tv Documentary RT April 11, 2021 8:30am-9:01am EDT
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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 doc 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 lost a child a brother a friend from an opioid overdose. dr nichols dr. she was the one prescribing the trucks.
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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. provide the hard to 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 defended this community but today the confines 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
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children who have 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. that's enough if anything. this oklahoma city lawyer has never seen a case like this and you victim wants to press charges. to 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 $99.00 per day that she would have prescribed. and he passed away about may 2nd. 20122012.
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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
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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 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
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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 a 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 with the originally prescribed for well historically the uses
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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. content 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
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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.
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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 i sort of thing oh good evening a midwest city duckie doctor i'm homeless tonight 3000000 jobs davis i'm just reading and listening to the doctor raising as many times you should stop and he. was very happy she got a rest question on t.v. oh very happy that it went on there for him said this this is from 3 doctors i mean did she harm i didn't know any internet i met a man why america should surrender men and marriage to. a met. you. mean these are innate he has spent her entire life in this house this is where
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the 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 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 half and 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
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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 as. much as 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. 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 there i did trust her maybe money feeder to do it maybe just that 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 and she chose to want to help people.
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the industry prefers to spend millions of you know being to do daily conditions i will be sniffing all about making money making profits in some of the corporations international markets import export do you imagine the number of printing diseases in every community then it is not due to new viruses all new microbes just not true so it is due to environment. siggy though their momentum is simply the. really just accumulate could only come in to see them to be. declared. 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 into street not accept that we are british and we want regulation i was in just 23 don't behave zaniest penalty just fine.
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so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy. let it be an arms race. spearing dramatic development the only personally i'm going to resist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time time to sit down and talk. and 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. i mean a criminal defense attorney here in oklahoma city we represent dr ragan nichols or i really like her very much. doctors lose patients all. all the time.
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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 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.
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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 the doctor's head but way is good painter minds if 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 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 rather. well you i'm good will cool man i feel and. i gotcha.
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us take claims wolf this is your eddie all right man. get your mom in here and we'll get we'll get everything started. right after you guys. now. has been to college and is the father of a little boy. but 4 years ago he became addicted to opioids and then heroin. writes opiates terror one and oxycontin anything else now ok and this is the 1st treatment on right 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
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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. the bury. i don't know how else to say it but i'm at my end 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. really will be out of the one who. are all good care. kyle has 90 days to learn to live without opioids.
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how it feels horrible i love my body a us a lot of. my thought process it's slow. i just about a lot of anger and then there are a lot of sad emotions and they assist i have a kid my lotions in one place. you know it's. her i just hope they'll get. 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
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day i think that's how i wanted things and 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 too many bad things of loss for family and that wasn't enough that wasn't enough the weight room changes and mentally in my head by now it's gotten close to suicide. well these pills are. a. little. just like tobacco addiction the dangers of opioids have been had and it has taken 20 years for the government to take action for financial reasons.
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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
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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 this model burrage i am my lawyer in oklahoma. sir. carol hunter hired my law firm when 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. and. i think we're going to be able to prove that 80 percent of all the crime in
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the state of oklahoma is directly caused by this opioid epidemic and our prisons are over feel because of the loss of productivity of taxpaying citizens cost the state money but i'm anxious to get this 1st this 1st battle started what they did to this country. it's pretty amazing. 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 a gene has been involved in the opioid addiction the opioid crosses ever since the
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death his son brandon and i had a nice that also related to drugs and so when the attorney general talked to us 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 freshmen athletes at the university of oklahoma i'm going to tell a. story about my son brandon. that the power of addiction and how dangerous it is. and maybe. save somebody's life.
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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 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. 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 the dread that brought him down was 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
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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 and when i tell this story a school's 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
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heroin pills most people don't know that these opioids are essentially the same this here one 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've shared with you today. might help you in a good way. i. never managed to quit. there is someone responsible for his misery. pharmaceutical. this. misguided believe by many of the by locking down the whole society can
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somehow protect the old high risk people but we'll see how it's sort of on view is that that wasn't the case it did not betray. the high risk pool of people in the us. over half a 1000000 deaths most little of people there was a complete failure to think these lockdowns would actually protect all the high risk people. the swarms of them so much. good who was before. much of those who heard it's a preview. soon we will. we will. move . move.
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move show didn't look beautiful the immediate sense looked good. just like most of these girls the view from school good pool. go to shows or look why do you just seem you belong if you show the story to actually go. to startups to. get to meet until they were a little missed don't see a look it is it's. just testing understand just need to mash don't try to stop the president and please introduce more to. those we have producers to produce for to snoop on what to do with because that is the cousin with you or your supporters to your machine station shouldn't do you should could do for the one who's doing does the.
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