Time Period 10/1/2008 through 3/31/2009 (In Grams)
As you can see, Scioto County recently ranked number 10 in the top 100 oxycodone dispensers in the United States. Where do we go from here? I believe the answer to this question lies buried in the piles of filthy drug money generated by this bloodthirsty business. It's obvious that Scioto County is a mecca for prescription drug abusers - both for those greedily benefiting from the huge profits of sales and for those paying for these poisonous chemicals that essentially take their lives, gut their families, and flood our meager addiction facilities.
Believe me, now that our local Facebook group has reached nearly 2,800 members, each day, I hear new horror stories about crippling drug experiences from our members. If all of us merely realized the tremendous toll these drug dependencies and deaths have taken on our community, we would demand that Rx drug abuse became our first priority. Scioto County is experiencing a HEALTH EPIDEMIC.
So much of the misery in the county is directly tied to prescription drug abuse -- murder, theft, poverty, child abuse, spousal abuse, malnutrition, lost work time, Hepatitis C, traffic accidents, sexually transmitted diseases... the list goes on and on. 90% of all crime in the county is drug related. 85% of substance abuse treatment requests here are for opiate addiction, a threefold increase in just the past three years.
HOW ARE NINE "PAIN CLINICS" OPERATING LAWFULLY IN SCIOTO COUNTY?
1. An independent person with no medical background files for a LLC with the Secretary of State (costs $100). This is often a convicted felon or person with a criminal background, often a convicted drug trafficker.
2. The "Pain Clinic" is set up anywhere they can rent, and, as long as they accept cash only, they will not be subject to building or any sanitary compliance regulations by HHS, WC, or private insurance. They will not be subject to ADA compliance or codes. They do not fall under the Department of Health as they are not listed as a "Medical Facility" under ORC.
3. The Clinic Owner will hire a physician from a "locum tenens" agency. Physicians often end up working for a "temp service" due to past licensing issues or disciplines by a state medical board. The hired physician can be from anywhere, as all he has to do is apply for an Ohio license to practice here. He could even have lost his license in another state for trafficking or substance abuse. The clinic owner will rent a place for the physician, who will stay during business hours and fly home for the weekends or whatever. Sometimes, the clinic owner will rotate several physicians at the clinic to confuse law enforcement, the DEA, or the coroner.
4. The clinic owner and the physician will conspire to run a "cash only" business, advertising as a "Pain Clinic." There is no Ohio law that requires a specialty in pain managment. (But, of course, ANY licensed physician can treat pain, so there is really no need for a special clinic, EXCEPT TO SELL NARCOTICS.
5. The clinic will employ spouses and relatives and typically charge $200 a monthly visit. 75-100 clients a day is a cash net of $15,000 to $20,000 a day. Cash - so they don't have to report truthfully on income taxes.
6. Local pharmacists will usually not honor their prescriptions, so the physician and clinic owner conspire to find a pharmacist that will "work with" them, usually for cash and lots of business. Often, this pharmacy is far away.
7. The clinic will often then apply under the physician's name using the DEA # to the Pharmacy Board to be a "Terminal Distributer of Dangerous Drugs," enabling them to start an in-house pharmacy with the physician acting as the pharmacist (legal in Ohio only if the clinic is owned by the physician). So BADLY (1) The pharmacist is taken out of safeguard loop and ALL profit will go to the physician/clinic owner, (2) The physician/clinic owner will NOT be subject to inspection or discipline by the Board of Pharmacy, and (3) The physician/clinic owner WILL NOT be required to report prescription distribution in OARxRS as a pharmacist would, so they go completely off the radar.
8. Once they open the in-house pharmacy, the "Pain Clinic" profits triple for each client.
9. Once these steps are accomplished, the "Pain Clinic" is only regulated by the State Medical Board, who only has authority over the physician, not the clinic, the setting, or the clinic owner. As long as the physician is working within the Pain Management Guidelines, he is difficult to discipline, sanction or prosecute.
10. . The Policies on the Treatment of Intractable Pain (written in 1997) basically contain language that says that treatment is up to the PHYSICIAN'S OWN DISCRETION, AND TREATING PAIN WITH NARCOTICS (OPIATES) ONLY IN-ITSELF IS NOT A PUNISHABLE OFFENSE.
11. OARxRS in Ohio is voluntary, not mandatory. It is a tool but CANNOT IN ITSELF BE USED AS EVIDENCE IN COURT, HARD COPIES WILL BE REQUIRED.
YOU MUST TAKE ACTION NOW
At this point, the residents of Scioto County must face a crucial decision. Are we going to wait and wait until we essentially dwindle into an area of holocaust, or are we going to actively change the laws, add new enforcement, prosecute the criminals, and provide new treatment facilities? Folks, the status quo is NOT GETTING IT DONE.
Excuses flow like water from all our mouths, but no excuse permits a bystander to watch a neighbor die or watch a criminal make millions. The drain is too much and the cause is too great for a few to react while the rest watch. In order to have far-reaching effects, total cooperation is essential. We must work together, young and old, to stop this insanity. So much pain is being inflicted that Scioto County has become infamous nationwide for its Rx drug abuse.
