Robbie,
These were pill mills. They were storefronts opened by people like you and me who hired 70 year old doctors that couldn't really practice anymore to write prescriptions for whatever people wanted. They only took cash and most dispensed the pills from the office. You could walk in looking perfectly fine and walk out with 120 oxycontin, 120 xanax, 60 muscle relaxers and anything else you wanted. Sure, you had to have an MRI, but they'd send you to a mobile MRI behind a strip club that they also had their hands in... meaning the MRI report would show whatever it needed to.
They were drug dealers, plain and simple. The doctors they hired were at the end of their careers and would write prescriptions for cash.
The fact that most of these people are pleaing out shows they knew exactly what they were doing.
You're not supposed to have lines out the door at your doctors office and you shouldn't have to bribe the receptionist with $40 to be seen that day, which is exactly what happened with these.
At one point Florida was responsible for 90% of all pain prescriptions. Yeah, we have a lot of senior citizens, but not enough to justify 90% of nationwide prescriptions.
The OD's and deaths started piling up, people started coming from other states and after many years the DEA and state authorities finally stepped in.
I go to a pain management doctor. The funny thing is the majority of his practice is now prescribing suboxone to all of the not sick people who got cut off. You walk into the waiting room and it's a bunch of 20 year olds that are fine.
All the hoops I have to go through just to get the same prescriptions I've been getting for like six years are ridiculous. CT scans, blood work, drug tests, etc. just so he can cover his own ass and have good documentation. He feels just as punished as I do.
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