Nationwide Arrests for Opioid Fraud & Prescription Abuse

[doc_loliday]

It's not too tough, some of these guys are writing dozens of opioid scrips a day. Most of this can be narrowed to a few docs. What doesn't get much press is how this whole crisis is the creation of the drug industry looking to expand sales. They created a whole crisis of "undertreating pain" in order to hustle their oxycontin. My wife runs an urban (real urban) mental health clinic and see a shitload of this. She thinks these docs would be easy to stop with a little oversight, but no one has bothered.

There is a myth that nobody cares and nobody does shit about the over prescription of painkillers. And that's just not true in the least. They have been cracking down hard for years. Prescriptions are way down.

This does not mean that there aren't any doctors that over prescribe pills, it just means what I said, that the prescribing of opioids has been going down, I believe for some 8 years now.

Moreover, the industry has been under a lot, a lot, of scrutiny. It's no secret, everybody knows they hustled drugs.

[doc_loliday]

I don't get it. So the son didn't make the choice to do the drugs? We should lock people in cages for 30 years for having a week's worth of pills and deny people in pain from getting medicine because your son had no willpower? Hundreds of thousands of people are rotting in prison because someone's son OD'd.

It's not just a willpower issue with opiates. If someone has the willpower or guts to quit cold turkey they can die. You can't willpower your way out of a genetic disposition to alcoholism/addiction either.

In a libertarian paradise where all drugs are legal without prescription things might be good but these drugs are controlled and I see no problem going after doctors that use their titles to become drug dealers by prescribing to people who don't need it.

You cannot die from opiate withdrawal. It is very, very safe to cold cold turkey from opiates, excluding some serious medical conditions.

Benzo and alcohol withdrawal can absolutely kill you.

[doc_loliday]

Funny how the government creates massive black markets while it is busy preventing overdoses.

Can't have it all, I guess.

Uncle Sam take away, uncle Sam giveth.

[doc_loliday]

The people getting the pills are also dealing them. Half the GDP of most trailer parks comes from medicaid funded dope sales, roughly estimating.

Follow the money and it leads back to corporate sales. There's a huge difference between this and illicitly produce drugs. The notion that there can possibly be a prescription drug epidemic blows my mind. Those people in the trailer park did not get them from legitimately operating doctors.

"Muh back still hurts"
"Ok, here ya go"

Legitimate doctors have no way of measuring pain, so they will keep a script going for life.

Outside of shady doctor pain pill distributors, most doctors are aware of the addiction potential and will not keep give an opioid script for life cus "muh back hurts".

[SuburbanFarmer]

Follow the money and it leads back to corporate sales. There's a huge difference between this and illicitly produce drugs. The notion that there can possibly be a prescription drug epidemic blows my mind. Those people in the trailer park did not get them from legitimately operating doctors.

"Muh back still hurts"
"Ok, here ya go"

Legitimate doctors have no way of measuring pain, so they will keep a script going for life.

Outside of shady doctor pain pill distributors, most doctors are aware of the addiction potential and will not keep give an opioid script for life cus "muh back hurts".

I don't believe you'll find 1 in 100 doctors that would cut a patient off, complaining of chronic pain. They would probably be liable to a lawsuit of some kind, if they did.

[doc_loliday]

"Muh back still hurts"
"Ok, here ya go"

Legitimate doctors have no way of measuring pain, so they will keep a script going for life.

Outside of shady doctor pain pill distributors, most doctors are aware of the addiction potential and will not keep give an opioid script for life cus "muh back hurts".

I don't believe you'll find 1 in 100 doctors that would cut a patient off, complaining of chronic pain. They would probably be liable to a lawsuit of some kind, if they did.

This is just not true. Patients get cut off all the time. Besides you're not only being extremely vague, but you're implying that the patient need only mutter "muh back hurts" to continue getting drugs. This also isn't true. Prescriptions are way down, and the demand has not. Many doctors will not fill refill a script. If the patient continues to complain more than likely they will be sent to a pain specialist. Doctors can actually be liable for overprescribing medication too.

[heydaralon]

I don't get it. So the son didn't make the choice to do the drugs? We should lock people in cages for 30 years for having a week's worth of pills and deny people in pain from getting medicine because your son had no willpower? Hundreds of thousands of people are rotting in prison because someone's son OD'd.

