The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and local law enforcement are raiding pain clinics, pharmacies and other facilities in Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana in a four-state crackdown on the abuse of prescription pain drugs.
“Operation Pilluted”
According to a Buloxi, Mississippi GulfLive.com article, “Operation Pilluted” involved both federal and local law enforcement, and upwards of 200 arrests were made across four southern states as part of a nationwide effort to curtail sales and distribution of illegal pharmaceutical drugs.
Pain clinics, pharmacies and other facilities are being raided as part of the aggressive four-state crackdown. The late-May, 2015 busts and arrests are part of an operation by the Drug Enforcement Administration drug diversion unit that spans 15 months. One-thousand agents and officers are reported to be involved in conducting the raids.
“Operation Pilluted” is cited as the “single largest pharmaceutical operation” in the history of the DEA, and its focus is the illegal sale and distribution of prescription painkillers such as hydrocodone and oxcycodone.
Over the past 15 months, there have been 140 people arrested as part of “Operation Pilluted”, and according to an MSNBC report, another 170 more will be arrested before the end of May, 2015.
Doctors and Pharmacies Gone Bad
Suspects in “Operation Pilluted” include doctors and pharmacists.
A Little Rock, Arkansas bust occurred at the KJ Medical Center, with the arrest of one doctor, four staff, and a security guard.
According to Alabama Governor, Robert Bentley, also a physician, the suspected doctors in the prescription drug raids are “an embarrassment to the medical profession”, noting that in choosing to overprescribe narcotics to their patients, they do so with the knowledge “these patients may be or are” abusing the drugs. It is at that point, Bentley says, “they change from being a physician” to being a drug dealer.
In a Biloxi, Mississippi press conference, U.S. Attorney Gregory K. Davis, announced arrests last week at a Waveland medical clinic included a physician, Dr. Steve Morris III.
Keith Brown, DEA Special Agent-in-Charge notes that licensed physicians involved in the crackdown shouldn’t be considered doctors. He emphasized that even though it may say “Dr.” in front of their name—they aren’t doctors. They are drug dealers, he says—and they are not different than drug dealers on the street corner.
Ricky Adam, Hancock County Sheriff, agreed with Brown, saying these doctors “are drug dealers—plain and simple.”
Twenty-two doctors and pharmacists across Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama have been arrested to-date as a result of the “Operation Pilluted” effort.
How Operation Pilluted Rolled-Out
Led by the New Orleans office of the DEA, Operation Pilluted used a combination of intelligence data, local and state law enforcement information, and citizen complaints to hone-in on DEA “registrants”—individuals with federal government authorization to prescribe, dispense and administer a controlled substance; along with others involved in illegally distributing addictive and dangerous controlled substances.
Oxycodone, Hydrocodone and Xanax were amongst the drugs Operation Pilluted found being illegally distributed.
Davis cites 43,982 unintentional drug overdose deaths reported in 2013 in the United States. That translated to one death every 13 minutes. Of those deaths, almost 52 percent were ascribed to prescription drugs; and 71 percent of those were ascribed to opioid overdose.
According to one federal prosecutor in Arkansas, Christopher Thyer, there is enough hydrocodone prescribed in Arkansas every year to provide every man, woman and child in the state with 42 pills. He views the prescription drug problem to be “truly a public health and community problem” as opposed to a crime problem.
While prescription drug overdose-caused deaths declined in 2012 after a climbing for 10 years, an average of 44 people die every day from opiods such as OxyContin, Vicodin and Percocet.