Who would want pill mills to stain their native soil? Every day is a day that more people die and become lifelong addicts. Talk to the parents, spouses, friends of those who know -- prescription abuse will likely destroy most it touches. This addiction services no one but the undertaker. Demand it stop today, or are we content to say, "It won't affect my family" or "One person can't help do anything to stop it."
14 comments:
How do we change the laws?
What a statistic.....!......We need a "swarm" of police teams and tototally "lock down" this county!
Anonymous - The first Executive Order has been made by Governor Strickland. Now a state task force is ironing out language - maybe 5 or 6 weeks before the first step - in the meantime, corpses arrive at the morgue.
Amy - Activism is needed NOW. Lack of money and personnel means the local enforcement couldn't lock down one small neighborhood. Write the congressmen, President for funds to save Appalachia.
the most important thing that noone has commented on is the atomic plant that has been hiding there waste in there grounds where it is going into the water supply and causing different diseases in scioto county,cancer,heart problems,lung problems just to name a few,the truth is the a plant is killing people off slowly every day.what are the law doing about that,just letting them keep hiding the killer chemicals into the grounds and the atmosphere.
i agree to the cash operations being checked out and make sure they are legit on describiting medication to the people in need of it only.i agree with the comment above about the atomic plant that the goverment is keeping quiet and not doing anything about the dangerous chemicals being hidden in the grounds of the a plant and is leaking into the water supply and the atmosphere causing so many illnesses that is killing people off slowly every day of cancer,heart problems,breathing problems where the people of scioto county and joining countys are being abused by these chemicals that are hidden but you dont here nothing about,just like the movie aron brokavich where the waste was being dumped in the river supply causing serious deseases and killing innocent people.the doctor prescribes the medication to the people who need it and tells them to take as noted on the bottle by swallowing by mouth only.but some cases people that dont need the medication is snorting up there nose,or shooting it up and overdosing thereselves that way,that is not what the doctor recomends it is the people that are not in pain that are doing this and getting a high or buzz from it sometimes overdosing.that is not the doctors fault.when a person needs pain medication and takes it the way it is supposed to be taken only helps them survive the day with settleing down some of there pain and when a person in pain needs the medication they dont get any kind of buzz at all i know for myself because i live in misserable pain every day if you people stop the doctors from perscribing pain medication to those in need you are gonna harm millions of people,stop and think what you are doing because you have no idea how a person in pain lives.wouldnt you rather clean up the aplant issue that is the true killer in scioto county and the people on meth and snorting cocain rather than attacting legal prescription medication.just give that a long thought
Dear Anonymous, We are certainly not in favor of depriving those in legitimate pain from their medications. We are trying to stop the needless death of those who OD because these prescriptions are acquired and used recklessly. The destruction factor for our communities due to this is at epidemic levels.
but what you really dont know is most of those people that have drug problems ,its not prescription type its meth and cocain and crack are the most used drugs in scioto county,thats where the people should put all efforts out to try and help those who are hooked on them you guys think its pain medication but the truth is its what i said meth,cocain,crack that is the real problem not just in scioto county but everywhere.you see frank when you start roomers about pain medication being bad the people that have never been in any kind of major pain beleive those type of comments and so called church people who beleive those comments and it is so far from the truth,most of the so called christians are really hipacrits and are like in a cult camp they think they do no wrong but they got to have there cigerettes which is addictive and most of them are on pain medication thereself or nerve pills whatever,dont get me wrong i beleive that if people dont need the medication then they shouldnt be getyting them,if the doctor is giving it to people that dont need meds then yes that is wrong but the most deadly harmful drugs are meth,cocain,and crack.and the law lets there so called informents go free if they give up names that they get there drugs from should be a felony to the officers who are doing this.they are letting the real druggys go on and keep useing thats what makes me sick to my stomach wouldnt you agree
You bible thumpers need to mind your own business. People have been using drugs for thousands of years. The drug prohibition causes more problems than drugs ever could.
Legalize it!
i dont know why the yankeys are picking on scioto county when they need to worry about all the killings and robberys going on in the northern area
Were it not Ohio one would think that these drug dealing doctors were operating out of a tarpaper shack in some third-world country. Yet they ply their trade with impunity, seemingly beyond the reach of the law. And where does the American Medical Association stand on this? In reality and beyond the fuzzy platitudes and high sounding moralizing, the A.M.A has an agenda that supplants and supersedes the Hippocratic Oath, and that agenda first and foremost is to protect its own and make money. Given the ethical standards these doctors operate under the Hypocrites Oath rather than the Hippocratic Oath would seem more apropos.
this posting is a lie,the deaths are not from prescribed medicine they are for meth,cocain heroin and things like that frank you started something where a person that doesnt have insurance that might have cancer cant get any help for the pain there in,you are pathetic
the whole thing is a lie there are not 239,000 people in scioto county for starters to be in 10th place retard
This is distribution - retard anonymous.
As a person with many years in the field, I believe all medications containing oxycodone, (percocet, roxicodone, oxycontin) should have to be monitored at a federal level. Meaning all scripts including these drugs should be tracked as to who wrote it and who received it. Persons who use pain clinics aren't usually in pain, and it usually isn't the only pain clinic they go to. There should be a national database so that a person cannot have five physicians all prescribing the same drug filled at different pharmacies. Of course, addicts always find a way. It is so easy right now it is sickening.
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