it was mainly republicans that were going with me over to mississippi and louisiana after ka tretrina. whether you re republican or democrat, you need to help americans in puerto rico. you can do that by contributing to americares. coming up, a whistle blower says drug distributors are working hard to pump opioids into u.s. communities and that congress derailed the dea s efforts to stop it. and the congressman who supported legislation that reportedly weakens efforts to beat the epidemic is now president trump s nominee for drug czar. we ll speak with one of the washington post reporters who teamed up with 60 minutes for this bombshell investigation. [burker] at farmers, we ve seen almost everything
matter your political party. thanks, chris. appreciate it. coming up a bombshell investigation reveals congress limited the drug enforcement administration s ability to crack down on drug distributors despite the opioid crisis spiraling out of control. were democrats controlling this? and why a pro football team chose us to deliver fiber-enabled broadband to more than 65,000 fans. and why a leading car brand counts on us to keep their dealer network streamlined and nimble. businesses count on communication, and communication counts on centurylink.
opioid crisis which i know has hit kentucky, especially northern kentucky very hard, so many states across this country? well, i m glad that he wants to do something about it. i mean, it s terrible. we have so many people dying. so many of our young ones. you know. martha: emotions running high for one of the many kentucky residents special personally effected by the overdose deaths of a loved one as louisville goes after the drug distributors in court, we are learning shocking statistics, last year on average every adult in this state was written at least one pain killer prescription. kentucky now ranks third in the nation among states with overdose deaths wit 2016 record high. lost son to addiction and
will have to deal with this. they move down towards details. these drug distributors who in some ways are hitten from the public. they are the middle man. the doctor, the pharmacy, the big drugmakers. what s the aim and the best way to deal with it? we should divide this chronologically. a lot of the problem is not people on kripgz drugs and they moved offf that. nine million prescriptions in two years said the town. nine million pills.
overdosed on the same two drugs. under west virginia law, distributors are legally required to report pharmacy orders that seem suspicious. the quantities of the opioids were increasing dramatically. they were shipped from the wholesalers to the pharmacies. that should have sent signals to the distributors. west virginia sued the distributors for failing to raise red flags about the number of painkillers flowing into the state. during the previous 12 years, the state received just two suspicious order reports. in the years since the lawsuit was filed, that number shot up to more than 7, 200. the state settled with two of the biggest distributors which said they would pay $36 million. neither admitted to wrongdoing. now the town of kermit is following the state s example, suing five drug distributors for damages. if we don t get anything out of this suit monetary maybe we