Over the past two decades the opioid epidemic is believed to have claimed the lives of half-a-million Americans. It’s a crisis that has been fueled by a seemingly limitless supply of pain pills that were manufactured, distributed and sold by legitimate businesses, some of them among the largest in the country.

On this edition of KCBS In Depth we speak with two Washington Post investigative reporters about the great lengths the opioid industry went to to make sure that business as usual could continue even as overdose deaths began to skyrocket.

Guests: Sari Horwitz and Scott Higham, the authors of “American Cartel: Inside the Battle to Bring Down the Opioid Industry” 

Host: Keith Menconi