about the addictive properties of oxycontin but they and other companies in the opioid business had a few billion reasons to keep aggressively marketing their drugs. >> we're talking about huge, huge amounts of money. so every year that they can prevent regulations from cracking down on this market, that's a major victory for them.

>> the vast supply and illegal diversion of opioids made them increasingly available to millions of americans suffering from the disease of addiction. >> once the people become hooked on these drugs, they need more and more. you build up a tolerance. you need ever-increasing doses to either offset the pain or get high. once it got big enough, what you then start to see is the black market becomes an important part of this whole economy of dealing in opioids. >> clinics and pharmacies turn themselves into pill mills, distributing oxys and other opioids as fast as they could get them. >> in little more than a decade more than 20 million prescription pills were sold here, an average of 6500 per person. >> in a town, williamson, west virginia, the police described to me how you would have many bus loads of people who would arrive, brought by one dealer, simply sign people up to come,

get prescriptions. he would pay them, take their prescriptions, get the pills, sell them on the black market. so, everybody starts to benefit a bit from this, except those, of course, who are being dragged downward. >> it's the fastest-growing drug in america. >> the tide of opioid addiction spread out from appalachia like a stain across the country. >> center for disease control has a map. it flipped during the years, there's a little red spot that rises in southern west virginia, and as the years tick by, you see that spot spread through southern west virginia, east to kentucky. it pops up in southern ohio and up in parts of new england and that red dot gets wider and darker. and then, eventually, dots spread up across the country. >> the wildfire of opioid addiction had so far burned virtually unchecked, but all

that was about to change. by february 2001, the opioid epidemic had spread from small, rural towns to the streets of big eastern cities, like philadelphia, where 18-year-old eddie bish was a high school senior. >> president's day, february 19th, 2001, i was at work. i got a call from my daughter. dad, eddie's not breathing and he's turning blue. as i ran up the block, i noticed two guys were sitting in the ambulance and they looked at me and i looked at them. and they said, "sorry, sir." and i was like, please don't tell me he's dead. and they said, "sorry, sir. nothing we could do." i was like, "what?"

>> unbeknownst to his father, eddie had begun experimenting with a little blue pill that was appearing at neighborhood party. >> my son's friends were outside. i walked outside and i said, tell me, what did he do? eddie's dead. what did he do? he did an oxy. an oxycontin. what the hell is an oxycontin? i was reading these stories about how bad this drug was. i had no clue painkillers were related to heroin. they were almost the exact same as heroin. ever since that day, that was my personal mission. i dedicated in the name of my son, eddie, to warn as many people as i could. - oh. - what's going on?

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a professional i.t. specialist, bisch created a simple website called oxyabusekills.com. >> the website started one page, just one page and it told eddie's story. my 18-year-old son died 2-19-01 after taking the powerful painkiller drug known as oxycontin. the site developed from there. eventually that one-page website had 40 or 50 pages. >> the website became a kind of virtual memorial. its pages, filled with the stories of young people dead from oxy overdoses. these are some of the first casualties in an epidemic that was still mostly under the radar. >> to my surprise, over half of

the emails i got were from people who were prescribed oxycontin. people who took it as prescribed and became addicted. as i learned more and more stories came out, it was, you know, plain and clear that the company was lying about this drug. >> bisch wanted to turn his grief into action. he put out the word to the parents who visited his website, to join him in an effort to rein in purdue pharma. >> we got together and came up with a name for our little group, r.a.t., relatives against purdue pharma. i would get emails, sometimes five, six, seven a day and let them know, look, we're trying to do something. >> r.a.p. parents fanned out at public protests, in front of

congress and on television news, letting the country know of the dangers of oxycontin and other opioids. >> it has now been over ten years since oxycontin first came on the market. addictions and deaths continue unabated. >> my 18-year-old son, bobby, died from an overdose of oxycontin. >> my wife, mary, died of an overdose of oxycontin. >> my son died of an overdose of oxycontin. >> one of the offices he contacted was the u.s. attorney in the western district of virginia. that u.s. attorney, john brownlee, soon launched the first criminal investigation against purdue. >> he sees this overdose and deaths and says to himself, what's going on here? he looks at it and sees one drug, oxycontin. he starts to dig in to what's going on.

he essentially levers open the door to all the internal information about purdue if pharma, how they've marketed this drug, the lies that be being told, the misinformation about its safety and, above all, what the company knew and what it was telling its salespeople to say wasn't, as far as he was concerned, an accidental epidemic. it was something they consciously pursued. >> ultimately brownlee indicted the company and three of its top executives. >> the genesis of oxycontin was not the result of good science or laboratory experiment. oxycontin was the child of marketeers and bottom line financial decision making. >> purdue fought back, hiring one of the most famous lawyers in the country, former new york mayor, rudolph giuliani. >> rudolph giuliani was there to show that purdue pharma had

political pull. he was still a big name in washington. so the pressure starts to ratchet up. >> brownlee wanted to indict purdue executives on felo in. y criminal charges but his higher-ups in the justice department ordered him to settle for misdemeanor charges of misbranding and no jail time. ed bisch and the other members of r.a.p. felt betrayed. at the executives' sentencing hearing, they were invited by the judge to give a statement. >> we pleaded that they get jail time. the judge was apologetic, saying that if it was up to him, they would have got jail time. but he had to go by the recommended plea agreement. >> purdue pharma must pay a $600 million fine, one of the biggest ever against a drug company, and company executives were fined

individually $34 million. >> in the end, purdue pled guilty to felony misbranding for actions that occurred before 2001. but for purdue the $600 million fine was affordable when compared to billions in profits from the sale of oxycontin. >> there were various watershed moments when you say that the opioid epidemic could have been, at the very least, reined in, if not prevented, and that was one moment. the way the case turned out, it discouraged others from going after purdue pharma and would take many more years before other federal agencies decided to look more closely at what the company was doing. >> reached for comment, purdue says, in part, that it has accepted responsibility for specified misconduct before 2017 and has made changes, including ending promotion of opioid products. it says it has eliminated its salesforce and appointed new

executives. the sackler family members have resigned from the board. it would take until 2010 for purdue pharma to reformlated. so you can't just crush it or inject it and snort it anymore. and at the same time the medical profession starts to get hesitant about prescribing. and a big crack down on the pill mills. >> news of the arrests and prosecutions of suspected pill mill operators fills local newscasts. >> 20 people arrested two weeks ago. accused of stockpiling oxycontin by getting prescriptions from different doctors. >> earned the nickname doctor oxy one prepgs at at time. >> the tighter controls did litt little to stop the spread of the opioid epidemic.

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west virginia.

in 2008 was in many ways a micro cosm of the opioid epidemic sweeping through. and beginning to leak out to the rest of the country. 30 year-old mark trent grew up here. he left to go to college to study photograph ri. when he returned and saw what was happening to his community he picked up his camera and started to shoot. >> i started trying to document it. around 2008. i was an outsider at that point. i moved away. it took time to come back and be accepted again. especially for what i was asking. i was asking a lot. >> when he began taking pictures, oxycontin was the main problem. >> it's an x-ray of the knee. >> one of our close friends had a knee injury playing soccer and that turned into a prescription for painkillers. that prescription turned into an

addiction. from that addiction she turned her friends onto all that. and it wasn't just her it was everywhere. >> in 2009, mark reconnected with an old friend named ally. she intro-doused him to her 17 year-old girlfriend and another friend. these three women became mark's main subject over the next few years. >> that was the first day i met pk. so young. she was just a young, young girl that had no experience with this stuff. everyone was watchful of it at first. no one wanted her to get involved. it was one of those things that got her. >> for years, she tried to keep pk off opioid. heroin proved too enticing. >> she begged me not to do it. i didn't listen. i done it. i remember going through my arm and my whole body felt really

warm. and my eyes got heavy. i remember looking up at her and smiling. i had never felt that in my entire life. it was the most peaceful thing i have felt in my life. >> with ally, pk and barbie as guide. he began taking his camera everywhere. >> this is one of the houses i always shot in. hunt for drugs or something. seeing who had what. who was getting high. seeing who was getting a script. i knew it it was inevitable i would see my friend shoot up. i knew there was evidence. i never saw it in person. >> they were cooking them on and drew back on the syringe. it was black. it was like injecting death. that was the second time i was ever shocked. the first time i saw someone shoot up in their neck.

