Q&A: Newly public data maps opioid crisis across US
(World News USA)

The release of a massive trove of data from lawsuits over the nation`s opioid crisis provides the most detailed accounting to date of the role played by the major pharmaceutical companies and distributors. In legal cases across the country, they have defended themselves as being little more than bystanders - dispensing government-approved drugs at the behest of prescribing doctors. But the data gives a stunning portrait of how the nation`s deadly public health crisis unfolded year by year, with manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies turning a firehose of prescription painkillers disproportionately on rural, working-class communities at the same time the death toll from prescription and...