Pill Mill

Pill Mill PDF Author: Joel Canfield
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781530110988
Category : Drug traffic
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
For 5 years, Christian Valdes was at the center of the biggest drug operation in America. It was an operation that became internationally notorious, insanely violent and nonstop freaky. It made its kingpins millions and millions of dollars, and it made Valdes as much money as he could possibly make in a day -- because there were endless numbers of people lining up for what he had the power to give them. Those people were willing to do just about anything to get it. With the men, that generally meant money. With the women, that meant money - and almost any kind of sexual arrangement Valdes proposed. And the interesting part about this operation? It was completely legal. From 2000 to 2009, Florida's incredibly lax prescription drug laws fueled a huge spike in so-called pain management clinics, especially in the Fort Lauderdale-Miami area. CNN and other national news media outlets tagged these clinics as "Pill Mills" -- and with good reason. When Valdes managed them, they gave out heavy-hitter drugs like Xanax, Percocet, Oxycontin, Roxicodone and Methadone just like they were candy. And because the Sunshine State kept everybody in the dark about who was prescribing what, somebody could easily go into one clinic and get some Oxy and then head over to a different clinic for some more a few minutes later. Valdes helped a whole lot of people do just that - including a posse of strippers he sponsored - because he was running his own operation within the operation. Pill Mill is his no-holds-barred memoir of life in the center of the action as the whole pain clinic scam spiraled out of control. In this book, you'll hear this full-blooded Cuban's whole story - from the rough-and-tumble childhood and high school years that shaped him; to how he started dealing weed and eventually began growing it himself; to how he quickly learned how to work the pill mill scam and how he recruited friends and family to help him make the most money in the fastest amount possible; to how Hurricane Wilma almost put him behind bars for who knows how many years. Valdes also reveals the major players behind the pill mill scandals, talks about his frightening and sometimes hilarious conflicts with psychotic junkie patients and takes the reader inside one of the most notorious "Jungle Houses" of the time - a sad excuse for a clinic where junkies zoned out at a backyard barbeque, dozens of drug deals went down, and the owner, the infamous "Pill Mill" Vinny, sat behind a desk with over 200 grand in cash piled on top of it. For the first time, this book offers an insider's look at what happened when Florida became ground zero for pain pill abuse. At one point, the country's top 50 prescription pain pill sellers were ALL in Florida - and 33 of those 50 were in Broward County, where I got involved in the racket. There were more than 150 storefront pain clinics in Broward at the height of the madness. This is a story that has yet to be told in movies, TV shows or even in another book. This is a story that could only happen in South Florida. Just like Christian Valdes is a guy you would only find in South Florida.

Pill Mill

Pill Mill PDF Author: Joel Canfield
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781530110988
Category : Drug traffic
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Get Book Here

Book Description
For 5 years, Christian Valdes was at the center of the biggest drug operation in America. It was an operation that became internationally notorious, insanely violent and nonstop freaky. It made its kingpins millions and millions of dollars, and it made Valdes as much money as he could possibly make in a day -- because there were endless numbers of people lining up for what he had the power to give them. Those people were willing to do just about anything to get it. With the men, that generally meant money. With the women, that meant money - and almost any kind of sexual arrangement Valdes proposed. And the interesting part about this operation? It was completely legal. From 2000 to 2009, Florida's incredibly lax prescription drug laws fueled a huge spike in so-called pain management clinics, especially in the Fort Lauderdale-Miami area. CNN and other national news media outlets tagged these clinics as "Pill Mills" -- and with good reason. When Valdes managed them, they gave out heavy-hitter drugs like Xanax, Percocet, Oxycontin, Roxicodone and Methadone just like they were candy. And because the Sunshine State kept everybody in the dark about who was prescribing what, somebody could easily go into one clinic and get some Oxy and then head over to a different clinic for some more a few minutes later. Valdes helped a whole lot of people do just that - including a posse of strippers he sponsored - because he was running his own operation within the operation. Pill Mill is his no-holds-barred memoir of life in the center of the action as the whole pain clinic scam spiraled out of control. In this book, you'll hear this full-blooded Cuban's whole story - from the rough-and-tumble childhood and high school years that shaped him; to how he started dealing weed and eventually began growing it himself; to how he quickly learned how to work the pill mill scam and how he recruited friends and family to help him make the most money in the fastest amount possible; to how Hurricane Wilma almost put him behind bars for who knows how many years. Valdes also reveals the major players behind the pill mill scandals, talks about his frightening and sometimes hilarious conflicts with psychotic junkie patients and takes the reader inside one of the most notorious "Jungle Houses" of the time - a sad excuse for a clinic where junkies zoned out at a backyard barbeque, dozens of drug deals went down, and the owner, the infamous "Pill Mill" Vinny, sat behind a desk with over 200 grand in cash piled on top of it. For the first time, this book offers an insider's look at what happened when Florida became ground zero for pain pill abuse. At one point, the country's top 50 prescription pain pill sellers were ALL in Florida - and 33 of those 50 were in Broward County, where I got involved in the racket. There were more than 150 storefront pain clinics in Broward at the height of the madness. This is a story that has yet to be told in movies, TV shows or even in another book. This is a story that could only happen in South Florida. Just like Christian Valdes is a guy you would only find in South Florida.