this is such heartbreaking moment. she was high and talking about it everyone is turning against her. and her own family didn't want her around it and treated her like she was track and something wrong can her. like she was trash. >> isn't this crazy? >> the center of the drug scene was an old abandoned house since burned to the ground. >> this is the living room where everybody gather up here and always set in here and if you cut back there's a bathroom and stuff. everybody did the drugs back there. and nobody cared. and there were needles around everywhere. and everybody would be piled up in the house. elbow to elbow in here. just hanging out doing trades and deals. we traded a vehicle one time for some stuff. >> once she got into heroin, she became addicted quickly. >> i remember being so messed up

stumbling out of this door. just swaying and everything was spinning around. i thought i had it under control. i thought i could quit. i thought that for a long time. >> she couldn't quit. nor could her girlfriend or their close friend. mark watched helplessly as the three women spiralled deeper and deeper into a addiction. >> three and a half years in, i started seeing the struggles of what being dope sick would look like sp shivering and being cold. and the people that i knew and loved changing completely. and being ir rational with each other and angry. relationships just turning really sour because one person got more high than the other. it wasn't let's go party and have fun and feel good anymore. it was let's survive.

>> one of the first and most complete visual record of the opioid epidemic. >> i never thought about not shooting this or making it work because i knew it came to a point where they wanted me to. >> in 2016, the inevitable happened. ally and pk's friends suck comed to a fatal over dose of heroin. >> i had just gotten back to new york. i had gotten two calls from a west virginia number. my heart sank. it was one of the girls. i called and it was pk. she was crying. she's like barbie and her girlfriend are dead. they died. they're dead. they over dosed. >> i thought things would chaj at that point. they're going to see. >> you think so. but that's the thing. >> barbie was pretty invincible. i never saw anyone like that.

>> it hit reality we could go. but we didn't care. we wanted to keep getting high and numb the pain. >> ally survived pulling herself through sheer force of will out of addiction. part of her recovery, she decided not to talk to us on camera. >> she found sobriety through a court ordered program. she got into trouble and finally came clean and said if you don't get me out i'm going to die. they pulled some strings and got her a bed. she found sobriety that way. and that's what really turned things around for her. >> this is the first time she saw her family after being clean for a year. >> pk was on and off heroin for years. shooting up so much that her arms were krisz crossed with needle marks. >> finally in 2018, she quit

too. >> it wasn't until i got pregnant with my son this past year. i didn't want to put him through what i put my daughter through. even though i didn't use while i was pregnant. she had to grow up without me in a sense. and like i didn't want to make him go through withdrawal. it was like i have to be done this time. >> pk and her boyfriend are now on a maintenance drug. prescribed to staunch the horror of withdrawal. they want to quit that too. >> i want to be done with it. so i can be normal. i don't think i'm ready. i'm stressed out about it. >> it's the last thing. all the other stuff is done. it's hard to quit the last -- >> we have hard cravings. and we almost break. if she would cut me down then what if the cravings are

overcome. and not having that. you know what i mean? it will jeopardize my whole sobriety. >> in december 2018, mark published some of the photographs in the "new york times." bringing much needed national attention to want opioid crisis. >> i figure if i can reach one person and show them how horrible it is. they can show 20 other people and i can save 20 people. everybody thinks it's fun and games and you lose so many people. my sister just died last month of it. i'm not trying to lose anymore friends over it. >> though the story mark chronicled brought hope, it was too late for many. and in countless towns like it. >> these communities are still under water with it. it hasn't went away. it's crazy. an over dose death is not shocking at all.

it's normal now. you can meet entire generations wiped out by this. the damage is done. there's no undoing any of this.

an epidemic hitting rule america hard. oxycontin. heroin over dose deaths doubled in the last two years. >> public health crisis. >> the opioid epidemic in the united states hasz come in three waves. prescription painkiller phase crested around the same time as cheap heroin began to flood the market. >> 28,000 people die each year from heroin over dose. >> the leading killer of people under 50 in the united states. >> heroin over dose deaths quinn tup ld between 2010 and 2016. before that drug too reached saturation. the deadliest period of the epidemic was still to come. >> this is fentanyl. opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin. so powerful, you can die just touching it. >> taking 18,000 lives in 2016.

african-americans suffering the most dramatic increase. >> fentanyl first in a europe lab in the 1950s as a powerful an stettic. >> schedule 2 medicine. used in invasive surgery and patches to treat cancer pain. end of life pain. today the problem is it's being manufactured abroad and imported into the united states. >> it is estimated that fentanyl over doses have cost the lives of 150,000 people in the last eight years. most fentanyl comes into the united states from china. where it can be purchased online. >> we think the dealers are the ones driving the transition toward fen nil. it makes economic sense. the profit margins are larger. you can conceal it easily. ship it easy through the mail. it makes economic sense.

