He stopped working. Her depression spiraled. Their lives narrowed to one purpose: staving off the sickness that sets in during opioid withdrawal.

The addiction morphed into an uncontrollable obsession, starting with Brian Parker’s motorcycle accident in 2007. The father of four suffered nerve damage after he was T-boned at a Tucson intersection. Trying to hold onto his job as a welder, Parker said he could not go a day without the morphine and oxycodone doctors prescribed him. His wife, Jamie Dutton, was having headaches, so she started taking pills, too.

In Arizona, drug users say they are gripped by an almost-identical pattern of drug addiction, which starts with a pill bottle and ends with a needle.

Cronkite News conducted a four-month investigation into the rise of prescription opioid abuse in Arizona. In 2015, more than 2 million grams of oxycodone alone came into the state, the third-highest total per capita in the country.

Continue reading “Addicts say they are trapped in a vicious cycle of dependence”

• Slug: BC-CNS-Opioids Rehabilitation Industry,2,300
• Photos available (thumbnails, captions below)
• EDS: PLEASE RUN THE HOOKED PROMO PHOTO (below) OR THIS BOX WITH THIS STORY IF YOU PLAN TO PUBLISH PRIOR TO JAN. 10:  Watch “Hooked Rx: From Prescription to Addiction,” a 30-minute commercial-free investigative report airing at 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 10 on 30 broadcast TV stations in Phoenix, Tucson and Yuma and 97 of the state’s radio stations. For the full report, go to hookedrx.com.

By COURTNEY COLUMBUS
Cronkite News

TUCSON – At 19, Joey Romeo had his wisdom teeth removed.

His doctor prescribed 180 pills of hydromorphone, an opioid, to relieve the pain. That triggered a cascade of events that would take him in and out of more than 10 addiction treatment programs in two states.

Romeo, now 25, had tried prescription drugs before. But his mother, Susan Romeo, said after the 180-pill prescription, “There was no going back. He was 100 percent addicted.”

Susan keeps a crate full of the bills, pulling out stacks of them and piling them on the dining room table in her Tucson home.

“I don’t even count it. I would cry,” Susan said. “If I added up all the numbers, I’d probably be beside myself because I don’t want to think about it.”

Continue reading “Substance-abuse treatment industry grows to keep up with demand”

The family practice doctor and medical director at Arrowhead Health Centers in Glendale said the medical community operated under the idea that compassionate physicians relieve patients of their pain, and that Americans should be pain free all the time. This mantra encouraged doctors to reach for their prescription pads and write down powerful narcotics such as Vicodin, hydrocodone and OxyContin.

Their patients demanded it and their medical training has – until recently – mostly sanctioned it. But Americans’ obsession with pain pills didn’t just start with patients and their doctors.

The pharmaceutical industry has recently come under fire from federal investigators, the public and even comedian John Oliver for its role in helping to create and sustain this nationwide epidemic.

“They’re selling out for the sales,” said Tim Morrison, a Phoenix resident whose son is recovering from an opiate addiction. “It’s all about dollars, and there is no consideration for the human element and the fact that it’s addictive.”

From 1999 to 2014, overdose deaths involving prescription pills quadrupled. In that 15-year period, more than 165,000 people died from an opioid overdose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Continue reading “Pill push: How pharmaceutical companies helped create the opioid epidemic”

Since 2010, nearly 67,000 people in Arizona have required emergency room care for opioid-related overdoses and illnesses, according to an analysis of hospital discharge data by the Arizona Department of Health Services. Those ER admissions increased from 7,753 in 2010 to 15,867 in 2015.

For ER physician Kara Geren of Maricopa Integrated Health System, the cycle of overdoses is part of a daily routine. Geren works in one of Phoenix’s inner-city neighborhoods off 26th and Roosevelt streets.

• Slug: BC-CNS-Opioids Babies,2,500
• Photos available (thumbnails, captions below)
• EDS: PLEASE RUN THE HOOKED PROMO PHOTO (below) OR THIS BOX WITH THIS STORY IF YOU PLAN TO PUBLISH PRIOR TO JAN. 10:  Watch “Hooked Rx: From Prescription to Addiction,” a 30-minute commercial-free investigative report airing at 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 10 on 30 broadcast TV stations in Phoenix, Tucson and Yuma and 97 of the state’s radio stations. For the full report, go to hookedrx.com.

By CLAIRE CLEVELAND
Cronkite News

PHOENIX – Laianna Denny was born addicted to methadone, her small arms trembling and body shaking from the drug her mom used to fight off her heroin addiction. It was Dec. 19, 2015, and the baby was just hours old.

