I refuse to be on the side of people who want to take up going to kill each other i want to stay and work intellectual shore where you stand and i think for the sheets theyre hold up no to violence no to blood shed yes to think. Less be more like. A new gold rush is underway and gonna thousands of ill equipped workers are flocking to the gold fields hoping to strike it rich heres a good way out of this that you know by those that work children are torn between gold. A family was very poor i thought i was doing my best to get back to school which side will have the strongest appeal. Wow not walk tough street. Campaign. Wow not walk tough street. I can see. The. Stretch jobs she expects 60 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. For the 1st time in the United States a doctor will be sued by the state for 2nd degree murder for over prescribing opioids hears 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 theres 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 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. Why the hard to the Oil Production were right on the edge of were cowboys are the and 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 confines have changed before i was having people from more the Poverty Level people all walks of life i have lawyers i have doctors children that become addicted to the opiates and the odds 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. Thats enough if anything. This Oklahoma City lawyer has never seen a case like this and you 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 thats 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 its never quite the same and then they get some other treatment anyhow and 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 dose 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 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 theyre trained and 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 miltie firefighters here call a city Police Officer to your School Teacher 2 year you know its its not a its 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 if you get in drug stores that look like fast food anyone can shop for pain killers physical or psychological a pain killer 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. Im jason be 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 of a lot of cases what with the originally prescribed for well historically the uses been for what we call cancer pain cancer does a lot of horrible things are body and can cause a lot of pain nowadays its used for a lot of Different Things these pills. Are found to know 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 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 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 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. 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 was 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 then i said oh good evening the midwest city ducky dr im homeless tonight 3000000 jobs davis im just reading and listening to the jury just raising as many times you can stuff and he. Was very happy she got to rest in our washington studios very happy that there were no more instead because this is all 3 doctors i mean did she harm i didnt 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 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 pill. You know and now youre having to take 2 or 3 pain pills because the pain is so bad. So it just increased 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 medicine. 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. I did trust or maybe money paid if you were. Made is that the love the money maybe get that its worth because i know that when she chose to be a doctor i would bet on it that she chose to want to help people. And we met dr nichols almost a year ago 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 or 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 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 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 a. The 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. We are a country of fast food quick fixes now now now feel bad heres a pill her heres a pill. Dysfunction heres a pill all of those things are right there at a doctors pay pay is good painter minds 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 i. Saw brother and you know. Im good well cool man are you feeling. Us stay clean. Are you ready alright ran. Or did your mom in here and well good well get everything started. Right 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. Rights opiates heroin and oxycontin anything else you know ok and this is the 1st treatment on right all right are you feeling very emotional i adjure. The motion of everybody shes waiting for her boy to come back. Its going to take about 30 days for you to really begin to see a change. This is life and death man theres 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 youre lucky. 31 is needed barry. I dont know how else to say it but on them right and i cant do the similar as. Our own so much rather not see how. Them who are more at this moment i dont know. If you even be on the view i want to. Crawl through to you dear. Kyle has 90 days to learn to live without opioids. How it feels to learn like my body is a a lot of. My thought process its slow. For just about all of it and there in the down a lot of. Sad emotions in me is just i cant keep my emotions in one place and you know its all. Her i just dont feel good. Or are friends and its 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 i. Fighting back tears every day i think its hard to hide things and it was just blocking out that pain. And it made me feel good it made me forget it it 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 last for family and that wasnt enough that wasnt enough to write or change him mentally in my head by now its 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 fees. In my office while the lawsuit against purdue pharma. 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. 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. He wanted to prove that he and his team have been investigating for more than a year. Yes my name is Regina Whitman the attorney here in Oklahoma City. In my mind this model burrage i am my lawyer in oklahoma. Carol hunter hired my law firm 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 weve this person. 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 and our prisons are over feel 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. Its 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 for this struggle is a personal one. Partner a gene has been involved in the opioid addiction in the opioid crosses ever since the death his son brian 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. Were going to talk to the Incoming Freshman athletes at the university of oklahoma im going to tell on. A story about my son brandon and thats the power of addiction and how dangerous it is and. Maybe. Save somebodys life. I think i got a chance to shake almost everybodys hand when you came in i was trying to figure out what sport you are its 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 ill tell you why later this is me when i was at o. U. And i had this young son also when i had more hair. Was a cute little kid. His plan was to go to college and play football which he did. He ended up playing on a National ChampionshipFootball Team never got in any kind of trouble and the drug 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 its not that easy i found out its like telling a diabetic to use more willpower and stop needing insulin you cant do that 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 to education because i think education is the key to this problem and when i tell this story at 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 we thank you guys for being a good audience and im hoping some of the information i shared with you today. Might help you in a good way. Never managed to quit. There is someone responsible for his misery. Pharmaceutical. Seemed wrong. Just told. Me that hed get to shape out. Become. Engaged with betrayal. Once find themselves the part. Of the phone call been ground. In this president ial election cycle both democrats and republicans claim to be tough on china but does that actually need instead what does the American Public really know about the china. On this edition of the program the attempt to separate this reality. I refuse to be on the side of people who want to take up guns and really. Want to stand intellectuals are always i think theyre all wrong no to violence no to bloodshed yes to think. Less. More like. Theres a world. Of the little more. Of the. Sound of the going. Was almost as if. Most. Of the music is still on the street though both of you so. The point was the use of the book was of course discussion of those with you was a visit with you using with me yes of course the. New gold rush is underway and. Thousands of ill equipped workers are flocking to the gold fields hoping to strike it rich heres the good. As. Those that work children are torn between gold. My family was very poor i thought i was doing my best to get back to school which side will have the strongest appeal. Escalated accusations over the alleged poisoning of opposition activists alexina vile me. An envoy now questions who actually stands to benefit from the follow. The School Incident can raise questions some way you speak. Of news this morning leaders insist they are ready to help thousands of migrants displaced by the destruction of europes largest refugee camp in a fire though many doubt have affected this message of solidarity to immigrants in greece will actually be another day. And from such new daily record of almost 10000. 00 coronavirus cases says the country struggles under