>> this is challenge for law enforcement. since now this stuff is showing up in places where there's no prior contact or proximity to organized crime. >> fentanyl represented a frightening new front in the war on drugs. no longer would traffickers require sophisticated distribution net works. now they needed an internet connection and mailing address. they can operate from anywhere. even a middle class suburb in utah. >> in 2016 we heard that they were shipments of fentanyl making their way into utah. and it instantly became a top priority for us. >> on november 8, 2016, postal inspectors seized a box on route from a port city in china. it was a addressed to a man in salt lake. named sean. >> we received intelligence from

customs and border protection. there was an inbound package. we began to investigate the package. our sense of urgency went off the chart and led to further intercepts of packages intended for delivery. >> nvt tors quickly determine he was a low level carrier. probably unaware of the contents of the packages he was handling. >> he went home that night and thought about things. and thought long and hard. the next morning he called back and said there's more to the story. most nights of the week i get in my car and i go to a port. and from that porch i pick up 40, 50, packages and then i take them to the blue post office collection boxes throughout the valley. and i mail them out every night. >> he agreed to cooperate with the authorities instead of dropping his pickups in the

mail, he delivered them to police. inside a single days packages were nearly 35,000 counter fit oxycontin pills. each lace td with a few grains of fentanyl. he began to give up the names of others in the large fents nil trafficking ring. at the head of which was a 26 year-old former eagle scout. named aaron. she grew up in phoenix, arizona. but moved with his family to salt lake city in 1996. in high school, he began smoking pot and skipping school. he dreamed of the using the internet to become wealthy like his idol bill gates and steve jobs. he went to work at e bay after college. the tedious life of entry life employee was not for him. they concocted a plan to sell prescription drugs on the dark

web. a part of the internet accessible only with a special browser. there he set up a store modeled on amazon where he bought and sold drugs using untraceable digital currency. called it pharma master. >> they approached associates and friends from work or previous life. and they recruited them. not out of the goodness of their heart. with cash. to help them run this operation almost like an internet start up. >> he acquired a pill press. with which he made fake oxycontin pills in his basement. to give them the same narcotic effect as real oxy, he laced them with inexpensive fentanyl he had shipped from china. >> in most organized crime cases, we're dealing with models that we know. and have been around for a long time. mexico based drug trafficking

organizations linked to cartels for example. more or less understand their way of doing business. but this was a new learning curve. this was the first experience with someone who was so prolific at selling drugs on the dark net. >> it's almost surreal to read customer reviews from his operation. the glowing reviews. how good the product is. how wonderful the customers service is. they always send extra. to what you order. it's a reasonable price and it has quite a powerful hit. and this mushroomed on the dark net. by word of mouth or otherwise, tens of thousands of customers came to buy his product. >> obviously they got good at one year pharma master was the largers retailer of counter fit oxycontin pills in the nation.

>> in november 2018, sean agreed to wear a wire to capture his conversations with aaron. >> the conversations revealed crucial details of the operation. including the involvement of two female associates. alexandria and katy. >> he is pressing and manufacturing the pills at his home. and then the pills that he pressed he would take them to the ladies home.

and they would organize the pills according to the dark net orders and package them and get them ready for shipping. and place those on the doorstep. for him to come and pick up each night and deliver to different mail facilities throughout the valley. >> his packages found their way to customers in all 50 states. including one to a 29 year-old man in utah. named devin. >> when he was a teenager, he began to have these things that are called cluster headaches. a migraine on steroids. sticking a hot knife in your eyeball and rolling it around in your brain. >> it was every day. he could almost time it. he knew it would be between 3 and 4:00 a.m. he would have his oxycontin to help him survive. it would carry him usually through the next day. until the next one hit again.

when you are in pain all the time, depression is a problem. you don't see any hope or any point. we tried everything we could find. just to try to find him an alternative. but opioids. it's the only thing that deadened the pain. >> by the time he was in his mid-20s. he was taking two oxycontin a day. >> he said the doctors just felt so bad. that he couldn't do anything more than he was doing. and one he explained he was having two a day and could i get more. i can't. i legally can't give you more. >> he knew he was becoming addicted and struggled against it. >> he actually would go on week long detox. which was a nightmare. to get it out of the system. he didn't want to be addicted to it. but, ultimately he goes back on them because tths only thing that would help. he was stuck. he was trapped.

