Ohio was an apt forum for this showdown. By 2016, 2.3 million people in the state—approximately 20 percent of the total population—received a prescription for opioids. Half of the children who were in foster care across the state had opioid-addicted parents. People were dying from overdoses at such a rate that local coroners had run out of room in which to store all the bodies and were forced to seek makeshift alternatives. None of the states had enough money or resources to contend with the problem.
