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 heres the accused doctor regan equals. 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 row have lost a child a brother a friend from an opioid overdose. Dr nichols was there doctor. She was the one prescribing the trucks. Let him serve unbox im an attorney in Oklahoma City i practice cripple defense ive got a Police Officer and ive been a prosecutor and ive been a judge ive been here all my life born and raised in oklahoma. All right the hardship of the Oil Production were right on the edge of were cowboys are the case so weve got a lot of people in here that are hard working people and its a pretty peaceful city as far as that goes. Box knows these roads inside out and whos on 1st name terms with the local people all his career hes descended this community but today the complaints have changed before i was having people from more the Poverty Level people all walks of life i have lawyers i have doctors 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 if a cardiac arrest following a painkiller overdose drugs prescribed by dr nicholas. Tough enough it really is this and. This Oklahoma City lawyer has never seen a case like this and you victim wants to press charges. To come in you can see it in 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 thats 99. 00 per day that she would prescribe. An i pad. 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 its never quite the same and then they get some other treatment anyhow you know its 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 goes 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 shes doing it in the name of medicine. According to her doctor nicholas which 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 theyre trying to thats what their job is is to make sure theyre treating you in a healthy manner and theyre doing whats best for you and not whats going to bring harm to you. It happens to just your next door neighbor to your uncle missy firefighters here come a city Police Officer to your School Teacher to your you know its a its not a its not a disease that is specific it could hit anybody. How come they didnt their pain has become a market and the idea of not suffering even likely if you get. That look like fast food anyone can shop for pain killers physical or psychological a pain. Exists for almost any reason. Imagine facing the day with less chronic osteoarthritis pain. Imagine living your life with less chronic low back pain. Imagined with less pain. Amongst the pain killers on prescriptions. Usually prescribed for back aches or headaches 2000000 americans are addicted to these for a reason that most ignore their opium based. Im jason b. Minute and i am the chair of psychiatry at Oklahoma State universitys center for Health Sciences our oath is essentially 1st do no harm and i think that thats one of the biggest problems is that doctors dont realize that by prescribe opioids that they could doing more harm than good and weve seen that in a lot a lot of cases what would they originally prescribe 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 its used for a lot of Different Things these pills hydrocodone. The content. 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 a much more potent. And 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 theres a 13 percent chance that youll be taking those opioids a year later so whether its a few prescriptions or a few pills its a very small amount that it takes to get addicted. To the left a lethal dosage of heroin to the right its equivalent to opium samples. Today 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 whos 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. Good evening a midwest city documentary im homeless tonight 3000000 jobs davis im just reading and listening to the doctor raising as many times you can stuff and he. Was very happy she got a rest question on t. V. Oh very happy that it went on there for it was sad because this is for 3 daughters i mean did she harm i didnt know any internet 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 burdened family hiding in the secret and shame with addiction. Shes headed for back surgeries dr nichols was lizas 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 doesnt work you know you used to take one pain you know and now you have instate 2 or 3 pain pills because the pain is so bad. So it just increase and its just a vicious cycle because you know youve got to have the medicine but you know you dont want to have to take that much medicine but you cant i could work and do my job if i didnt have as. Much as lisa had her own addiction what she didnt 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. Night 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 chelseas medical but she could talk to me about chelseas diabetes but she wouldnt talk to me about. The medication issues i did trust her maybe money feeder too or. Maybe just that the love of money maybe did that to her because i know that when she chose to be a doctor i would bet on it as she chose to want to help people. The world is driven by a dream shaped by frank person of those. Who dares thinks. We dare to ask. 54 jets and more than 1300 military personnel are headed to heal some air force base in alaska where is that to say come on ill show you whats the reason for any type of enhanced u. S. Military presence in this area at rush up. What is it suddenly about the South China Sea that makes it so that it 11000000000 barrels of oil. Take a look at this map who really owns what kind of says no it belongs to us india says no we claim that that belongs to us both of these countries have Nuclear Weapons capabilities there is reason for concern so thats why were going to drill down on this story for you today right here on the news with rick sanchez where you know as we always like to say we do believe by golly its time to do news again. 