>> he took to hording pills. >> there was a period he did ask myself and some family members if they had any left over pain meds that they wouldn't need. so he would have a back up. >> we had to tell him, you can't go asking people for prescription meds. i'll never forget he said what am i supposed to do? >> devin found a way to make sure he always had enough oxy. he ordered a small number of back ups through the internet from company called pharma master. >> the day he passed away he was supposed to meet me to get his suit fitted for his brother oos wedding. it was coming up. and he had a headache and didn't feel good. he was going to come home and rest. that night, i told him good night and went to bed. and it was a couple hours later.

kate came in and knocked on the door and woke us up. told us that devin wasn't breathing and we went downstairs and he was on the floor. and i called 911 and started doing cpr and the rest just kind of a blur. liberty mutual customizes your home insurance, here's one that'll really take you back. wow! what'd you get, ryan? it's customized home insurance from liberty mutual! what does it do bud? it customizes our home insurance so we only pay for what we need! and what did you get, mike? i got a bike. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ dcoughing's not new.. this woman coughs... and that guy does, too. people cough in the country,

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pills into boxes and shipping them out. postage, priority mail envelopes, bags. lists and lists of customers. and what they ordered. in one tote alone they found 74,000 of the fentanyl pills. pills everywhere. these women were having to work so quickly to keep up with the orders, pills would spill on the ground. they vacuum them up. several thousand dollars of pills inside the vacuum. >> i was surprised it was taking place less than a mile from my own home. >> we live in a quiet middle class neighborhood where nothing particularly exciting goes on. it's clean, it's like america. >> police next turn to aaron. specially trained agents in

hazmat suits descended on his nearby home. it's a crazy scene. to see what the agents pull out of this non-descript home that could be in any neighborhood in the united states. >> bags of cash. >> have i ever seen a million dollars in cash in person? no. a million dollars in cash was hoisted out of his home in garbage bags. $1.2 million.

>> you go in the door there was a pill press. to create the tablets. he was primarily running that. the second is dedicated to producing the fake tablets. >> you can see where powder has been wiped off the wall. powder everywhere. it was quite a scary scene for everybody. knowing the danger of fentanyl. >> dea agents have taken down what could be the biggest pill bust in utah history. >> agents found countless pills laced with fentanyl. >> several hundred thousand pills and a pill press capable of making up to 7,000 pills an hour. >> perhaps the most alarming thing about the operation was

just how quickly and easily he had put it together. >> a 26 years of age. almost over night. he is able to spawn this incredible empire. it's not like he had an elaborate net work. tths small and off the internet. it's a young kid. that's a very different profile than what we had seen emerging. and what we see in other types of drug cases. >> most of the individuals had good parents, good families and up bringings. what happened was greed. there were over 8,300 orders placed on pharma master. we were able to look at those customers on the list and figure out where all the drugs were going to. >> these orders touched every part of the united states. every major metro area. every small city.

>> we received a call from the dea office. and the office said we understand your son passed away. we'd like to see if we can get his computer. because when we got aaron's, and his computer. your son's name came up on the list of people who purchased from him. sure enough there was the order that he had made i think it was for two pills. if i remember right. they were supposed to be two oxycontin pills. what they were is fentanyl laced. pills. >> the trial of the former eagle scout. >> he went on trial in salt lake. for 13 counts including criminal conspiracy and murder. >> there were card board boxes and plastic bins full of evidence in the courtroom. prosecutors lay out the case against 29 year-old aaron. >> the trial lasted 18 days.

among the witnesses to take the stand for the prosecution, were members of the his organization. sean, katy, and alexandria. >> the jury found him guilty on two counts including one that carries a mandatory life sentence. prosecutors say his actions directly resulted in death. the jury couldn't reach a verdict on a specific count involving death. >> she was convicted of continuing a criminal enterprise and sentenced to life without possibility of parole. >> i have heard criticism about the sentence. and how fair is that for a young man in his 20s. how fair is that. we know there's more than one death. there's tens of deaths and customers who are on his list. how much more serious does it get than that? >> i hope that while he's in

prison he recognizes and realizes and has a long time to think about all the hurt and pain and carnage that he has unleashed upon people's lives. >> devin! >> that's pretty gut wrenching when you go to the cemetery and there's a headstone. with your kids name on it. sion. from our expert technicians armed with state of the art tools and technology, to genuine parts made for the perfect fit. whether it's our place... ...or yours. we're there. rain or shine, day or night. no one knows your vehicle better. to learn all the ways we can be at your service, call, click or visit a dealership near you.

