Hank Scorpio wrote:
rogers park bryan wrote:
Right, no one is denying that it gets abused.
But you said "It probably exists"
No, it definitely exists.
Yeah, I said that. For sure bad wording on my part. I didnt want to imply I think it doesnt exist, just in lower occurances than people would have you believe.
Read about the pill mills in Florida.
Invasion of the Pill Mills in South Florida
By Thomas R. Collins / Fort Lauderdale Tuesday, Apr. 13, 2010
It's only 8:45 a.m., but the storefront is already busy. Men and women in jeans, baseball hats and leather jackets keep the tinted door swinging open and closed. But this is not a retail outlet. It's a pain-management clinic. The people have come for pills.
The waiting room at Broward Pain Clinic is swarming. A woman begs a receptionist, "There's no way he can squeeze me in?" "We're packed," the receptionist explains. "Packed, packed, packed."
There are more of these pain clinics here in Broward County than there are McDonald's restaurants: 115 so-called pill mills, vs. about 70 of the burger franchises. And that profusion contributes to one big problem: there is no tracking system to prevent patients from getting multiple pill prescriptions at once and immediately, because the clinics hand out the pills rather than making people go to a pharmacy. The business card of the Broward Pain Clinic announces, "Dispensing on Site!" — a service that's also trumpeted by dozens of other clinics. Because of that, cocaine is no longer king in South Florida, as it was during the Miami Vice era. Prescription oxycodone now reigns supreme. (See pictures of America's cannabis culture.)
The nation's top 25 oxycodone-dispensing doctors were all in Florida in the first half of 2008; 18 of them were in Broward County, according to a Broward County state attorney grand-jury report. In South Florida overall, there were 176 pill mills, up from 66 just 14 months before. This has contributed to tourism — pill-shopping trips to the Sunshine State from Tennessee and Kentucky, where authorities have cracked down hard on similar clinics, seem to be as common as Disney vacations nowadays. In the parking lot of the Broward Pain Clinic, there are just as many license plates from Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky as there are from Florida.
The rest of the article is here:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1981582,00.html