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 of the 22 years she's now suspected of being a prescription murderer. the judge has to ascertain if there's 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 at 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 the case 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. in 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 they can lions have changed before i was having people from more the poverty level knive 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 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. for not figuring. this oklahoma city lawyer has never seen a case like this and you victim wants to press charges. the man 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 $99.00 per day that she would prescribe . and he passed away 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 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 miltie 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 could hit anybody. how come opioids invaded america pain has become a market and the idea of not suffering even likely if you get in drug stores that look like fast food anyone can shop for pain killers physical or psychological

a pain killer 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 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 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. are found to know all 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 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 something for your pain talk to your doctor. to be able to not feel pain has become a tacit agreement between doctor and patient this is 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 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 that oh good evening the midwest city doggie doctor i'm homeless tonight 3000000 jobs dave was just reading and listening to the raising as many times and stuff and he. was very happy she got a rest question on t.v. oh very happy that there were no 4 it was said was this is from 3 doctors i mean did she harm i didn't know any sort of met and met a man why america should search for men and manage to. a met. or. do you mean these are innate he has spent her 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 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 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 have to stay 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 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. i did trust or maybe money cater to or. maybe just the love of money maybe good that's worth because i know there are ways she chose to be a doctor i would bet on it as she chose to want to help people.

well suppose there was when choice of those lists initial what show it is what it also has been. but soap publisher didn't wants to roll a clip of it in that you will quote them in the us want to quickly sing months alone. when you left the company that it's all profit and you must see another one at the quote of the brawl at the east waltz up on the stage do it in you mustn't those like you want to keep the most of them there was still police and you up. for a sham didn't want all the money. to still stood so it's like god only. that in the last place i need some of what they did that would know more than the buddhists. the world is driven by dreamers shaped by think person of those.

who dares thinks. we dare to ask. 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 and i really like her very much. doctors lose patients all the time. to accuse

a doctor of 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 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 klein we are a country of 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 a doctor's pay pay is good pain or mines is that we're 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 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. i'm good well cool man are you feeling.

you a stately. pull to this are you ready all right ron. put your mom in here in the mill good will get everything started. right after you guys. are all. 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 cal bout 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 berry. i don't know how else to say it but a memory and i can't do this in the room or as. our room so much that i would rather not see him. them who are more at this moment i don't know. you would be on the view i want to. crawl through to you dear. kyle has 90 days to learn to live without opioids.

how it feels the war like my body is a lot. my thought process it's slow. for just about a lot of anger in the. south emotions in me it's just i can't keep my emotions in one place and you know it's all. her i just are of the little bit. one of our friends and it's 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 that's hard i would think it was just blocking out that pain. and it made me feel good it they 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 to me about things of loss for family and that wasn't enough that was. or change. mentally in my head i have gotten close to. a lot of these pills are monsters. i don't think they should be 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 reasons.

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 rigi whitman the attorney 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 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 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 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 a gene 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 incoming freshman athletes at the university of oklahoma i'm going to tell 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. ran i 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 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 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 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

the cerebellum that's the key telling patients that they're not addictive that's the killer literally we 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. son never managed to quit. there is someone responsible for his misery. pharmaceutical.

it's. 'd a little different said earlier got another researcher to. the challenge. is weapon of mass communication is spreading into the lens pal and in that way to marinate the gender family and other on t.v. this is an image well devices more than 12000000000 contaminated conjured if you don't even feel the effect your mind. or any early against alternative vision. asked if you start to question all of that your way excelled. idealistic and laminated mariama to create

enough career to media narrative day undercover that estate outside. you will get exposed i'll take your complaints to decontaminate while i love to help your audience and brave. thing to. track down where. you can defend yourself i enjoyed of the ones from the weapons of mass communications. thanks for the r.t. earlier give the enemy a single view. of the problems.

the headlines this hour nasi hospitality workers in paris protest against the law down until mid january with many businesses on the verge of collapse also to come from each tile box at britain's borders for rush to stockpile goods over threats they is and films the effects of drug dealers taking over parts of the in the rising signal caltex in the german capital plus a top british art gallery from its a mural depicting a black child with a chain around its neck is unequivocally offensive we get opinion because the type gallery in london considers removing it altogether only able to do just how they issue your way so that all friends of the employed on that channel.