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president trump signed a covid relief bill and government fundingage. reportedly hours ago. this avoids a shut down and extends benefits to millions of americas. president trump previously refused to approve the bill. blowing past a saturday deadline to prevent an estimated 14 million americans from temporarily losing unemployment insurance. the agreement signed will extend jobless benefits until march. millions are still expected to lose a week of benefits. now back to the forgotten epidemic. by the mid-2010s fentanyl had become the most dangerous drug ever to hit america streets. authorities in places like

buffalo, new york found themselves totally unprepared for an opioid that was both so powerful and so difficult to intercept. >> 2015, when i got a call from the police services lab, they were telling me about this substance they have been detecting in the aarheroin supp. the over dose deaths started to really spike. >> drug dealers and users lacing heroin with a narcotic painkiller fentanyl. >> we had more than six times the number of overdose deaths from opioid than we have for homicides in all of last year. >> it was unbelievably dangerous. we were seeing two or three over dose deaths a day. it was overwhelming. it was a wake up call this is not going away. it's getting worse. >> the country was involved in the vietnam war for 12 years.

the entire conflict we lst 58,000 u.s. service personnel. one year of over dose death we lost 72,000 people. it's a national emergency. >> cheryl of the health department is in charge of the city response to the opioid epidemic. like many others in buffalo, she's been directly impacted. losing a sister to an overdose in 2011. >> i like this one. >> what i have learned from dealing with this in my family. there's anger and frustration. misunderstanding. >> she was a mess. you can see in her eyes in the picture. >> she's trying to hide. >> people are doing anything they can to feel okay. whether it's selling their children's toys. whether it's stealing mortgage money. >> these are not bad people. they don't need to be locked up.

a will the of things we did in the past we didn't know. this is not a moral failing. in my journey yes learned this. it's a disease. it's a chronic disease. >> when it came time to form late the strategy to fight the opioid epidemic. they sought compassion and less punishment. >> i have a privilege of running this task force. >> together with her boss, health commissioner, they convened a new emergency task force. which began meeting in november 2016. >> i'll talk about our over dose trends. >> since then, nearly every government agency touched by the epidemic has signed on. >> we have all the stake holders. if you have anything, any vested interest affected by opioid. you're in the room. each agency in that room

learning what the challenges are of the other agencies was paramount. >> a presentation today about gathering data. >> the most difficult challenge was to convince law enforcement that they could not arrest their way out of the epidemic. >> they had to trust the health folks to understand that if people were in good treatment, law enforcement wasn't going to have to live with him anymore. >> we got called for over dose. we'll see what's happening there. hopefully we can wake him up. before ems gets there. >> a three year veteran has seen his job change from arresting officer to something like wartime medic. trying to keep over dose casualties alive. >> the officers that arrive first on scene are trained to recognize the signs of over dose

and utilize narcan. >> did you use anything? >> i don't -- >> narcan is the brand name for a drug which quickly reverses the effects of opioid over dose. >> the human brain lasts four minutes without oxygen. we can deal with everything else later. >> every single police department carries narcan. every fire department. family members carry narcan. we aggressively train the community. if you're not alive you don't get treatment. >> you're going to the hospital. >> what exactly did you take? just the pill? >> just the pill. >> don't close your eyes. >> look at my nose.

>> the cultural shift is you wake up there's drugs or heroin there. you're going to jail. we don't do that anymore. >> getting the over dose victim to the hospital is the first step. to prevent future over doses, there must be a massive follow up effort and it has to happen right away. >> we knew that there was a short window after over dose where somebody would be necessarily receptive to stopping the cycle. and that if it took too long, or you had to wait too many days or possibly weeks. for a bed to open up. the cycle starts up again. >> responding officers are now required to make a report of the incident. key details about where and when

the over dose occurred. these become points on a electronic map showing in realtime how the epidemic is unfolding. >> each dot eludes to a specific incident. diamonds are death. dots are resolutions of over dose. a red diamond what it shows me it was a fatal. that person probably was dead. when i look at a kind of a orange color diamond. it was a fatal single dose. green fatal multiple doses. >> it's not uncommon i'll get a phone call because she's look at the map first thing in the morning and say we had a number of over doses this this neighborhood. what do we have to do? it allows a quick immediate response to the problem. >> if a victim survives, more is able to quickly assign former add dik addicts trained as counsellors to reach out to them. >> 24 to 72 hours later. and they offer help.