Dreamland (YA edition)

Dreamland (YA edition) PDF Author: Sam Quinones
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1547601418
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
As an adult book, Sam Quinones's Dreamland took the world by storm, winning the NBCC Award for General Nonfiction and hitting at least a dozen Best Book of the Year lists. Now, adapted for the first time for a young adult audience, this compelling reporting explains the roots of the current opiate crisis. In 1929, in the blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio, a company built a swimming pool the size of a football field; named Dreamland, it became the vital center of the community. Now, addiction has devastated Portsmouth, as it has hundreds of small rural towns and suburbs across America. How that happened is the riveting story of Dreamland. Quinones explains how the rise of the prescription drug OxyContin, a miraculous and extremely addictive painkiller pushed by pharmaceutical companies, paralleled the massive influx of black tar heroin--cheap, potent, and originating from one small county on Mexico's west coast, independent of any drug cartel. Introducing a memorable cast of characters--pharmaceutical pioneers, young Mexican entrepreneurs, narcotics investigators, survivors, teens, and parents--Dreamland is a revelatory account of the massive threat facing America and its heartland.

American Pain

American Pain PDF Author: John Temple
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493019597
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
* Finalist for the Edgar® Award in Best Fact Crime * New York Post, “The Post’s Favorite Books of 2015” * Suspense Magazine’s “Best True Crime Books of 2015” * Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Book of the Year in True Crime * Publishers Weekly, Big Indie Book of Fall 2015 The king of the Florida pill mills was American Pain, a mega-clinic expressly created to serve addicts posing as patients. From a fortress-like former bank building, American Pain’s doctors distributed massive quantities of oxycodone to hundreds of customers a day, mostly traffickers and addicts who came by the vanload. Inked muscle-heads ran the clinic’s security. Former strippers operated the pharmacy, counting out pills and stashing cash in garbage bags. Under their lab coats, the doctors carried guns—and it was all legal… sort of. American Pain was the brainchild of Chris George, a 27-year-old convicted drug felon. The son of a South Florida home builder, Chris George grew up in ultra-rich Wellington, where Bill Gates, Springsteen, and Madonna kept houses. Thick-necked from weightlifting, he and his twin brother hung out with mobsters, invested in strip clubs, brawled with cops, and grinned for their mug shots. After the housing market stalled, a local doctor clued in the brothers to the burgeoning underground market for lightly regulated prescription painkillers. In Florida, pain clinics could dispense the meds, and no one tracked the patients. Seizing the opportunity, Chris George teamed up with the doctor, and word got out. Just two years later Chris had raked in $40 million, and 90 percent of the pills his doctors prescribed flowed north to feed the rest of the country’s insatiable narcotics addiction. Meanwhile, hundreds more pain clinics in the mold of American Pain had popped up in the Sunshine State, creating a gigantic new drug industry. American Pain chronicles the rise and fall of this game-changing pill mill, and how it helped tip the nation into its current opioid crisis, the deadliest drug epidemic in American history. The narrative swings back and forth between Florida and Kentucky, and is populated by a gaudy and diverse cast of characters. This includes the incongruous band of wealthy bad boys, thugs and esteemed physicians who built American Pain, as well as penniless Kentucky clans who transformed themselves into painkiller trafficking rings. It includes addicts whose lives were devastated by American Pain’s drugs, and the federal agents and grieving mothers who labored for years to bring the clinic’s crew to justice.

