Federal law enforcement and health officials held a press conference in Cincinnati to announce charges in the Appalachian Regional Prescription Opioid Strike Force takedown operation that began four months ago. Dozens of people were charged in the sting, including thirty-one doctors, seven pharmacists, and eight nurse practitioners, who are said to have taken part in 350,000 prescriptions and over 32 million pills distributed across 11 states.
Attorney General William P. Barr said in a statement, "
The opioid epidemic is the deadliest drug crisis in American history, and Appalachia has suffered the consequences more than perhaps any other region. (oops, now it's a problem!) But the Department of Justice is doing its part to help end this crisis. One of the Department's most promising new initiatives is the Criminal Division's Appalachian Regional Prescription Opioid Strike Force (ARPO), which began its work in December."
Among those charges are a Dayton, Ohio pharmacy that prescribed over 1.75 million opioid pills between October 2015 and October 2017 and a Tennessee doctor that allegedly prescribed approximately 4.2 million opioid pills.
A Tennessee nurse practitioner named Jeffrey Young who called himself 'Rock Doc' and once piloted a reality show about his Jackson clinic was also arrested. Young, 43, is accused of prescribing about 1.4 million addictive pills and 1,500 fentanyl patches over a span of about three years. The indictment also states that Young accepted sex or "notoriety" for his "Rock Doc" brand as payment for the drugs.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet rock doc:
