This is a storyline that you hear every day. Until some serious controls are put in place, and people are made aware of the dangers of taking prescription medication, you are going to hear it time and again!
According to the Centers for Disease Control, one American dies of a drug overdose every 14 minutes ... with a rapidly increasing share of those deaths caused by prescription drugs. It's the sort of statistic law enforcement officials in one Florida county know about all too well.
Instead of chasing drugs from abroad, police say their biggest problem now comes from a doctor's office. After years of spotty regulation, Florida is still awash in prescription painkillers, like Oxycontin, the brand name for Oxycodone.
Staggering Figures
And the effect has been lethal: In Florida alone, seven people die of prescription drug overdose every 24 hours.
Nationwide, prescription drug overdose has surpassed traffic accidents as the leading cause of accidental death.
And Florida is the epicenter:
Police surveillance tape captures a Pinellas County pain clinic - run by a licensed doctor as a cash-only convenience store for prescription painkillers, or pill mill - and the customers can't seem to get in fast enough.
"People literally line up in the morning, wait for the doors to open," said Chief Deputy Bob Gualtieri. "They swarm inside.
"I hate to even call them 'doctors,'" Gualtieri said. "Because they're really not doctors. They're people who hold a medical license, but they're really not practicing medicine. And you pay a cash fee."
These are drug dealers – nothing more, nothing less!
As part of their efforts, police also are arresting the visitors of these “pill mills” as they leave.
If the detectives can get them for the smallest violation - maybe they don't put their seatbelt on when they drive away - that's a reason to pull them over, and most of the time something else is going on in that car.
Police follow one car for a few blocks, then pull him over for the seatbelt violation - and find he's carrying a handful of prescriptions. They suspect this "patient" may be a prescription drug dealer - going from doctor to doctor, stockpiling supplies.
After a few phone calls to the doctors, he's arrested on suspicion of doctor shopping - a felony that carries a jail term of up to five years.
The pill mills are very profitable. The local pharmacy sells generic pills for about a dollar a pill. You could sell it locally, on the street, for $15 to $20 a pill. You could take it up north in some places and sell it for $30 a pill.
No doubt these “pill mills” need to be shut down. If not, this problem is only going to get worse.