tv Documentary RT May 27, 2020 12:30am-1:00am EDT
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oklahoma in the heart of america one of the most deeply afflicted states in the opioids addiction crisis oklahoma might change the course of history. for the 1st time in the united states a doctor will be sued by the state for 2nd degree murder for over prescribing opioids here's the accused that to reconnect calls. a family doctor for over 22 years she is now suspected of being a prescription murderer. the judge has to ascertain if there is enough material to go to trial. the plaintiffs in the room have lost a child a brother a friend from an opioid overdose. dr nichols was their doctor she was the one prescribing the drugs.
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let him serve unbox i'm an attorney in oklahoma city i practice cripple defense i've got a police officer and i've been a prosecutor and i've been a judge i've been here all my life born and raised in oklahoma. the white the hard to the oil production we're right on the edge of we're cowboys are there and so we've got a lot of people in here that are hard working people and it's a pretty peaceful city as far as that goes. box knows these roads inside out and he's on 1st name terms with the local people all his career he's defended this community but today the clients to changed before i was having people from more the poverty level people all walks of life i have lawyers i have doctors children that
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become addicted to the opiates now it's every level in every area of life is for is for the low income high in. all of what affected by the opiate use. he represents several families from this town everyone has lost a relative deceased of a cardiac arrest following a painkiller overdose drugs prescribed by dr nichols. that's about it really is this and. this oklahoma city lawyer has never seen a case like this and you victim wants to press charges. to come in you can see you can see you. have a seat and that marshall has been raising her 2 children alone since her husband died of a painkiller overdose my math shows that's 99 per day that she would prescribe him and he passed away and got my 2nd. one in 20122012. he was
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a fireman she works as an education counselor a regular family all. it was back surgery to turn everything over in a few months her husband became addicted to the painkillers prescribed by dr nichols of course once you have that surgery it's never quite the same and then they get some other treatment and he had you know some other issues with just on the judge just injuries it from being to having such a physical job and i think it just snowballed you know he persisted with the pain but instead of trying to wean him off though she did those at their dose after dose after dose and really became his drug dealer. more drugs than the regular drug dealers of the street would prescribe but she's doing it in the name of medicine. according to her doctor nichols which swiftly see patients without any physical exam a few dollars for
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a prescription her husband would have been prescribed $100.00 pills a day $3000.00 a month the doctor should have been the response well course and they're trained in that's what their job is is to make sure they're treating you in a healthy manner and they're doing what's best for you and not what's going to bring harm to you. it happens to just your next door neighbor to your uncle miltie firefighters here come a city police officer to your school teacher to your you know it's a it's not a it's not a disease that is specific it can hit anybody. how come opioids indeed get in there pain has become a market and the idea of not suffering even likely to get. that look like fast food anyone can shop for pain killers physical or psychological a painkiller exists for almost any reason. imagine facing the day with less chronic
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osteoarthritis pain. imagine living your life with less chronic low back pain. and then. with less pain and amongst the pain killers on prescriptions it's usually prescribed for back aches or headaches $2000000.00 americans are addicted to these for a reason that most ignore their opium based. i'm jason be minute and i am the chair of psychiatry at oklahoma state university's center for health sciences our oath is essentially 1st do no harm and i think that that's one of the biggest problems is that doctors don't realize that by purse cry being opioids that they could doing more harm than good and we've seen that in a lot a lot of cases what would they originally prescribe for well historically the uses been for what we call cancer pain they cancer does
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a lot of horrible things to your body and can cause a lot of pain nowadays it's used for a lot of different things these pills hydrocodone. the content. of the drugs that are legally sold on the market share the same component a powerful narcotic heroin and sometimes they are a 1000 times more concentrated. the opioid compound comes from a plant called the opium poppy and these plants are really grown mostly in asia and then there are imported by drug companies into the united states but what we do with the pills is we take the good parts of the flour that you would smoke and we concentrate them in a little pill. and so the pills are much more potent than smoking ever was but in the united states we
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outlawed the smoking of opium in the early 1900 s. if you get a 3 day per script there's a 13 percent. you'll be taking those opioids a year later so whether it's a few prescriptions or a few pills it's a very small amount that it takes to get addicted. to the left a lethal dosage of heroin to the right it's a quick to opium softballs. to date you know you did something for your pain talk to your doctor. to be able to not feel pain has become a tacit agreement between doctor and patient that it was price. these drugs a ticking bombs who's aware of that fact did dr nichols know.