they need a ride. they will offer transportation. the biggest key they do is get them linked to medication ass t assisted treatment. >> the use of less addictive drugs to wean the body from its dependence on opioid. >> the way the disease works the more you take the more you need. when your body needs opioid, you have to replace it with opioid. get people on the right medication. so they are not craving. so they're not hurting. >> we wornt take a high risk chest pain patient and discharge them with no plan. we did this with people using opioids for years. patients that have the disorder need to be on medication for a while. it's not a subs tigs for drugs. it's a treatment. a treatment that works. >> will people addicted to

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buffalo's fight against the opioid epidemic comes down to people like april. who's last name we are with holding at her request. she's a yoga instructor who became addicted to opioids as a teenager in the early 2000s. she has struggled ever since. >> i used just sporadically. in high school. maybe the weekends and club, drink. but opioids started after my second daughter. i remember taking my first pain pill for back pain. i remember liking the way i felt. i remember when i didn't have it i thought i had the flu. >> april took her first bag of heroin at age 26.

>> it kept me normal. in order to function. i had a job, i have a house, a car. i was there for my children. i wasn't stealing or prosecuting. i worked for the drugs and became part of my life. >> three years ago it was a first time i over dosed. i remember going to the bathroom, i had a fight with my boyfriend and i shot up. i put it away and hid it. and next thing i remember i'm sitting on the kitchen. paramedics and police around me. they had narcan me twice. i felt so bad my children were home. all they knew was mom fell in the bathroom. i could still see the their faces. they were scared. it's just not a good feeling.

not at all. so -- >> hello? >> she lost custody of her children and soon after nearly everything else. >> my ex-husband found out what happened. and he used that to take me to court to get custody of my children. >> i lost my apartment. my car. >> you look good. your hair is purple. >> knowing i lost my girls i didn't have that motivation. to do right. i fell down worse after that. >> how was school? >> you called us in class. >> it hurt so bad to not have my children. i couldn't allow myself to think about it. i used the drugs. to numb myself more and not

care. >> many drug dependents like april resort to felonies to fund habits. if they are arrested they are sent to a special opioid court. in which judges function more like drug counsellors or social workers. than officers of the law. >> it really wasn't that much. i guess your testing is very -- >> maybe it was more than you thought. >> the court was the brain child of city judge craig hannah. his main idea was to suspend criminal charges in return for adherence to a strict recovery rej min. >> we put the criminal case on pause. everything is held while we focus on the medical needs. the second a person touches the

criminal justice system. get them help immediately. people said you can't do that. why not? >> anybody new this morning? >> no. >> anybody picked up? >> no. >> judges and officers are the most conservative profession you can be in and they all want appearance of being tough on crime. be smart on crime. if you throw them in jail and paut band aid on it the second they leave jail they have the addiction and a problem. that wasn't addressed. >> what can we do to help you get this out of your system? >> i went to a meeting yesterday. >> our job is let them know there's no perfect path to recovery. they have to find their path. >> they are going to use again. and again i know it sound add. relapse is a part of recovery. >> he should know. before becoming a judge several

decade ago he was addicted to cocaine. >> i tell the clients the only difference is clean time. i have 21 years clean time. they have 21 hours. >> i'm willing to give you another shot. we want to gt you the help you need. >> the judge is now the presiding judge in the opioid court. >> if i put them in jail for 30 days instead of treatment they come back out as it's a cycle. they'll keep stealing and feed their habit. you have to go to the source and fix the habit. >> you have them come to court every day. it sound exhausting. we want to make sure they are busy and focussed on the recovery. >> always tell them when you're trying to get high and cop some dope, you got up every day to do it. this is the new thing you do every day. med with state of the art tools and technology, to genuine parts made for the perfect fit.

