I’d like to see my children grow up without weapons, without hitmen killing family upon family. ibid.
Oh, my God, there’s stuff coming out of her mouth, coming out of her nose! The Trade s1e2, distressed father’s 911 call
Ashleigh’s case is my first fatal case and it weighs on you. It’s important that I find out who gave Ashleigh the heroin that killed her so I can bring them in before they kill someone else. ibid. rozzer
I would love it if it was all calm and we could live in peace. ibid. Mexican gangster
Addiction is a son of a bitch. And I need to stop the cycle now because I don’t want my kids looking in a casket. ibid. mother
The courier that we arrested said that he was picking up money from an Hispanic female. He says she runs a stash house for the cartels, and that the stash house is part of a larger cell here in Columbus. The Trade s1e3, US rozzer
I’ve never thought of myself as a leader. I have defended my family and my town from Los Rojos. And through these actions we’ve won over the people. The Trade s1e4, Mexican gangster
Hope After Heroin. ibid. protest march
Rozzer: What I need to know, Edith, is how many kilos come at one time to this house?
Edith: Maybe two kilos …
Rozzer: … At least twenty were here … ibid.
Sick and tired of being sick and tired … I knew I could change. ibid. addict
Edith and her co-conspirators pleaded guilty and are now in prison. ibid. caption
America’s overdose crisis is worse than ever before because of the synthetic opioid Fentanyl. The Trade s1e5, television news
Overdoses are now the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of fifty. ibid.
This horrible cycle that we’re stuck in … The heroin death rate is going up. ibid. rozzer
I’m Dan Schneider. And I’m a pharmacist … My son was murdered buying crack in the Lower 9th Ward. The police have the attitude that it’s another drug deal gone bad. And these kids maybe got what they deserved. The New Orleans police department was corrupt. And almost none of the murders were ever solved. But I was determined to get the killer off the street. The Pharmacist I: Justice for Danny, Netflix 2020
I started noticing in the drug store an unusual amount of high-powered opiate prescriptions. There was a certain doctor using her licence to virtually decimate my community. ibid.
I saw this opiate epidemic in its infancy. We were creating addicts all over this country. Purdue could have done things to stop this but they saw the profits. Not only were they white-collar criminals, they were white-collar murderers. My son’s killer paid a price. What about Purdue Pharma? What price have they paid? They gave birth to a crisis that killed hundreds of thousands of people. ibid.
Jeffrey [dealer] said he knew my son and he wouldn’t have killed my son. ibid.
Addiction was not spoken of in pharmacy school. It’s not something we thought we’d have to face. The Pharmacist II: A Mission from God
When I see these kids coming in with these Oxycodone prescriptions I felt that something wasn’t right about this. ibid.
I was going out there [local pill mill] almost every week filming hard. ibid.
My mind went into paranoia. I really do believe I crossed the edge. The Pharmacist III: Dope Dealers with White Lab Coats
I was pretty much working full time at shutting Dr Cleggett down. ibid.
I saw Dr Cleggett taking pills herself when arriving at the clinic. The Pharmacist IV: The Tunnell, local prosecutor
Since 2000, more than 500,000 Americans have died of opioid overdoses. Millions of Americans have become addicted. Every 25 minutes a baby is born with opioid withdrawal. The US government estimates that the cost of opioid abuse is over $1 trillion. We call this ‘the opioid crisis’. But a crisis is something that just ‘happens’. What if we discovered that the opioid crisis was caused by businesses seeking to profit from pain? What if behind the crisis there was a spectacular crime? Alex Gibney, The Crime of the Century I ***** Sky Documentaries 2021
No American family has profited more from controlled substances, from Valium and Oxycontin, than the Sacklers. ibid.
In the 1960s Sackler became incredibly rich by expanding the market for addictive tranquillizers. ibid.
Controlled-release Oxycodone, or Oxycontin, would be the drug that triggered what we call the ‘opioid crisis.’ ibid.
Johnson & Johnson also genetically altered the nature of the plant to create a super-poppy … Soon 74,000 acres of Tasmania were devoted to opium. ibid.
