From: logici23x@gmail.com   
      
   The Washington Post    
      
   A doctor prescribed so many painkillers, she’s been charged with murdering   
   her patients, authorities say    
   By Cleve R. Wootson Jr.    
   June 24    
        
   Regan Nichols is charged with five counts of second-degree murder after   
   investigators say she overprescribed powerful opioids to her patients.   
   (Oklahoma County Jail).    
   On Nov.  21, 2012, Sheila Bartels walked out of the Sunshine Medical Center in   
   Oklahoma with a prescription for a "horrifyingly excessive" cocktail of drugs   
   capable of killing her several times over.    
      
   A short time later, she was at a pharmacy, receiving what drug addicts call   
   â€œthe holy trinityâ€� of prescription drugs: the powerful painkiller   
   Hydrocodone, the anti-anxiety medication Xanax and a muscle relaxant known as   
   Soma.   
      
   In total, pharmacists handed her 510 pills that day — all legal, because she   
   had a prescription with the signature of her doctor, Regan Ganoung Nichols,   
   scrawled at the bottom, according to a probable cause affidavit.    
      
   Bartels's lifeless body was found later that day, court documents say. A   
   medical examiner concluded that she died of multiple drug toxicity, another   
   victim of the America's opioid epidemic.    
      
   But investigators say the 55-year-old Bartels was also a victim of Nichols, a   
   pain management doctor who investigators concluded “either didn't know or   
   didn't care what she was doing.â€�    
      
   Nichols is charged with second-degree murder in the death of Bartels and four   
   other patients, some of whom died just days after receiving large   
   prescriptions from the doctor. She was arrested Friday and released from   
   Oklahoma County Jail on $50,000 bail.    
      
   She couldn't be reached for comment on Saturday. A number listed for Sunshine   
   Medical Center was disconnected. Jail officials didn't know whether she had   
   hired an attorney.    
      
   The doctor's arrest is part of a new and growing offensive in America's battle   
   against the abusive use of opioids, which kill an average of 91 people a day,   
   according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.    
      
    Play Video 5:27    
   Users of opioid painkillers often grapple with risking addiction or living   
   with pain    
        
      
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   Respondents who took part in The Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation   
   survey on long-term, opioid painkiller use share their experiences of living   
   with pain (Monica Akhtar, Erin Patrick O'Connor/The Washington Post)    
   Law enforcement agents aren't just going after drug dealers and Mexican   
   cartels — they're also targeting pharmaceutical companies and doctors, who   
   they say are irresponsibly flooding the nation with potent painkillers, and   
   holding them responsible for    
   overdose deaths.    
      
   â€œNichols prescribed patients, who entrusted their well-being to her, a   
   horrifyingly excessive amount of opioid medications,â€� Oklahoma Attorney   
   General Mike Hunter told the Associated Press on Friday as his office   
   announced the doctor's arrest. “   
   Nichols’s blatant disregard for the lives of her patients is u   
   conscionable.â€�    
      
   [‘Drug tourists’ keep overdosing at this library. Here’s how employees   
   are saving their lives.]    
      
   Opioids killed more than 33,000 Americans in 2015, according to the CDC. Since   
   1991, the number of opioid overdose deaths has quadrupled. In 2014, according   
   to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 1.3 million Americans were   
   hospitalized for    
   opioid-related issues.    
      
   And prescription opioids are a primary driver, and prosecutors increasingly   
   have gone to the source to stop abuse. In February 2016, another doctor,   
   Hsiu-Ying “Lisaâ€� Tseng, was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison after   
   three of her patients    
   fatally overdosed, according to the Los Angeles Times.    
      
   Prosecutors said Tseng made millions from overprescribing opioids to   
   drug-addicted patients.    
      
   And lawyers for the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma have sued the nation's top six   
   drug distributors, according to The Washington Post's Scott Higham and Lenny   
   Bernstein. The suit says the pharmaceutical companies are profiting from the   
   epidemic and “   
   decimating communities across the nation's 14 counties in the state.â€�   
      
   Last month, seven counties in West Virginia, a state that has the highest   
   prescription drug overdose rate in the nation, filed suits against many of the   
   same corporations, according to Higham and Bernstein.    
      
   A lawsuit by the state of Missouri against pharmaceutical giants strikes a   
   similar tone.    
      
   Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley said the companies have used bogus   
   science to mislead patients about just how addictive opioids are, according to   
   The Post's Katie Mettler. As a result, the companies have “profited from the   
   suffering of    
   Missourians.â€�    
      
   The lawsuits have different aims, although attorneys in the Missouri case say   
   they want state legislatures to more closely monitor prescription drug use.    
      
   Oklahoma's attorney general has been trying to paint Nichols in the same   
   light.    
      
   Nichols prescribed more than 3 million doses of controlled dangerous drugs   
   from 2010 through 2014, according to court documents, including    
   €œirrationalâ€� and dangerous combinations of drugs that led to five deaths.    
      
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   On March 24, 2010, for example, Debra Messner received a prescription for 450   
   pills — the same cocktail of Hydrocodone, Xanax and Soma and died six days   
   later of acute drug toxicity, according to court documents. A doctor   
   contracted by the Drug    
   Enforcement Administration to review her case file found that there was "no   
   need for the quantity or combination" of those drugs.    
      
   Lynette Nelson was evaluated by Nichols once, a few days before Christmas in   
   2008. Still, over the next four years, Nelson was prescribed so many potent   
   drugs from Nichols's clinic that investigators were baffled that she didn't   
   die sooner.    
      
   She was found dead on March 1, 2012, five days after getting her final   
   prescription of Xanax filled.    
      
   In the probable cause affidavit, the doctor contracted by the DEA to examine   
   the dead patients' files concluded that because of Nichols's “lack of the   
   use of the basic fundamental safeguards, patients suffer and very well may end   
   up paying the ultimate    
   price as all ten of these patients did.â€�    
      
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)