but, first, the battles over biden s border crisis and big tech dominance playing out in courtrooms across the country. texas a.g. ken paxton leading the charge demanding answers from twitter, google, and the biden administration. here s paxton with me on the program earlier this week. we have asked twitter for basically answers that if they are going to operate in our state they have to answer. it s state law. and despite that, they have taken this to california to ask a california judge about texas law doesn t make any sense to me but i guess i understand why they want to be in california because they don t want to answer questions in texas which they re ultimately if they are going to operate here have to answer those questions. maria: and the questions do not stop there. 21 a.g.s are banning together to save american jobs. suing the biden administration over its shutdown of the keystone pipeline. several other states are fighting the administration in court over its d
through an overdose, they re not republicans or democrats, not living in a red space or blue states, rich or poor or black or white. they re human beings that we need to help support. that s exactly the way i look at it, looking at addiction as a chronic relapsing brain disease rather than a choice. if you compare the united states to similar other countries, the overdose death rates are three to four times higher. if it s a brain disease that s driving this, why does it so disparately affect this country? if you recall, first we had the prescription opioid epidemic. we saw an incline in deaths and addiction because of that. i was right there in the trenches where i was seeing the marketing happening to me about why these are such great things. from there we went and saw it turned into the heroin injection drug use epidemic.
or whatever it might be, that is not really because of us and this rulely obviously suggested that is not the case. there was misinformation that was deliberate and it helped fuel this opioid epidemic. i think also if you look at the total economic cost according to the cdc per year of the prescription opioid epidemic it is about $80 billion a year and there is 2,000 cities and counties and states that have filed suit and where this goes from here, i don t know. but it will make a lot of waves throughout the medical world, throughout the entire world. elliott, we ll let you tackle the legal aspect of that. when you look at this, what could be next? there is other pending legislation and i would imagine that those folks will now be looking at this ruling out of oklahoma. and it s a remarkable legal theory because this is the first time that a drug company has been found to have created a public nuisance for putting out a drug that functioned exactly as it was intended. it is not lik
quiet and unseen, has ruined more lives here. now spreading across the country, america is only now beginning to address it. this pharmacy under a previous proprietor under a previous name, could arguably be considered ground zero in america s prescription opioid epidemic. from june to september of 2006, the pharmacist here ran what prosecutors called a pill factory, ranking in as much as $20,000 in cash every day, which may have led to the heroin epidemic here in west virginia, ohio, kentucky, and virtually across appalachia. there is such an abundance of cash that they could not close the cash register drawer. the attorney calls himself the father of the west virginia approved lawsuit industry with over 100 suits settled, 30 others ongoing. the save rate pharmacy case was his first. he hired a private detective to shoot this video that helped reveal how drug manufacturers,
distributors, and patients all helped play a role in the prescription opioid epidemic. while much of it was fueled by greed, at the root of it all is addiction. this is the day i was given my life back, the day i went to jail. she popped her first pain killer at 12 and was shooting up oxycontin by 15. paint scars on her wrist still show the needle marks nine years after she turned her life around and became an addiction counselor. she describes the euphoric sensation that opioids like oxycontin s produce. your body just gets a warm sensation that makes everything in the world so much better. even though you don t realize you re destroying everything in your life. and the withdrawal? you lie in bed and you shake and you feel like you could cut your legs up or your arms off and it would feel better. a patient s pathological need to end that pain has led to what some unethical pharmacists took advantage of. they would have assistance to