Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday that the Justice Department is prosecuting more physicians charged with profiting off of so-called “pill mills” as part of the agency’s effort to combat the opioid crisis.
“I’ve been to 30, 40 United States Attorney offices all over America, and they all have cases on physicians, some on pharmacies, some hospitals have poor control measures, and pills are out there,” Mr. Sessions said on “The Hugh Hewitt Show.”
He said prescription pills is often the first step toward addiction for these kinds of substances, and physicians need to be extremely careful in who and how they prescribe these substances.
“Pill mills” are those clinics that unnecessarily prescribe pills to patients in exchange for an office fee or cash payment of some kind. This floods the community with drugs and often spreads the addiction while the clinic profits.
“They get addicted, and then they move to heroin and fentanyl and die. It is a, we’re working, we’re going to bring down, our goal is flat out to bring down the number of deaths. This year, we expect a reduction in deaths instead of these huge increases we’ve seen the last several years,” Mr. Sessions said.
He also said they’re educating mail carriers, like the U.S. Postal Service and FedEx, to recognize when these substances are being sent in the mail, especially from overseas.
“The FBI has busted and eliminated Alpha Bay. Alpha Bay was a dark website selling illegal guns and substances, 220 illegal outlets there, some 13,000, as I recall, were fentanyl outlets that anybody could hook onto that site, have it sent to them in the mail,” Mr. Sessions explained.
The individual involved in that case was located in Thailand, but he killed himself before being apprehended by authorities.
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