[asphaltgambler]

Interesting.......................I saw this unfold in the Northern Va area to what seemed like a 'cottage' industry where doctors started to specialize in pain management, then went on to open brick and mortar facilities dealing exclusively with that. First noted a problem in 1998 or so when a small private pharmacy in Mclean, Va (very affluent area) - connected to local physician who was essentially 'over prescribing' Oxy in both number and MG's to his patients and wrote the scripts only to be filled there.

Wasn't too long that the doctor was on trial, as the Pharmacist lost his license and shuttered their doors. I remember it seemed to only make the local newspaper........

I had several long-time friends, one of which was essentially a professional pill-head that latched onto these as soon as they hit the market. Suddenly pain management 'clinics' were everywhere and no shortage of 'patients' as I believe medical insurance covered all of that from A to Z.

But it seemed the Feds started concentrating on the end game; watching the pharmacies, then tracing back to the 'doctor'. Specifically a pharmacy in a tiny town, nearby where I used to live.
The pharmacist was a close family friend and the short story is he essentially became the 'dealer' for Oxy; filling any prescription, from any 'doctor, from anywhere. Bypassing and waiting for the local 'doctors' to send him the script requests. That pharmacy ultimately became on of THE largest distributors of OxyContin in the Mid-Atlantic region. People would drive there from Ohio, Md, DC, West Va, etc. with a 'prescription' written on anything from just short of a 3M sticky note to something that casually resembled a genuine script pad.

The Feds had been watching him for some time, gathering information and was just about to close in when he went in for what was supposed to be routine surgery, developed an aneurism and died on the table. If he lived he would have died in prison. How do I know all this? My brother in-law had retired as chief of police and was working there part-time to supplement his health insurance, saw it all go down.

I lost several of my friends to overdoses of Oxy that were young....................My pill-head friend overdosed several times, had to retire early from Verizon, and now at age 55 has health issues so bad he is basically confined to the couch or wheel-chair, diabetes, has had part of his foot cut-off, teeth rotted out, high blood pressure, on and on. Honestly he might as well already be dead as he is nothing but a shell of his former self living in a body that is essentially 80 years old now.