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Hello, I'm Matthew Price.

This is Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4.

Every day we ask one big question about one big story.

Today, did one family create the opioid epidemic?

Imagine a world without pain. That's sort of what the doctors of the American Sackler family

did for the best part of the last century, which kind of makes them sound like the good guys, doesn't it?

But it didn't work out like that. We all know the opioid crisis is bad. In parts of Britain there are lots of people addicted to

prescription painkillers, but it's the United States that is the epicenter.

People are dying from opioid overdoses at a rate that means in the 20 minutes you'll take to listen to this podcast,

two more people will lose their lives.

Now the Sackler family own the company which perhaps more than any other is today associated with the opioid epidemic.

The firm's called Perdue Farmer and this week it filed for bankruptcy. It's facing more than 2,600 lawsuits

from across the United States claiming that its drug OxyContin fuelled this crisis.

And it's a crisis that the writer and journalist OxyContinue fueled this crisis.

And it's a crisis that the writer and journalist Chris McGreel, who lives in America, has spent

years watching up close, speaking to the people involved.

He knows everything about this, and he has unpicked the story of

the Sacklers. The Sacklers, the eldest brother, Arthur, was a doctor,

but he was also quite a clever marketing man.

He's the man that gave us Valium in the way that we now know it as Mother's little helper.

He very shrewdly recognized that this drug was

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