Pain Management and the Opioid Epidemic

Pain Management and the Opioid Epidemic PDF Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309459575
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 483

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Book Description
Drug overdose, driven largely by overdose related to the use of opioids, is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. The ongoing opioid crisis lies at the intersection of two public health challenges: reducing the burden of suffering from pain and containing the rising toll of the harms that can arise from the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain and opioid use disorder both represent complex human conditions affecting millions of Americans and causing untold disability and loss of function. In the context of the growing opioid problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan in early 2016. As part of this plan, the FDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to update the state of the science on pain research, care, and education and to identify actions the FDA and others can take to respond to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on informing FDA's development of a formal method for incorporating individual and societal considerations into its risk-benefit framework for opioid approval and monitoring.

American Overdose

American Overdose PDF Author: Chris McGreal
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541773772
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
A comprehensive portrait of a uniquely American epidemic -- devastating in its findings and damning in its conclusions The opioid epidemic has been described as "one of the greatest mistakes of modern medicine." But calling it a mistake is a generous rewriting of the history of greed, corruption, and indifference that pushed the US into consuming more than 80 percent of the world's opioid painkillers. Journeying through lives and communities wrecked by the epidemic, Chris McGreal reveals not only how Big Pharma hooked Americans on powerfully addictive drugs, but the corrupting of medicine and public institutions that let the opioid makers get away with it. The starting point for McGreal's deeply reported investigation is the miners promised that opioid painkillers would restore their wrecked bodies, but who became targets of "drug dealers in white coats." A few heroic physicians warned of impending disaster. But American Overdose exposes the powerful forces they were up against, including the pharmaceutical industry's coopting of the Food and Drug Administration and Congress in the drive to push painkillers -- resulting in the resurgence of heroin cartels in the American heartland. McGreal tells the story, in terms both broad and intimate, of people hit by a catastrophe they never saw coming. Years in the making, its ruinous consequences will stretch years into the future.

Pill Mills, Medicaid Fraud, and the Diversion of Pharmaceuticals

Pill Mills, Medicaid Fraud, and the Diversion of Pharmaceuticals PDF Author: United States. Congress. House. Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
Distributed to some depository libraries in microfiche.

Bad Medicine

Bad Medicine PDF Author: Charlotte Bismuth
Publisher: Atria/One Signal Publishers
ISBN: 1982116420
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
“Charlotte Bismuth gives us a bold and cinematic true crime story about her work at the intersection of medicine and greed. Bad Medicine is a gripping memoir that toggles deftly between the personal and prosecutorial.” —Beth Macy, New York Times bestselling author of Dopesick “Bismuth has written a brilliant account of prosecuting a doctor who became a drug dealer in a white coat. She is haunted by the voices of the dead and listening closely to the voices of the living.” —Nan Goldin, artist, activist, and founder of P.A.I.N. “Bad Medicine is a taut exploration of America’s deadly battle with opioid addiction—an unnerving and inspirational firecracker of a book.” —Karen Abbott, New York Times bestselling author of The Ghosts of Eden Park For fans of Dopesick and Bad Blood, the shocking story of New York’s most infamous pill-pushing doctor, written by the prosecutor who brought him down. In 2010, a brave whistleblower alerted the police to Dr. Stan Li’s corrupt pain management clinic in Queens, New York. Li spent years supplying more than seventy patients a day with oxycodone and Xanax, trading prescriptions for cash. Emergency room doctors, psychiatrists, and desperate family members warned him that his patients were at risk of death but he would not stop. In Bad Medicine, former prosecutor Charlotte Bismuth meticulously recounts the jaw dropping details of this criminal case that would span four years, culminating in a landmark trial. As a new assistant district attorney and single mother, Bismuth worked tirelessly with her team to bring Dr. Li to justice. Bad Medicine is a chilling story of corruption and greed and an important look at the role individual doctors play in America’s opioid epidemic.