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a wrongful death lawsuit was filed today against a midwest city dr ragan nichols is already accused are prescribing a massive amount of opioids to 5 patients who later died when i heard that there was 4 other deaths then a. good evening a midwest city doggie doctor i'm homeless tonight 3000000 jobs dave was just really not a clinician. raising as many times he should stop and he. was very happy she got a rest question on t.v. oh very happy that that went on there or it was sad because this is all 3 doctors i mean did she harm i didn't know any internet i met a man why america should surrender men and manage to. a met. you. mean these are navy have spent their entire life in this house this is where
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their daughter chelsea was born 21 years ago here also that she passed away as a painkiller overdose in 2013 their story is one of an analgesic burdened family hiding in the secret and shame with addiction. she's headed for back surgeries dr nichols was nice this doctor for 7 years she was the 1st to fall into the trap when i 1st started seeing her i thought she was going to be ok and she was giving me pain medicine to help my back but as the years go by course your body gets used to that medicine so that it doesn't work you know you used to take one page bill and now you have to say 2 or 3 pain pills because the pain is so bad. so it just increase and it's just a vicious cycle because you know you've got to have the medicine but you know you don't want to have to take that much medicine but you can't i could work and do my
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job if i didn't have that was. lisa had her own addiction what she didn't know is that her daughter was doing the same thing for 3 years chelsea had diabetes which causes muscular pains it was her turn to consult with dr nichols. knight i asked her about the quantity of medicine she was given her and her response to me was chelsea was an adult that she couldn't talk to me about chelsea's medical but she could talk to me about chelsea's diabetes but she wouldn't talk to me about. the medication that she was i did trust her maybe money feeder to do it. maybe just that the love of money maybe get that's where because i know that when she chose to be a doctor i would bet on it that she chose to want to help people.
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cold war $2.00 targeting china is off the ground in gaining momentum some sleep china must pay for the endemic while others claim beijing is an existential security threat to the washington centric world still others say to washington and concede he lives in a pole but. you can't be both with the yeah you know what. i am.
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is you'll be a reflection of reality. in a world transformed. what will make you feel safe. isolation will kill you to see. you good in the right way or are you being that. direct. forces. in the world corrupted you need to descend. to join us in the depths. already made in the shallows. we met dr nichols almost a year ago i think she has a very good heart she wants to help people maybe a little awkward but she's got
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a really sweet heart my name's tommy adler i'm in a criminal defense attorney here in oklahoma city we represent dr ragan nichols or really like her very much. doctors lose patients all the time. to accuse a doctor of of acting in reckless disregard for her patient a good step for the government that say. that exposes doctors to a lot of risk newsgroup troubled people these patients were abusing the things that they had access to. it wasn't the amounts that dr nichols prescribed these people that killed them it was the amounts that they decided to take. her line of defense is set to shift away the shadow of responsibilities dr nichols was an irreproachable professional who was duped by drug addicts and she never had any aware. her patients were facing any danger whatsoever nowadays in oklahoma city
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addiction can be seen at every corner. i think america got here because we are the most medicated country in the world. we are a country of fast food quick fixes now now and now you feel bad here's a pill her here's a pill tell disfunction here's a pill all of those things are right there at a doctor's pay his good painter minds that were alive. he went to the center as a patient since then he's become the head of the facility in order to save others like himself everyone here has to learn to live without pain killers this private
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ranches 30 places a year it receives 40 requests a day at 21 years old kyle is in rehab for the 1st time i. saw brother you know. i'm good well cool man i you feel and. i got. us stay clean if. you're ready alright ran. or get your mom in here and we'll good will get everything started. right after you guys. are really. has been to college and he's the father of a little boy. but 4 years ago he became addicted to opioids and then heroin. writes opiates heroin and oxycontin anything else i know. and this is the 1st treatment on right all right are you feeling very
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emotional. the motion of everybody she's waiting for her boy to come back. it's going to take about 30 days for you to really begin to see a change. so as life and death man there's only 3 ways out of this which is get sober which is what i pray for you on the 2nd one is is prison if you're lucky 3rd one is the barry. i don't know how else to say it but a memory and i can't do this in the room or as. our own so much rather not see how. them who are for at this moment i don't know. believe that we are the one who. are all through to
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get here. kyle has 90 days to learn to live without opioids. how it feels a war like my body is a lot of. my thought process it's slow. for just about all of it a married man around a lot of sad emotions and me it's just i can't keep my emotions in one place and you know on top of the. hurt i just are up to look at. one of my friends who died for all of us for the. after that.