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 shes got a really sweet heart my names tommy adler im 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 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. Newsgroup troubled people these patients were abusing the things that they had access to. It wasnt 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 heres a pill her heres a pill tell this function heres a pill all of those things are right there at a doctors head pain is good pain or mines is that were alive. He went to the center as a patient since then hes 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. Im good cool cool man are you feeling. Us take. This. All right ron. Or did your mom in here and will did will get everything started. Hot after you guys. Are all. Has been to college and hes 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. And this is the 1st treatment on right all right are you feeling very emotional. The motion of everybody shes waiting for her boy to come back. Its going to take kalb our 30 days for you to really begin to see a change. So is live and man theres only 3 ways out of this which is get sober which is what i pray for you on the 2nd one is this prison if youre lucky 3rd one is. The barry. I dont know how else to say it but im right and i cant do that said humor as. Our own so much that i would rather not see. Them who are or at this moment i dont know. Really will be on the view who are who. Are all good here. Kyle has 90 days to learn to live without opioids. How it feels toward my body is a is a lot. Like thought process its slow. For just about a lot of pain or in the. South of motions and me its just i cant keep my emotions in one place and you know the top of. Her i just arent so good. For our friends and for all of us for us and. After that. We in my friends kind of stuck together in. 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 thats how i wanted something it was just blocking out that pain. And we feel good it made me forget it. Actually helped me out with a lot of things depend on it. I was that was my girl you know that was well loved and then. Just this last year like to me tell me about things of loss for family and that wasnt enough that wasnt enough to write or change. Mentally in my head by now ive gotten close to suicide and. You know these pills are creating monsters and i dont 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. Hes 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. In order to prove that he and his team have been investigating for more than a year. As my name is regina whitten im an attorney here in Oklahoma City and my mind is model burrage 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 were 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 field because of the loss of productivity of taxpaying citizens costs the state money but im 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 for this struggle is a personal one. Partner has been involved in the opioid addiction the opioid crosses 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 and because of the epidemic. Were going to talk to Incoming Freshman athletes at the university of oklahoma im going to tell a. Story about my son brandon. That the power of addiction and how dangerous it is and maybe. Save somebodys life. 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 its hard yes 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 rand is not here today and ill 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. He ended up playing on the National ChampionshipFootball 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 its not that easy i found out its like telling a diabetic to use more willpower and stop needing insulin you cant do that and thats crazy. I never told him about addiction i never warned him. And so now i i have survivor guilt now but im 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 is schools it gets so quiet you could hear a pin drop and theyre not really interested in me theyre interested in brandon they i show pictures of him he was one of them hes 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. Theyre essentially heroin pills most people dont know that but these opioids are essentially the same as her were and thats the key telling patients that theyre not addictive thats the killer literally thank you guys for being a good audience and im hoping some of the information ive shared with you today i might help you in a good way. Reggie son never managed to quit. There is someone responsible for his misery. Pharmaceutical. We go to work so you straight home. Know whats a clip of she will be no use to you. But the way its always at the because it was a. Moment in the late. Like not so. Immediate. Today they can put us in the mood at the. Smithsonians national t. V. If the capital. City they say yes. Yes. And in the 1996 something happened different a Company CalledPurdue Pharmaceuticals came out with a drug called oxycontin and they started a mere and falsely promoted that opioids were rarely addict maybe only one percent of the time could you get addicted to no. That was not true. And it is not true and never was true that was a false statement and the other companies jumped on the bandwagon of making money and the false lies spread and the false marketing spread that they are guilty of was about these tricks they cause the step i believe that with every fiber of mud being. Back in 1906 the 1st promotional at campaign for an opioid was broadcasted we found it. We doctors were wrong in thinking that opioids cant be used long term they can be and they should be we used to think theyd stop working all the patients would become addicts or theyd be sedated and. These 6 cases show how wrong those views were. In this. Little film the public was assured with certification that. Would show no risk of addiction despite its high concentration in opium to make it believable a real doctor and real patients. That this treatment usually reserved for patients in the terminal phase of cancer can be used without. Pain. And enjoy. It really enjoy it must say i have been on this new pain medication i have not missed one day of work and this medication is not turning you into a zombie it has turned me into an active person again. Whereas addiction is the