i think is this is the fun that is a confluence of us. not walk the streets. do you. not walk up the street. i can see. mr joseph. 506066th street.

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 hears 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 all lost a child a brother a friend from an opioid overdose. dr nichols was their doctor she was the one prescribing the drugs.

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 right the hard to the oil production we're right on the edge of we're cowboys are there 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 who's on 1st name terms with the local people all his career he's defended this community but today the clients have changed before i was having people from more the poverty level and i have people all walks of life i have lawyers i have doctors

children that become addicted to the opiates now it's every level in every area of life is for is for the low income high and. all of what affected by the opiate use . he represents several families from this town everyone has lost a relative deceased if a cardiac arrest following a painkiller overdose drugs prescribed by dr nicholas. tough enough it really is this is. this oklahoma city lawyer has never seen a case like this and you victim wants to press charges. to come in and 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 have prescribed him and he passed away about my 2nd major win in 20122012.

he was a fireman she works in education counselor a regular family all this. it was back surgery to turn everything over in a few months her husband became addicted to the painkillers prescribed by got to nichols of course once you have that surgery it's never quite the same and then they did some other treatments 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. after 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 nicholas which swiftly see patients without any physical exam a few dollars for

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 invaded america pain has become a market and the idea of not suffering even likely if they get in drug stores 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

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 prescribe opioids that they could doing more harm than good and we've seen that in a lot a lot of cases where they originally prescribed for well historically the uses been for what we call cancer pain cancer does

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 they do with 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

outlawed the smoking of opium in the early 1900 if you get a 3 day per scription 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 glimpse onto opium southfields. today 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 is aware of that fact did dr nichols know.

a wrongful death lawsuit was filed today against a midwest city dr ragan nichols is already kids are prescribing a massive amount of opioids to 5 patients who later died when i heard that there was 4 other deaths then i said. good evening the midwest city. hall us tonight 3000000 jobs davis i'm just reading or listening to the. middle aged stuff. is very happy she got a read in our washington studio. i don't know where it was said this this is from your. heart i didn't know any internet i met a man why america should surrender men and marriage to. a met.

these are navy have spent their entire life in this house this is where their daughter chelsea was born 21 years ago hear also that she passed away at a painkiller overdose into. 13 their story is one of an analgesic burdened family hiding in the secret and shame of addiction. she's headed for a back surgeries dr nichols was nice as doctor for 7 years she was the 1st to fall into the opioids 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 could take one pain pill and now you're having to take 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

job if i didn't have those. lisa had her own addiction but 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 giving 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 the money maybe give it to her because i know that when she chose to be a doctor i would bid on it and she chose to want to help people.

seem wrong. but old rules just don't. let me. get to shape out just to become educated and gain from it because the trail. when so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. 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 at 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 you know as we always like to say we do believe by golly it's time to do news again. if we see culture on earth has prohibitions against. the same time virtually every culture and. words you enormously if you killed the right person in

one setting it is the most horrendous to have wishing singing matching of them and you knew if you're sitting in his room one day they will give you a medal for their boots because of that the people will be with you because you're good at doing that sort of say. 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 a really sweet heart my name's tommy adler i'm in a criminal defense attorney here in oklahoma city we represent dr ragan nick. or really like her very much. doctors lose patients all the time. to accuse a doctor of. acting in reckless disregard for her patients when we believe that she

was genuinely attempting to care for them. is a big 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. 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 awareness that her patients were facing any danger whatsoever nowadays in oklahoma city addiction can be seen at every corner.

i think america got here because we are the most medicated country in the world to climb we are a ton trio if that is fast food quick fixes now now i now 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 the doctor's head but wayne is a good painter minds that were alive. he went to this to save others like himself everyone here has to learn to live without pain killers this private ranches 30 places a year it receives 40 requests a day at 21 years old kyle is in rehab for the 1st time. sub or other. you know aren't you i'm good cool cool man i feel and. i gotcha. you a stately. pull to this are you ready alright ron. put your

mom in here in the mill good will get everything started. right after you guys. are all. pleased he 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 now ok and this is the 1st treatment on right is alright are you feeling very emotional i actually. the motion of everybody she's waiting for her boy to come back. it's going to take kalb out 30 days for you to really begin to see a change. so is 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 i'm right and i can't do that said member of. our own so much that i would rather not see. them who are more at this moment i don't know. if you will be on the view who are who. are all through to get here. kyle has 90 days to learn to live without opioids. how it feels toward my body is a a lot of. my thought process it's slow.

for just about an area there are a lot. satam oceans and me it's just i can't keep my emotions in one place and you know what's up with. her i just don't feel good. for our friends and for all of us and. after that. we are friends kind of stuck together in. 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 hard i would think it was just blocking out that pain.

and the feel good it and forget it. i actually helps 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. change. mentally in my head i'd have gotten close to suicide and. you know these pills are creating monsters and i don't think that they should be legal. just like tobacco addiction the dangers of opioids have been hidden you just taken 20 years for the government to take action for financial reasons.

in my office while the lawsuit against produce pharma. knowledge and so on and janssen pharmaceuticals. in putting this lawsuit together. we believe these companies are culpable for the tragic heartbreaking number of oklahomans who have become addicted or who have died as a result of the opioid up in. demick 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. even wanted to prove that he and his team have been investigating for

more than a year. is 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 verged to represent the state of oklahoma and try to recoup all of the costs that the state has incurred because of the opioid epidemic we've 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 in 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 a group of students for this struggle is a personal one. partner reiji has been involved in the opioid addiction the opioid crusts ever since the death 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 incoming freshman athletes at the university of oklahoma i'm going to tell on. the story about my son brandon and that the power of addiction and how dangerous it is and maybe. save somebody's life. i think i got a chance to shake almost everybody saying when you came in i was trying to figure out what sport you are it's 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 speakers and this

is brandon. and moran 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. i was a cute little kid brant his plan was to go to college and play football which he did. 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 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 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 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 that but these opioids are essentially the same this heroin that's the key telling patients that they're not addictive that's the killer we literally 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. join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guests of the world of politics sports business i'm showbusiness i'll see if that.

is you'll be via reflection of reality. in a world transformed. what will make you feel safe. isolation full community. are you going the right way or are you being that. way. what is true what is faith. in the world corrupted you need to descend. to join us in the depths. or inmate in the shallow. let me. give me my best bit. he said.

out loud. there's an awful lot in common i'm old but i'm also the most companies you know so i'm going to give those who see the big plays not emotional when i meet . those companies humans get all emotional screaming nobody goes from didn't you know she's going to she's just put oh you little different story. with someone don't believe the notes you know you see him a little you know you kind of the most beautiful. little kid. always stay in a little bit of you come to your list to see him to go to. homecoming

to something a visionary recently sophie shevardnadze humans on one hand. mass genocide and on the other hand people create sacrifices. essentially streams i ask robert small ski professor of biology in stanford university and a recipient of your foundation genes. roberson paul steve professor of biology and new rollins at stanford university it's so great to have you with us.