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william my friends kind of stuck together and were doing these pills and it was just blocking out so much pain or so stressed out and. fighting back tears every day i think that's how i wanted things and it was just blocking out that pain . and the feel good it they forget it. actually helped me out with a lot of things depend on it. i was that was my girl you know that was my love and then. just this last year like too many tell me about things i've lost for family and that wasn't enough that wasn't enough to write or change. mentally in my head i've gotten close to suicide and. you know these pills
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are creating monsters or i don't think that they should be legal. just like tobacco addiction the dangers of opioids have been hidden it has taken 20 years for the government to take action for financial reasons. in my office while the lawsuit against produce pharma. well we're just so full on and janssen pharmaceuticals. in putting this lawsuit together. we believe these companies are culpable for the tragic heartbreaking number of
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oklahomans. who have become addicted or who have died as a result of the opioid epidemic in our state. he's the oklahoma attorney general and the 1st one in his country to go to battle. my counter is publicly accusing pharmaceutical companies of having caused this epidemic. he wanted to prove that he and his team have been investigating for more than a year. yes my name is regina whitten i'm an attorney here in oklahoma city and my time is model burrage i am my lawyer in oklahoma. carol hunter hired my law firm whitman burrage to represent the state of oklahoma and try to recoup all of the costs that the state has incurred because of the
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opioid epidemic we need this person is a. case. and. i think we're going to be able to prove that 80 percent of all the crime in the state of oklahoma is directly caused by this opioid epidemic and our prisons are over feel because of the loss of productivity of taxpaying citizens costs the state money but i'm anxious to get this 1st this 1st battle started. what they did to this country. is from. their estimates bring the cost of the epidemic to $7000000000.00 in oklahoma. this is storm cool hearing will take place in a few days. today reggie which will explain his motivations to
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a group of students that this struggle is a personal one. partner has been involved in the opioid addiction the opioid crossus ever since the death of his son brian and i had a nice that also related to drugs and so when the attorney general talked about representing the state. in this case. i think he knew that we both had family members and because of the epidemic. we're going to talk to the incoming freshman athletes at the university of oklahoma i'm going to tell on. the story about my son brandon and that's the power of addiction and how dangerous it is and maybe. save somebody's life.
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i think i got a chance to shake almost everybody's hand when you came in i was trying to figure out what sport you are too hard to guess every sport from your you know your size but thank you guys for coming. so let me introduce you to my co speaker tonight this is brandon. and rand is not here today and i'll tell you why later this is me when i was at o. u. and i had this young son and also when i had more hair. brown was a cute little kid brand his plan was to go to college and play football which he did. and he ended up playing on the national championship football team never got in any kind of trouble in the drug that brought him down as an opioid and it did
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not come from the streets it came from a pharmacy i just told him stop using those pills and i found out it's not that easy i found out it's like telling a diabetic to use more willpower and stop needing insulin you can't do that and that's crazy. i never told him about addiction i never warned him. and so now i i have survivor guilt now but i'm living with it so i started a foundation called fighting addiction through education because i think education is the key to this problem when i tell this story at schools it gets so quiet you could hear a pin drop. and they're not really interested in me they're interested in brandon they i show pictures of him he was one of them he's just ordinary kid and if an
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ordinary kid like brandon can end up getting hooked they could and that is the truth these pills that big pharma sells. they're essentially heroin pills most people don't know the that these opioids are essentially the same this here one that's the key telling patients that they're not addictive that's the killer with little ways thank you guys for being a good audience and i'm hoping some of the information i've shared with you today. might help you in a good way. richie son never managed to quit. there is someone responsible for his misery. pharmaceutical.
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join me every thursday on the alex simon chill and i'll be speaking to guests of the world of politics sports business i'm showbusiness i'll see that. one else seems wrong. just don't call. me. yet to shape out these things become obsolete. and in detroit equals betrayal. when something find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground.
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he said. just that. is enough. but i'm also the most companies you know i've been a kid who says. when i meet. it's come to see those people in the school you know he goes from didn't you know just to see his pro you know i call. them and then they hit a seat on the. machine and in the middle you kind of. think. them in the clip that he comes to you in the studio. so to. speak is he.
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54 jets and more than 1300 military personnel are headed to heal some air force base in alaska where is that to say come on i'll show you what's the reason for any type of enhanced u.s. military presence in this area rush up. what is it suddenly about the south china sea that makes it so that it 11000000000 barrels of oil. take a look at this map who really owns what kind of says no it belongs to us india says no we claim that that belongs to us both of these countries have nuclear weapons capabilities there is reason for concern so that's why we're going to drill down on this story for you today right here on the news with rick sanchez where. or you know as we always like to say we do believe. by golly it's time to do news again.
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hello and welcome to cross talk we're all things were considered on peter lavelle cold war 2.0 targeting china is off the ground and gaining momentum something china must pay but the pandemic well others claim is an existential security threat to the washington centric world still others say washington can't concede we live in a multi-polar world.
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