1Blinn was taking the equivalent of 200 hits of heroin a day. He kept the prescription bottle for 20 years because he felt something was not right. ibid.
A nationwide criminal conspiracy that included Fraud, Pills Mills, doctors trading drugs for sex, false statements to Congress, and attempts to target key officials of the Bush administration … The FDA was used to falsely and fraudulently market Oxycontin. ibid.
None of them would spend a day in prison. ibid.
Lifetree Pain Clinic prescription: 60 x Amitriptyline 50mg; 30 x Celexa 40mg; 224 x Oxycodone 30mg; 112 Percocet 10/325mg; 60 x Requip 1mg; 60 x Xanax 1mg; 60 x Zanaflex 4mg. ibid.
Starting in 2013 a powerful synthetic opioid surged in popularity: Fentanyl. It’s a 100 times more powerful than morphine. Rather than reckoning with its dangers, companies sold it as aggressively as drug cartels. But instead of gun-toting dealers on street corners, men and women in suits and lab coats pushed opioids and cash bonuses and power-point presentations at pain management jamborees. Flush with campaign cash from Big Pharma, Congress would look the other way. ibid.
‘40 people every day die from Prescription overdoses.’ Alex Gibney, The Crime of the Century II ***** news
‘The opioid crisis started with prescriptions, prescriptions and patient care. This idea that we weren’t adequately treating pain. Drugs like Oxycontin … began to preach the gospel of the opioid … They developed new medical terms like pseudo-addiction … As you get stronger drugs, it’s more expensive. ibid. Joe Rannazzisi, insider whistleblower gives evidence
Fentanyl byproducts is killing a lot of people … It was a natural progression … Overdose deaths is under-reported, we know that for sure so we don’t know really how many people died. We started seeing massive amounts of death … prescriptions: 250 million. ibid.
An onslaught of pills, hundreds of thousands of deaths. Who is accountable? ibid. The Washington Post online article 20 July 2019
Some of America’s biggest pharmaceuticals were not only profiting from the opioid crisis, they may have been manufacturing it. ibid.
We have had many run-ins with the Sacklers lately. The crisis began when Oxycontin hit the streets. Their man point of contention is that they did not ignore the opioid crisis single-handedly. Whether you believe that or don’t believe that, there is voluminous evidence the crisis began when Oxycontin hit the streets. Purdue [Pharma] led the charge. ibid. Bernstein, Washington Post
Generic versions … sending massive amounts of these drugs downstream because there were corrupt doctors all over the country. It became like the Wild West. This was a new drug cartel that was being established in the United States. But instead of coming in from a foreign country, they were drug dealers who were wearing suits and lab-coats. ibid.
A patient survey form. You say, I got back pain. The problem is that no-one ever saw the patient. As long as they have any kind of credit card they were fine. You’d have a doctor on the east coast, a patient and drug seeker on the west coast, the pharmacy was in the mid-west. It was just a trafficking organisation that was hiding behind the veil of the internet. ibid.
Broward County has more pill-mills (142) than McDonald’s. ibid.
Superior Injury Centre 870-6370. ibid.
There was one store in particular that was known by drug dealers as the go-to: CVS Pharmacy. ibid.
In 2011 there was a crack-down by the DEA. Operation Pill Nation involved more than 500 law-enforcement officers resulting in seizures of 7 vehicles, $19 million in cash and 105 arrests. ibid.
But the real problem wasn’t on the street. It was in the executive suites of pharmaceutical companies which had become addicted to the profits opioids could deliver. ibid.
Workers disciplined in Prozac mailings: At least one Lilly’s employee fired; seven face various other measures. ibid.
The product was Act-Tiv. It was a lolly-pop made of Fentanyl whose potency carried the enormous risk of overdose. ibid.
They start paying exorbitantly, a huge number of speaker programs, and they use the speaker program basically as a way of cover for the bribes they are paying. ibid. whistleblower
Clearly we’re breaking the law. ibid.