oklahoma in the heart of america one of the most deeply afflicted states in the opioids addiction crisis. that 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 rican equals. a family doctor for over 22 years she's 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 trucks.

let him serve unbox i'm an attorney at oklahoma city i practice crippled events 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 hardship of the oil production we're right on the edge of we're cowboys are that is 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 is on 1st name terms with the local people all his career he's descended this community but today the kinds of changed before i was having people from war the poverty level people all walks of life i have a lawyer. 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 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. but for not figuring. this oklahoma city lawyer has never seen a case like this a new victim wants to press charges. 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 you and i passed my 2nd. one in 20122012. he was

a fireman she works in 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 dr 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 dose 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 miltie firefighters here come a city police officer to your school teacher 2 year you know it's 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 or 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. 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 of a lot of cases what would they originally prescribe for well historically the uses been for what we call cancer pain cancer does

a lot of horrible things street your body and can cause a lot of pain nowadays it's used for a lot of different things these pills a cooled hydrocodone. contents are found to no other 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 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 a quick lived 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 was 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 doctor regen 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 that i sort of thing oh good evening oh midwest city doggie doctor i'm homeless tonight 3000000 joes davis i'm just reading and listening to the jury just raising as many times as you just got and he. was very happy she got a rest question on t.v. oh. i don't know 4 it was said was this is from 3 doctors i mean did she harm i didn't know any internet i met a man why america should search for the 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 hear also that she passed away at the painkiller overdose in 2013 their story is one of an analgesic burden 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 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 take one pain you know 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 medicine. 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. night i asked her about the quantity of medicine she was given her 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 there i did trust her maybe money feed into it maybe just to the love of money maybe give it to her because i know that when she chose to be a doctor and i believe they had all of that and she chose to want to help people.

i. suppose it was a. last time we chased. each one of them carrying 20 kilos 'd of drugs. first offense. that they just stepped right. into the fray and we i mean. they have. this is for me. even if. i don't know maybe they'll get a. break right. now what.

is your media a reflection of reality. in a world transformed. what will make you feel safe. isolation community. are you going the right way or are you being led. by. what is true what is faith. in the world corrupted you need to descend. to join us in the depths. or remain in the shallowness.

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 is tommy adler i'm in a criminal defense attorney here in oklahoma city we represent dr ragan nichols or i 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 and these were 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 to climb we are a country of its. fast food quick fixes now now now feel bad here's

a pill her here's a pill. function here's a pill all 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 30 places a year but receives 40 requests a day at 21 years old kyle is in rehab for the 1st time. sub brother. i'm good well cool man are you feeling. all right ran. in here and then we'll good will 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. writes opiates heroin and oxycontin anything else i know. and this is the 1st treatment on right this all right are you feeling very 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 needed very. i

don't know how else to say it but on them mike 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. you will be on if you want to. crawl through to your. trial has 90 days to learn to live without opioids. how it feels more like my body is a along. my thought process it's slow. for just about all of it and there in the. south emotions in me is

just i can't keep my emotions in one place and you know on top of. her i just don't feel good. for our friends and for all of us friends 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 or so stressed out and. fighting back tears every day i think it's hard to hide things and it was just blocking out that pain. and made me feel good it made me 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 too many bad things of last for family and that wasn't enough that wasn't enough to write or change them mentally in my head i know it's gotten close to suicide. these pills are. a. little. just like tobacco addiction the dangers of opioids have been hidden it is taken 20 years for the government to take action for financial reasons.

in my office while the lawsuit against purdue pharma. so long 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 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. on the turn here in oklahoma city

. in my mind is model murray 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 need this person's 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 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. city this is storm cool 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 her 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 incoming freshman athletes at the university of oklahoma i'm going to tell on. a 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 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 ran 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. he ended up playing on a 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 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 as her were and 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. never manage to quit. is someone responsible for his misery. pharmaceutical. they didn't want to listen we or 2 of you. probably have those throat vaccines have to be acceptable to the corporation before they were rolled out in a in a society because if then was acceptable there is

a real risk undermining faith in the vaccination system as a whole and i think governments are under such pressure to introduce a vaccine rapidly that good the willingness to consult and to ensure acceptability or somehow to new growth to. trade and investment to become magic spells to conjure economic development. most people think about trade they think about goods and services being exchanged between countries and the investment chopped or of a trade agreement as opposed to something very different but what when investment leads to toxic manufacturing that destroys sacred sites all ruins the environment. that means if local communities that are being poisoned if they object if they do anything that the company feels is interrupting their profits they can be certain.

the nationals are taking on the whole nation's philip morris is trying to use i.s.t.'s to stop tour of the way from implementing new tobacco regulations aimed at cutting domestic smoking rates a french company sued egypt because egypt raise its minimum wage democratic choice to have a trump corporate law joining us as we try to fund don't want to touch it. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's. crazy. let it be an arms race in. spearing dramatic development that only mostly exists i don't see how that strategy will be successful very. few sit down.

huge rallies break out across protests against the president's 2nd 400 people have reportedly been detained. plus in the schools to shape the week germany agrees to work with moscow on a probe into the alleged poisoning of opposition figures make sure that fired up german lawmakers. why does novell need such a level of protection from a security service. is part of the putin system why would the russian government be so stupid and even let the money fly to germany instead of hiding him in russia. and former u.k. prime ministers condemn the government's plan to override the divorce treaty with the e.u. move the downing street admits would break international law.