The use to have this motto at the Charleston Gazette, the daily morning paper in West Virginia's

capital city. It was just two words, sustained outrage. And that means you just don't do one-off

stories that you in order to bring issues of injustice to light, you have to really hammer away.

This unofficial mantra is what convinced Eric Erer to pack up and move to this Appalachian

state more than two decades ago. I call sustained outrage at the rocket fuel from my reporting.

Eric was a state house reporter for a long time, but he reserved most of his sustained outrage

for the opioid crisis. Compared to other places, people here are much more likely to have an opioid

prescription, much more likely to die from an overdose too. Eric got obsessed with puzzling

out how so many powerful narcotics got into his state in the first place. What he found was a web

of drug distributors, companies that call themselves the central nervous system of healthcare.

Companies like Cardinal Health, McKesson, Amerisource Bergen, they're huge.

This company that I didn't know Cardinal Health, let me see what it was, last time.

16th largest company in the Fortune 500. McKesson is the eighth largest and Amerisource Bergen

is number 10. So you've got, I think Walmart's number one in the Fortune 500 and you've got Apple

and Amazon. Then you get these companies that nobody's ever heard of.

So these companies had heard of Eric though. He's learned that this week. That's because one of

the county's hardest hit by opioid addiction in West Virginia has taken these companies to court

and his lawyers dredge up emails and documents about who knew what when it's put Eric's reporting

center stage. The trade group for these drug distributors had actually put together and I'm

see if I can get the, I'm looking here at the transcript from yesterday's hearing

the crisis playbook. They called it. Just the crisis playbook. I guess that means the opioid crisis

playbook. But it was put together back in 2015 and it mentions me by name and talks about how

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