The Washington Post and the Charleston Gazette-Mail in West Virginia successfully sued to obtain a database with detailed drug industry transactions submitted to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration revealing the complicity of the industry, from manufacturers to retailers, in the overuse of opioids resulting in the deaths of 46,700 from overdoses in 2017 alone. (CNN, July 18, 2019, by Michael Nedelman and Arman Azad with reporting from Nadfia Kounang and Minali Nigam)
The data shows that the maker of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma, had help in flooding the market with billions of pills even as it was clear that overdose deaths were climbing. The data also showed that the areas in the country with the most pill were the ones with the most overdoses per capita. (Associated Press, July 17, 2019, by Geoff Mulvihill and Matthew Perrone)