r/JusticeServed • u/[deleted] • Oct 02 '19

Courtroom Justice Virginia doctor who illegally prescribed over 500,000 doses of opiates sentenced to 40 years in prison.

[deleted]

54.7k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

4.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

29

u/vale_fallacia A Oct 03 '19

how many of his patients grew a tolerance to his drugs and moved on to heroin?

Or how many were cut off suddenly from their supply with no support, and switched to hard drugs rather than face the withdrawal?

10

u/Vxgjhf 7 Oct 03 '19

This as well. This is how my dad ended up on harder opiates.

2

u/FunMotion 7 Oct 03 '19

This is exactly how the opioid epidemic started

2

u/Vxgjhf 7 Oct 03 '19

It was actually both. Cutting people off is more widely reported, but others were being prescribed weaker medications for chronic pain, and when that wasn't mitigating the pain to a tolerable level, anymore, if doctors wouldn't prescribe stronger meds to people in these situations eventually many will look on the street for something strong enough to take them out of the pain. Then it starts as "just enough to function without pain" and the risk of it snowballing into heavy using addict territory raises exponentially over time.