Those kids don't "choose" to get hooked on pills. They're usually prescribed them after some sort of injury, then get addicted. They aren't degenerates.

I never said they were. I'm just tired of this lazy journalism/puritanical hysteria about pain pills. From a harm reduction standpoint, this is literally the best thing possible. Medicinal quality drugs that you know down to the last miligram. Oxy has less hepatoxicity than alcohol. People abuse them, but I could not care less about that. People are going to use drugs. Some people will die. That is life. What I'm not fine with is the government acting like this is the end of the world, and ruthlessly imprisoning people for using chemicals that society doesn't approve of. This is like buckets in a well. They closed a bunch of pill mills in Florida, and the heroin deaths skyrocketed. Everyone acted shocked. This always happens. In Vietnam, the government cracked down on marijuana. The soldiers started using heroin. When the government cracked down on heroin, the price went up, so instead of snorting and smoking they injected it. Amphetamines used to cost pennies in midwest pharmacies. The government outlawed buying it without a scrip. Now there is a meth epidemic, with questionable chemicals and shady people selling it. Are you noticing a pattern?

[heydaralon]

I don't get it. So the son didn't make the choice to do the drugs? We should lock people in cages for 30 years for having a week's worth of pills and deny people in pain from getting medicine because your son had no willpower? Hundreds of thousands of people are rotting in prison because someone's son OD'd.

It's not just a willpower issue with opiates. If someone has the willpower or guts to quit cold turkey they can die. You can't willpower your way out of a genetic disposition to alcoholism/addiction either.

In a libertarian paradise where all drugs are legal without prescription things might be good but these drugs are controlled and I see no problem going after doctors that use their titles to become drug dealers by prescribing to people who don't need it.

You 100% cannot die from opiate or heroin withdrawal. That is a DARE style lie. You can die from benzo, booze and barbituate withdrawal. It is hell, but quite possible to beat. Many people who use heroin will actually voluntarily go into withdrawals so their tolerance goes down and their habit gets cheaper. This is the kind of bullshit that leads to these retarded laws in the first place that send people to prison for their natural lives.

[heydaralon]

This is what frustrates me about the OMG opioid epidemic! people. This comes with the territory of living in a modern society. We allow all kinds of high risk lifestyle choices. Alcohol ends tens of thousands of lives every year. So does smoking. So does eating disgusting food and not exercising. Football leads to serious physical and brain damage. Nuke posted a link to a guy who talked about the physical toll that receptive anal sex takes on the body, not to mention AIDS and hepatitis. We allow smokers, drinkers, football players, and gays to live their lives with minimal interference from the government, even though all these activities cost us personally and societally. Its a cost of doing business.

I'm not defending addiction, but you are kidding yourselves if you think that sending the SWAT team to some pain clinic is going to fix the underlying problems as to why people get addicted in the first place. There probably isn't a real way to fix it. If you know people are going to use drugs whatever government policy is in place, wouldn't you rather people get them where the purity is guaranteed from a pharmacy that pays taxes, from a licensed doctor, than from a sketchy drug dealer?Not to mention, once a bust like this happens, legitimate doctors are too spooked to write prescriptions to people who are in legitimate pain. Who are any of you to say what a person in chronic pain should use to treat their problems?

If you want to debate whether drug addicts should get welfare or foodstamps that is one thing, but I'm sick of this retarded hysteria about people engaging in a behavior that has existed in one form or another since society has been around. I'm fine with punishing people for stupid shit they do on drugs, or stupid shit they do to get drugs, but imprisoning people for decades because they have drugs is pretty disgusting to me.

[Okeefenokee]

The people getting the pills are also dealing them. Half the GDP of most trailer parks comes from medicaid funded dope sales, roughly estimating.

Follow the money and it leads back to corporate sales. There's a huge difference between this and illicitly produce drugs. The notion that there can possibly be a prescription drug epidemic blows my mind. Those people in the trailer park did not get them from legitimately operating doctors.

yes they did you bloke. did you not read the OP? I've been saying this for years. It's where I come from. They absolutely do get them from doctors, and medicaid pays for it.