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tv   Documentary  RT  April 11, 2021 4:30pm-5:00pm EDT

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not walk the streets. do you. know walk the streets. i can see. mr chops. 66th street. 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.
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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 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 was their doctor she was the one prescribing the drugs. 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
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a judge i've been here all my life i'm born and raised in oklahoma. the white the heart 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. in box knows these roads inside out and he's on 1st name terms with the local people all his career he's defended this community but to date the clients have changed before i was having people 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.
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but from unfit 30. this oklahoma city lawyer has never seen a case like this a new victim wants to press charges. come in we 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 a 9 per day that she would prescribe him and he passed away and got my 2nd major win in 20122012. he was a fireman she works an education counselor a regular family and 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
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they did some other treatments and he had 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 though so 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 per 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 call
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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 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. i'm
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jason b. 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 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
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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 scription 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
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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 this is 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 of prescribing a massive amount of opioids to 5 patients who later died when i heard that there was 4 other deaths then a. good evening a midwest city documentary i'm homeless tonight 3000000 jobs davis i'm just reading and listening to the raising as many times you can stuff and he.
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was very happy she got a rest question on t.v. oh very happy that that went on there for him said this this is from 3 daughters i mean did she harm i didn't know any of that i met a man why america should surrender men and marriage 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 back surgeries dr nichols was nice this doctor for 7 years she was the 1st to fall into the
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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 it is 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. 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
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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 you or. maybe just that the love of money maybe that's where because i know that when she chose to be a doctor i would bet on it that she chose to want to help people. what a pandemic no certainly no blood is just blind to nationalities. as
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a march we don't come with the we do a back seat the whole world needs to be. judged . come in a crisis like this this time to time so we can do better we should. everyone is contributing to each of our own way but we also know that this crisis will not go on forever the challenge is great the response has been masked so many good people are helping us. it makes us feel very proud that we are in it together . today the industry prefers to spend millions on fuel nothing to do daily
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conditions will be sniffy it's all about making money making profits in some of the big corporations international markets import export do you imagine the number of chronic diseases that are out in every community today it is not due to new viruses all new microbes that's not true so it is due to environment less will see the look on a ciggy though the momentum to simply out of this sort of lost cycles of really b.s. to cumulate could only come in to be seen to be so out of the list that they love us to plague the sky 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 have regulation we want regulation has in just any freedom behave zaniest penalty just fine.
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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 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
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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 if that is 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 pad but pain 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. first time to. sub rather. you i'm good will cool man i feel and. i gotcha.
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you a stately. pull to this are you ready all right round. put your mom in here and then we'll good will get everything started. right after you guys. 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 time right all right are you feeling very emotional i actually. he motioned for 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 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. indeed barry. i don't know how else to say it but i'm right and i can't do that said member of. 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 on the view who are who. are all good here. kyle has 90 days to learn to live without opioids.
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how it feels toward my body is a lot of. my thought process it's slow. for just about all of it again or in the down a lot. satam oceans of me is just a kid keep my emotions in one place and you know on top of. her i just are of the ability. for our friends and for all of us for us and. after that we in our friends kind of stuck together and were doing these pills and it was just blocking out so much pain for so stressed out i. fighting back tears every
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day think it's hard to hide things and it was just blocking out that pain. 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 i've lost my family and that wasn't enough that wasn't enough to right room or change i am mentally in my head by now 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 these.
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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
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counter is publicly accusing pharmaceutical companies of having caused this epidemic. in order to prove that he and his team have been investigating for more than a year. yes my name is regina whitman of an attorney here in oklahoma city . in my mind this model burrage i am my lawyer and oklahoma. carol hunter hired my law firm verbiage 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 say. yes. i think we're going to be able to prove that 80 percent of all the crime in the
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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 for. 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 for this struggle is a personal one. partner a gene 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
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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 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
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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. i was a cute little kid brant 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
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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 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 essential pills most people don't know that these opioids are essentially the same this here
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that's the key telling patients that they're not addictive that's the killer literally 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. system in my evil misguided believe by many of those by locking down the whole society you can somehow put high risk people. on here is that that wasn't
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the case it did not betray. the high risk pool of people in the us. over half a 1000000 deaths mostly older people there was a complete failure just seeing these lockdowns would actually put all the high risk people. the swarms of them so moving. who was before. much of those who heard it's a preview are. slim we will. we will. move . move.
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week's top stories on art's a vaccine has it's insane throws up a major obstacle for the e.u. is already stalling rolled out with regulators struggling to give its people that the astra zeneca covert shelter is safe. all but out of seeds its worst driving in decades with wyvil gangs howling petrol bombs and torching police cars amid fury of a post breaks a trade barriers. and a former u.s. intelligence analyst faces years in prison for exposing america's drone warfare program. he did it because he was exposing a war crime he's not allowed to see that he really doesn't have any chance of acquittal.

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