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 dr rican equals. a family doctor for the 22 years she's now suspected of being a prescription matter. 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 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.

provided the hardship of the oil production we're right on the edge of we're cowboys are the 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 descended this community but today they can lions have changed before i was having people from where the poverty level people all walks of life i have lawyers i have doctors children that become addicted to the opiates 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 of a cardiac arrest following a painkiller overdose. drugs prescribed by dr nichols.

books about. this oklahoma city lawyer has never seen a case like this and you victim wants to press charges. they 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 not that she would prescribe him and he passed away like 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 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 just 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 nichols 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 call 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 could 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 page. 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. 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. are found to know all 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 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 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 are 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 that. good evening a midwest city doggie doctor i'm homeless tonight 3000000 jobs davis i'm just reading and listening to the jury just raising this many times and stuff and he.

was very happy she got a rest question on t.v. oh. yeah i don't know or it was sad because this is from 3 doctors i mean did she harm i didn't know any term that 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 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 a back surgery 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 could take one pay you know and now you're having 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 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. kids 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 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 for a year or 2 or. maybe just to the love of money maybe get that 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.

we are segregated only where i saw. law school class people also in poverty by 1st . if you're born and show up for family och you're born into a minority family if you're born into a family that only has a single parent that really constrains your life chances people die on average 15 years old if you're born into generational poverty. it's a tough fight every day. to meet your needs and the needs of your family.

today the industry prefers to listen to music of you know being a d.j. reproducers i will be sniffing a lot making money making profits in some of the big corporations international markets import export do you imagine the number of currently diseases that are out in every community today it is not due to new viruses or all new microbes that is not true so it is due to environment. though that moment all discipline. really just accumulate could only come into use even though to be. declared dishonest. if the so food industry is successful in full create more jobs it will

create more value added it will create more growth so i don't see why we shouldn't also fight for the interest something into st outset that we are british and we want regulation of present industry and if we don't behave as in the us penalty that's fine. 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 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'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 on a new client we are a country of if that is the fast food quick fix is now now 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 pain is good pain or mines is that we're all. 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 to. sub rather to dora. i'm good cool cool man i feel and. i got.

you a stately. are you ready all right ran. your mom in here and we'll 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 and now ok and this is the 1st treatment on right 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 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 barry. i don't know how else to say it but i'm right and i can't do this anymore as. our own so much that i would rather not see. them who are more at this moment i don't know. really would be out of you 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 a lot of my thought process it's slow. and just about anywhere in the. south of motions of me is just i can't keep my emotions in one place and you know it's hard with. her i just aren't so good. for our friends and for all of us for us and. after that. we in my friends kind of stuck together in. we're 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 to hide since it was just blocking out that pain. and we feel good it and forget it and i actually helped me out with a lot of. 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 my family and that wasn't enough that wasn't enough to write or change. mentally in my head i've gotten close to suicide. in one of these pills are created monsters or i don't think that 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 full 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. amec 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. as 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 when 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 as a. 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 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's reiji has been involved in the opioid addiction the opioid crusts 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 speakers and 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. 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 and a 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

this heroin 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 way. never manage to quit. is someone responsible for his misery. pharmaceutical. russian officials are born kim

a renewed military assault on the country's east could lead to the end of ukraine itself this is how serious the situation is washington and its nato allies blame moscow for the escalation of tensions will the west back ukraine if camp starts again. today the industry prefers to spend millions of euros in you know the. d.-day regulations will be sniffy all about making money making profits big corporations international markets import export do you imagine the number of chronic diseases that are out in every community then it is no due to new viruses own new microbes that is not true so it is due to environment. and say you know the momentum to sit with this sort of muscles are really just accumulate could only come into use even though to be.

deployed. if the so food industry is successful it will create more jobs it will create more value added it will create more growth so i don't see why we shouldn't also fight for the interest something to street not accept that we have regulation we want regulation i was in just belief we don't behave any aspinall to last time. the swarms. who was before. much of those who herds of food you. see. who were going to. move. move. move showed you the snooper you. review films for good. good groove.

good issue also look i do the same you believe it's good to go. the thoughts to. the 2 needed oh it was the little one wished they'd say look it is it's. just testing understand just need to mashed on. destructive an egyptian please introduce more to. those who have petitions to go to school to snoop or come up with new yorkers are those the girls who are saying this approach to your machine shouldn't for you should cook door for the one who's doing. the.

twitter briefly suspends the account of an argument correspondent only agreeing to reinstate it once a decade old video of alleged u.s. war crimes is removed. a former u.s. intelligence analyst faces years in jail for exposing america's drone assassination program we spoke to a whistleblower who was in close contact with him. he did it because he was exposing a war crime he's not allowed to say that and so he really doesn't have any chance of acquittal. astra zeneca is covert vaccine is in the spotlight as the european medicines agencies top official links it to blood clots while the medical body itself goes on pointing to the jobs that benefits.