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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 reagan equals. 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 row 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.

my names are in box 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 who's on 1st name terms with the local people all his career he's defended this community but today they kind of 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 as far as for the low income high end. of all of what effected 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 nicholas. that's enough it really is this and. this oklahoma city lawyer has never seen a case like this and you victim wants to press charges. come in you can see i'm going to 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 you and i passed away about my 2nd major win in 2012. 2012. he was

a fireman she works an education counselor a regular family all it took 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 get some other treatment anyhow and you know it's a matter 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 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 would 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 and 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 missy firefighters here comma 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 is a good thing 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. imagine with less pain and amongst the pain killers on prescriptions are the opioids usually prescribed for back aches or headaches 2000000 americans are addicted to these pills for a reason that most ignore their opium based. m j somebody 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 of a lot of cases what were they originally prescribed for well historically the uses been for what we call cancer pain cancer does a lot of horrible things streamer 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 they're 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 a 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 script there's a 13 percent chance that 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 equivalent to opium samples. 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 what price these drugs a ticking bombs. who's aware of that fact did dr nichols know.

a wrongful death lawsuit was filed today against a midwest city dr breggin 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 i said oh good evening oh midwest city doggie doctor i'm homeless tonight 3000000 jobs dave was just reading and listening to the raising as many times as you just got and he. was very happy she got a rest question on t.v. oh very happy that there were no 4 it was sad because this is all 3 doctors i mean did she harm i didn't know any time that i met a man why america should search for a man and manage to. a met. you. mean these are navy have spent their entire life in this house this is where 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 liza's 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 pay you know and now you're having to take 2 or 3 pain pills because the pain is so bad. so it just increase it's just a vicious cycle because you know you 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. 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 time to consult with dr nichols. and i asked her about the quantity of medicine she was under and her response to me was chelsea was an adult that she could 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 to the love of money maybe give it to her because i know that when she chose to be a doctor i would bet on it that she chose to want to help people.

is the united states hell bent on self-destruction agenda make a dramatic economic turndown and massive civil unrest all point to define could this have been avoided also targeting watching the full force be she played in the . international memorial awards i'm now open for entries all media professionals are eligible whether your free lunch journalist work for all terms of media or part of a global news truffle. to participate in the still published works and video all written for. go to award dot altie dot com and then to now.

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 nichols 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's a. 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 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. we are a country of fast food quick fixes now now and now. here's a pill her here's a pill. function here's

a pill all of those things are right there at a doctor's. 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. everyone here has to learn to live without pain killers this private ranch places a year it receives 40 requests a day at 21 years old kyle is in rehab for the 1st time to. sub or other. i'm good well cool man are you feeling. alright ran. in here and we'll good we'll get everything started. right after you guys. carl.

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. rights opiates heroin and oxycontin anything else now ok and this is 1st treatment on right is all right 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 why the 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 needed barry. i

don't know how else to say it but a memory and i can't do this anymore as. our own so much that i would rather not see. them who are or at this moment i don't know i. really would be out of the view. are all good care. kyle has 90 days to learn to live without opioids. how it feels toward my body is a us law. my thought process it's slow. and just about a lot of anger and down a lot of sad emotions in the assist i can't keep my lotions in one place.

and on top of. her i just are of the obit. one of our friends died for all of us for this and. after that we in my friends kind of stuck together and were doing these pills and it was just blocking out so much pain we were 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 it made me feel good it made me forget it they 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 too many bad things of loss for family and that wasn't enough that wasn't enough to write room or change in mentally in my head by not gotten close to suicide. these pills are. a. legal. just like tobacco addiction the dangers of opioids have been hidden it is taken 20 years for the government to take action for financial fees.

in my office while the lawsuit against purdue 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 epidemic in our state. he's the oklahoma attorney general and the 1st one in this 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 whitman them an attorney here in oklahoma city

. in my mind this model burrage 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 opioid epidemic we need this person's a. case. 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 overfilled because of that 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 story corps hearing will take place in a few days. today reggie which will explain his motivations to 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 that 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. a story about my son brandon and that's 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's hand 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 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 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 to education because i think education is

the key to this problem and 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 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 literally please thank you guys for being a good audience and i'm hoping some of the information i shared with you today. might help you in a good way. never

manage to quit. is someone responsible for his misery. pharmaceutical. certainly. not just the needs. i think we. already passed the peak of. willingness to be most most.

developed this development of technology. communication i don't think it can be stopped. this control. between safe life and we'll share one bump it will not disappear. and. it's still moving. in the distance had this. and i don't know if. this is the only thing we do is music because everybody fights his way. if.

the floor you can be persuaded that. what i think is this is the funds that will come from. we go to work see you straight home.

video nick di the only makeup in they give me money does live up with good still is human and we save. more just at home i like a lot. there's an awful lot in common i'm old but i'm also the most amazing knows i've been a good loses it a bit downplays not emotional when i meet. his compass he must be told most will be honest even though he goes from didn't you know system to cease and has put oh you will get through a coke. can with them and i'm going to hit us in the nuts another little who's who live in the little you i don't like kind of the most beautiful. little kid is he kills him medical confit always stay in this old bundle the lot of them don't fulfill your list to us in the room number on it so to you can see it says oh no mindy kiss me.

i. i have a raise use for another nights with. police protest the von and sort of wake i'm sure. you heard earlier from his aunt. curfews are imposed across dozens of cities in the usa though that hasn't stopped right has leaving a trail of destruction more businesses and shops and the lost. and the protests have now spread beyond the u.s. we've thousands gathering in london.