establishment of one of the biggest pill mills in the anntry, and that came out of individual named henry vincent who was appropriately and undertaker. he had just come out of prison, arving four years are running gay escort agency in washington, d.c. that was busted by the secret service. he was sent back to williamson by his parole officer and he sees a business opportunity in setting up a group of doctors in an industrial warehouse as technically a pain clinic, prescribing drugs to just about anybody who wanted them, provided they could slap down the cash. become ailliamson place to go to for a while for a decade. williamson wellness as it was called, they would just prescribe thousands of pills every day without really consulting the patients. you paid $150 and got a prescription. host: "american overdose" is the title of the book. you are a british reporter for the guardian newspaper. how is this a uniquely american crisis, as you described it? guest: a couple reasons. one is the scale. there is nowhere else where you will see the scale of death we have seen over the past 20 years. nobody re

because henry vincent recruits him because as the doctor in the federal prison and says what you like to earn more money working for me and that's what he does so they are just writing prescriptions to anybody and taking cash so much so that when the fbi eventually raid the clinic , they find hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash lying around stuffed in the beds and at 1.1 was taking $1 million a month into a bank account and the clinic itself on top of what the doctors are doing in 2094 and a half million dollars per year in cash. this is the kind of money in a town of 3500 people. but those people were coming to buy these drugs from far and wide and what happens they could not bring too many alarm bells so they just had a handful of pharmacies that they will dispense of the prescriptions so the police observation reports there are so many people going in that have the pills prepackaged in 30 and 60 and 90 they are literally throwing them over the counter over the bar as people just march up and then they throw it over the top they catch it and then there you go people are lined u

establishment of one of the biggest pill mills in the anntry, and that came out of individual named henry vincentas appropriately and undertaker. he had just come out of prison, arving four years are running gay escort agency in washington, d.c. that was busted by the secret service. he was sent back to williamson by his parole officer and he sees a business opportunity in setting up a group of doctors in an industrial warehouse as technically a pain clinic, prescribing drugs to just about anybody who wanted them, provided they could slap down the cash. become ailliamson place to go to for a while for a decade. williamson wellness as it was called, they would just prescribe thousands of pills every day without really consulting the patients. you paid $150 and got a prescription. host: "american overdose" is the title of the book. you are a british reporter for the guardian newspaper. how is this a uniquely american crisis, as you described it? guest: a couple reasons. one is the scale. there is nowhere else where you will see the scale of death we have seen over the past 20 years. nobody really k