Black Box: Chapter One

For two decades, a corporate chain of some of America's most powerful companies pushed highly additive opioids into the hands of American families. Some spent the 1990s and 2000s heavily marketing and downplaying the danger of opioid prescription painkillers, while others looked the other way as the products they called medicine led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. By 2021, after states sued them, the companies began agreeing to legal settlements that paid out billions of dollars of reparations for the opioid epidemic. Mississippi is expected to receive over $400 million dollars of these penance payments, but a devastating question looms: will this money benefit Mississippians who've suffered most from the worst drug crisis in modern American history? If you like this series, become a member today. Help power the deep reporting our state deserves. https://donate.mississippitoday.org/