“Having a baby is something that creates a whole different world for you. You fall in love immediately when you see that baby,” said Carissa Denny, Laianna’s mother. “To see her withdraw and go through some of those physical symptoms. … She would cry all the time, and seeing that tiny, innocent piece of life that I created struggling and just absolutely miserable because of me, and something that I did, was just, I don’t even know a term for it, it’s horrible. … It’s horrible.”

Months earlier in July, Carissa Denny was outside a trailer home throwing up. She thought she was dope sick, going through withdrawal, so she shot up more heroin over and over again, trying to quell the illness. She also was pregnant.

But even with the heroin, her sickness didn’t go away. Later, at a hospital, she was diagnosed with sepsis and an infected gallbladder. While in the intensive care unit at the hospital, doctors started Denny on methadone, an opiate replacement drug used to treat withdrawal symptoms in drug addicts without giving them the addictive high.

In pregnant women, it’s used to ensure the fetus has a relatively stable environment during pregnancy. Withdrawing cold turkey from heroin and other prescription drugs can result in miscarriage. Continue reading “Babies born to addicts suffer sickness and withdrawals”

• Slug: BC-CNS-Opioids Doctors,2,600
• Photos available (thumbnails, captions below)
• EDS: PLEASE RUN THE HOOKED PROMO PHOTO (below) OR THIS BOX WITH THIS STORY IF YOU PLAN TO PUBLISH PRIOR TO JAN. 10:  Watch “Hooked Rx: From Prescription to Addiction,” a 30-minute commercial-free investigative report airing at 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 10 on 30 broadcast TV stations in Phoenix, Tucson and Yuma and 97 of the state’s radio stations. For the full report, go to hookedrx.com.

Eds: Because of an error in the editing process, a previous version of this story misstated information about Tucson’s Robert C. Osborne, who was indicted in December 2014. He has pleaded not guilty. The story below has been corrected, but clients who used earlier versions of this story are asked to run the correction that can be found here.

By AGNEL PHILIP and EMILY L. MAHONEY
Cronkite News

PHOENIX – One patient, a 29-year-old woman, was prescribed a dangerous cocktail of anti-anxiety drugs and opioids by her Fort Mohave doctor after a car accident. Another, this time a 61-year-old man with back pain, was given a potentially fatal dose of painkillers, including fentanyl, an opiate 30 to 50 times stronger than heroin.

Nearly five years after his first documented instance of overprescribing, the doctor’s medical license was suspended in August by the Arizona Medical Board. Three months later in November, authorities arrested him in Wyoming for allegedly prescribing an illegal amount of opioids to residents of five states, according to a complaint filed with the Wyoming’s U.S. District Attorney’s Office.

Although the number of doctors and physician assistants sanctioned for overprescribing opiates – just 250 during the past 16 years – is small compared to the more than 19,000 currently licensed to prescribe controlled substances, the boards’ disciplinary records detail more than 1,000 instances of overprescribing, sometimes after the doctor received multiple reprimands. In the most egregious cases, doctors prescribe opiates like OxyContin, Vicodin, Percocet, Dilaudid and others en masse for profit, often without performing any medical exams.

It can take years for a physician to be penalized and revocations are rare, according to a Cronkite News examination of hundreds of disciplinary records from the Arizona Medical Board, Arizona Board of Physician Assistants and the Arizona Board of Osteopathic Examiners. In the meantime, many of these physicians continue to practice.

Continue reading “Arizona medical boards can take years to penalize doctors who overprescribe”

• Slug: BC-CNS-Opioids Deaths,1,400
• Photos available (thumbnails, captions below)
• EDS: PLEASE RUN THE HOOKED PROMO PHOTO (below) OR THIS BOX WITH THIS STORY IF YOU PLAN TO PUBLISH PRIOR TO JAN. 10:  Watch “Hooked Rx: From Prescription to Addiction,” a 30-minute commercial-free investigative report airing at 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 10 on 30 broadcast TV stations in Phoenix, Tucson and Yuma and 97 of the state’s radio stations. For the full report, go to hookedrx.com.

By RYAN SANTISTEVAN and BEN MOFFAT
Cronkite News

MESA – John Koch knows about dying. He said he’s flatlined three times. But with each overdose, paramedics and doctors brought him back.

“There’s no light when you die,” he said. “It was just darkness. … I’m an addict. Death didn’t scare me as long as I got my fix.”

When Koch was 14 years old, he found his opioid addiction first in Vicodin pills from a friend, then through fentanyl suckers.

“I loved it,” he said. “Shortly after that, I got introduced to OxyContins. From there, nothing was more important than getting my OxyContin, every day.”

At the time, he said 80 mg OxyContin pills cost between $60 to $80 each.

