Hi, I'm Dan Primak and welcome to Axios Recap, presented by Facebook. Today's Tuesday, August 18th.

The SMP 500 is up to a new record high, the price of Bitcoin is down, and we're focused on efforts to hold companies accountable for the opioid epidemic.

Prior to the pandemic, America's top public health crisis accountable for the opioid epidemic.

Prior to the pandemic, America's top public health crisis was opioid, overuse, and abuse.

And opioids haven't gone away just because the coronavirus arrived.

In fact, the situation may have gotten even worse.

Two main reasons. First, people have been going to hospitals and regular medical providers less, addiction treatment too, all out of COVID fear,

so many have used opioids to deal with pain that would otherwise be treated differently.

Two, some people are simply in greater emotional and economic pain and have

turned to opioids to self-medicate. The hard numbers on this, well, they come on a lag, but the

Washington Post recently reported on a suspected 42% increase in national overdoses in May and said

that some jurisdictions, like Milwaukee County, saw dispatch calls for overdoses in May and said that some jurisdictions, like Milwaukee County,

saw dispatch calls for overdoses increase more than 50%. While all of this goes on,

makers of prescription opioids are gearing up to defend themselves against thousands of lawsuits

brought by states, municipalities, and tribes.

According to the AP, the plaintiffs of these cases estimate that the opioid epidemic has cost them $630 billion since 2007, and that the cost could nearly triple over the next 20 years.

So in 15 seconds, we'll dig in with the AP's Jeff Mulvahill to understand the state of

that litigation and what really comes next. But first, this. We're joined now by the AP's

Jeff Mulvahill. So Jeff, a lot of us were paying a lot of attention to these lawsuits and then the pandemic hit and our attention got diverted.

Can you give us the short story of what's been going on over the past five months?

Not nearly as much has been going on as we expected it to pre-pandemic.

The trials were put on hold.

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