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i never know what time you'll come get me. >> the experience of people like april shows both the benefits and challenges of a non-punitive approach to breaking addiction. keeping opioid users away from drugs without putting them behind bars requires enormous resources and patience. >> i've been going to court a couple years, but the last time i was in court was end of july, and i was supposed to go to rehab and i didn't go. i spent a week in jail. i was going through withdrawal from heroin in jail. i was really only sick for maybe the first three days. i tried to sleep all day, and you go through the hot and cold sweats and stomach cramps. but after that, then, you know, i just kind of sucked it up. >> they're here. >> i've been going back to court

now since last wednesday five days a week. hopefully this time i'll make it through. >> morning, april. how are you? >> i'm okay. i had a rough day yesterday. >> yeah, i was home yesterday with the neighbor. she was throwing snowballs at my window and said she got kicked out, so i let her in, and of course she was using. >> you have to stop blaming others. >> i'm not blaming her, and i even told her, you can't come over here anymore. because i felt bad, like, immediately. i felt bad as soon as i let her in, you know. >> there's so many bad batches going around these days, you know? it's not worth it. >> you're absolutely right. i see the doctor tomorrow. >> baby steps. >> one of the biggest challenges is to keep users from selling their maintenance drugs on the streets to other addicts. >> there is definitely a high demand for the soboxin.

it is a lot of money, $28 for 1 milligram adds up, you know. >> why do people want soboxin? >> because it gets you high. it's got a blocker in it but it still gives you some of the opioid. i heard a lot of people choose to be on soboxin so they can sell the medication. >> being in opioid court doesn't keep myself from using. i have to keep myself from using. >> honey, mom is here. >> it definitely reminds me that i have this problem that i have to work on, but ultimately i think it is up to me to decide if i'm going to stay clean and sober. >> everyone said, why are we treating this different? people could walk out of our courtroom, shake our hands, say, i'm good, judge, i'll see you tomorrow, go get a shot and they're gone. that's why this has to be handled differently, because their lives are at stake.

>> this area is heavily populated with drug use. the biggest problem that we're seeing when people overdose, it's that terrible drug fentanyl. people die with the needle still in their arms. it's the craziest thing to see. >> until the covid pandemic hit in the winter of 2020, buffalo was making steady progress in its fight against opioids, seeing a decline in deaths every year since 2017. when we first spoke to leaders of the task force, the thing that kept them up at night was not a virus but the probability of even more powerful opioids yet to appear. >> what worries me as a police officer in terms of not losing ground in this war that we have with opioids is the next new drug, the next new compound that comes out that we're not aware of hits the market and just goes like wildfire, causing deaths that we're just not prepared

for. >> the unexpected outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic has reversed the gains made in the fight against opioids. >> we distributed 24 narcan kits today, and people came especially for that. >> taxing an already overused system to its limits. >> looking at the limits in buffalo, they've reflected the whole country. i've been on multiple national calls and everyone is saying the same thing. they're seeing increases in numbers of overdoses and increases in deaths. >> according to the american medical association, more than 40 states have recorded increases in opioid-related deaths since the pandemic began. while the epidemic rages on -- >> perdue pharma has reached a settlement over oxycontin. >> one of the companies that started it all, perdue pharma,

filed bankruptcy and pled guilty, including kickbacks to doctors. >> the most dramatic effort yet by the federal government to hold a drug company accountable. >> they aren't going to face any criminal charges. >> reporter: with perdue in bankruptcy, it's unlikely they will ever pay $8 million. >> other companies have also settled large civil lawsuits. in november 2020, opioid manufacturer johnson & johnson and three distributors, mckesson, cardinal health and amerisource bergen reached settlements with states and municipalities across the country. perdue has proposed a $10 million settlement to address the crisis, including 100% of the company's assets to

claimants. the fund would provide for addiction treatment. many states say they are not yet satisfied that justice has been done. >> it seems like it has only energized state attorneys general even more in their fight for justice. >> state ags, we're going to continue to press our state claims in court. and we owe that to our families. >> the people who, in their grief and loss, brought the opioid crisis to light are still fighting to see that it did not again recede into the shadows. >> i'm getting the vibe because i'm going to try everything i can do to make sure they don't get immunity and to make sure the documents don't get sealed. they might get away with it. but we're going to try everything we can. we want to see the truth. liberty mutual customizes your home insurance, here's one that'll really take you back.

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it's the thing that most people would fear, to be home, asleep in your bed and have intruders come in and do the unthinkable. >> i felt like a hand being placed on my mouth. i started saying, please don't kill me, please don't kill me. >> an attack in the night.