Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, may have been the prime mover in the Big Bang of opioids in the 1990s, when doctors were aggressively treating pain and OxyContin was pushed as a non-addictive medication. But Purdue didn’t act alone.

In August, Johnson & Johnson was fined $572 million for its role in Oklahoma’s opioid crisis; Purdue settled with Oklahoma in March for $270 million. Beyond the cases in Oklahoma, there are now 2,000 lawsuits against opioid manufacturers and distributors. But rather than bringing a few bad players to justice for criminal behavior, these lawsuits are exposing a massive conspiracy 20 years in the making, along with a government database to prove it.

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