Empire of Pain

Empire of Pain PDF Author: Patrick Radden Keefe
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 038554569X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 574

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin. From the prize-winning and bestselling author of Say Nothing. "A real-life version of the HBO series Succession with a lethal sting in its tail…a masterful work of narrative reportage.” – Laura Miller, Slate The history of the Sackler dynasty is rife with drama—baroque personal lives; bitter disputes over estates; fistfights in boardrooms; glittering art collections; Machiavellian courtroom maneuvers; and the calculated use of money to burnish reputations and crush the less powerful. The Sackler name has adorned the walls of many storied institutions—Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, but the source of the family fortune was vague—until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing a blockbuster painkiller that was the catalyst for the opioid crisis. Empire of Pain is the saga of three generations of a single family and the mark they would leave on the world, a tale that moves from the bustling streets of early twentieth-century Brooklyn to the seaside palaces of Greenwich, Connecticut, and Cap d’Antibes to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. It follows the family’s early success with Valium to the much more potent OxyContin, marketed with a ruthless technique of co-opting doctors, influencing the FDA, downplaying the drug’s addictiveness. Empire of Pain chronicles the multiple investigations of the Sacklers and their company, and the scorched-earth legal tactics that the family has used to evade accountability. A masterpiece of narrative reporting, Empire of Pain is a ferociously compelling portrait of America’s second Gilded Age, a study of impunity among the super-elite and a relentless investigation of the naked greed that built one of the world’s great fortunes.

Phantom Billing, Fake Prescriptions, and the High Cost of Medicine

Phantom Billing, Fake Prescriptions, and the High Cost of Medicine PDF Author: Terry L. Leap
Publisher: Ilr Press
ISBN: 9780801449796
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Confronting medical fraud and its economic, psychological, and social costs.

Death in Mud Lick

Death in Mud Lick PDF Author: Eric Eyre
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 198210533X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
A New York Times Critics’ Top Ten Book of the Year * 2021 Edgar Award Winner Best Fact Crime * A Lit Hub Best Book of The Year From a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter at the Charleston Gazette-Mail, a “powerful,” (The New York Times) urgent, and heartbreaking account of the corporate greed that pumped millions of pain pills into small Appalachian towns, decimating communities. In a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, 12 million opioid pain pills were distributed in just three years to a town with a population of 382 people. One woman, after losing her brother to overdose, was desperate for justice. Debbie Preece’s fight for accountability for her brother’s death took her well beyond the Sav-Rite Pharmacy in coal country, ultimately leading to three of the biggest drug wholesalers in the country. She was joined by a crusading lawyer and by local journalist, Eric Eyre, who uncovered a massive opioid pill-dumping scandal that shook the foundation of America’s largest drug companies—and won him a Pulitzer Prize. Part Erin Brockovich, part Spotlight, Death in Mud Lick details the clandestine meetings with whistleblowers; a court fight to unseal filings that the drug distributors tried to keep hidden, a push to secure the DEA pill-shipment data, and the fallout after Eyre’s local paper, the Gazette-Mail, the smallest newspaper ever to win a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, broke the story. Eyre follows the opioid shipments into individual counties, pharmacies, and homes in West Virginia and explains how thousands of Appalachians got hooked on prescription drugs—resulting in the highest overdose rates in the country. But despite the tragedy, there is also hope as citizens banded together to create positive change—and won. “A product of one reporter’s sustained outrage [and] a searing spotlight on the scope and human cost of corruption and negligence” (The Washington Post) Eric Eyre’s intimate portrayal of a national public health crisis illuminates the shocking pattern of corporate greed and its repercussions for the citizens of West Virginia—and the nation—to this day.