We all know the way the prescription painkiller distribution system is supposed to work. A person with real pain that reduces the quality of his (or her) life visits a properly licensed doctor. To help that patient with the pain until recovery is complete, the doctor prescribes the minimum therapeutic dose, that is then accurately dispensed by an honest pharmacy.
We all also know that there are too many doctors who set aside both their medical and human ethics to hand out thousands of pills for profit. In this situation, everyone loses. The public loses because addiction increases, the patients lose because they have a channel on which they can get addictive drugs, families lose the loved one who became or remained addicted or may even overdose, the doctor may end up losing his license and his freedom.
Thanks to the hard work of New York law enforcement agencies, one of the most ruthless, profit-hungry clinics I’ve ever heard of has just been shut down. A US Attorney involved in the bust called it “an assembly line, not a medical clinic.”
Over a three-year period, doctors at the Astramed clinic in the Bronx wrote more than 31,000 unnecessary prescriptions for painkillers. That means 5.5 million oxycodone pills hit the streets, thanks to this clinic. They would have a street value of $550 million. How many people died as a result of abusing these pills?
The armed guards that hung out near the clinic might have been a tipoff as to what was really going on there.
When this clinic was shut down, there were 24 people charged for their crimes. The owner of the clinic profited nearly $12 million over a three-year period. That’s a pretty strong incentive to let one’s integrity lapse.
This Criminality is Not Exclusive to New York
Every state has clinics that operate on the same principles. Every big city will have a few practitioners that are known for their liberal prescribing policies. Maybe the clinics are not as big and “successful” as this one. Maybe they will be small clinics, hidden on some back street.
If you want to get an idea of the number of doctors involved in these schemes, take a look at the Drug Enforcement Administration’s list of Cases against Doctors, available here: http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/crim_admin_actions/index.html.
Here you will find practitioners and pharmacies from all over the country that have been willing to harm or even kill people, as long as they make their millions.
This will probably inspire some people to talk to their children about prescription drug abuse. To help parents have productive conversations with their kids, Narconon International created this simple, short booklet that covers the main points parents should cover with their kids.
10 Things Parents May Not Know About the abuse of Prescription Drugs.
http://www.narconon.org/drug-abuse/10-things-prescription-drugs.html
If this is a conversation you need to have with your children, I hope you use this booklet to help you make the dangers very clear. It could end up saving the life of your own children or his friends.