“I just did whatever was thrown my way,” he said. “I didn’t know what I was doing, but if it got me higher, I wanted to try it.”

Continue reading “Opioid overdose deaths continue to mount each year”

• Slug: BC-CNS-Opioids Fraud,1,500
• Photos available (thumbnails, captions below)
• EDS: PLEASE RUN THE HOOKED PROMO PHOTO (below) OR THIS BOX WITH THIS STORY IF YOU PLAN TO PUBLISH PRIOR TO JAN. 10:  Watch “Hooked Rx: From Prescription to Addiction,” a 30-minute commercial-free investigative report airing at 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 10 on 30 broadcast TV stations in Phoenix, Tucson and Yuma and 97 of the state’s radio stations. For the full report, go to hookedrx.com.

By GABRIEL SANDLER
Cronkite News

PHOENIX – In an unrelenting quest for painkillers, Arizona pill seekers embark on almost daily missions to obtain fake or stolen prescriptions and shop their pain among doctors. Sometimes, pharmacists report, patients try to get “multiple, multiple narcotic” prescriptions from “multiple, multiple doctors.”

Though the Arizona State Board of Pharmacy and lawmakers have built ways to thwart prescription drug fraud, Arizona’s addicts and abusers are equally persistent. A Cronkite News review of of almost 800 “fraud alerts,” which are regularly sent to the board by concerned medical professionals and pharmacists, details the extent to which doctors and pharmacists are confronted with people willing to try almost anything to get painkillers.

A Mesa pharmacist also reported a female patient bringing in a prescription for Promethazine with codeine in October, but after calling the woman’s doctor, it was determined that the “prescription was written on either a stolen prescription pad or was created by the suspect.”

Another alert, submitted by a dentist, describes a woman, brown hair, 5 feet 4 inches tall, claiming she needed Percocet because of a codeine allergy. According to the dentist, “patient appeared inebriated, incoherent at times, details of events changed with each telling. Came with a gentleman using a walker, both insistent that she be given Percocet, angry that I wouldn’t provide it, left without paying.”

Continue reading “Officials try to stop fake prescriptions, but addicts remain persistent”

• Slug: BC-CNS-Opioids Science,750
• Photos available (thumbnails, captions below)
• Run with video: https://vimeo.com/194743692
• EDITORS: PLEASE RUN THE HOOKED PROMO PHOTO OR THIS BOX WITH THIS STORY IF YOU PLAN TO PUBLISH PRIOR TO JAN. 10:  Watch “Hooked Rx: From Prescription to Addiction,” a 30-minute commercial-free investigative report airing at 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 10 on 30 broadcast TV stations in Phoenix, Tucson and Yuma and 97 of the state’s radio stations. For the full report, go to hookedrx.com.

By CASSIE RONDA
Cronkite News

TUCSON – Bliss. Euphoria. Calm.

Ask somebody who has ever taken a powerful prescription painkiller to describe the feeling, and they’ll likely respond with words like these.

Sure, these opioid drugs can stop pain. But they also can make you high – and it’s chasing that high that often leads to addiction and sometimes death. Every day in the U.S., 46 people die from overdosing on prescription painkillers, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But what’s exactly happening inside the body when opioids enter the scene? What moves the body from pain relief to addiction to overdose?

To find out, Cronkite News talked to Alexander Sandweiss from the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Arizona. He has spent the past five years studying how opioid drugs interact with the human body because understanding these details can help develop a non-addictive alternative to opioid drugs.

Continue reading “Opioids and the body: The science of an overdose”

• Slug: Police Unions, 540
• File photo below (thumbnail, caption below)
• Video story available 9/14

By PETER CHENG
Cronkite News

PHOENIX – The Arizona State Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that paying police officers while they did work for the police union does not violate the state constitution.

The court’s split decision overturns two previous lower court rulings against the practice of so-called “release time” for Phoenix police officers. As part of the city’s agreement with the police union, Phoenix had for years allowed officers to do work for the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association – on the taxpayers’ dime.

Over a two-year period, the union had negotiated release time provisions worth about $1.7 million, according to court documents.

“We’re extremely happy,” said Ken Crane, president of PLEA. “It’s been a long five-year battle with a lot of ups and downs, and we believe the state Supreme Court clearly saw the merits in our side of the argument – the issue being whether or not the city of Phoenix was gifting money to the police union to have officers on full time release.”

The two lower courts decided that release time violated the state constitution’s “gift clause,” which says no government entity can pay or subsidize any person or group unless it “has a public purpose” and the benefits to the entity are proportionate to what the government gains in return. Continue reading “AZ Supreme Court OKs police pay for on-the-clock union work”

• Slug: Antibacterial soaps, 550.
• File photos available (thumbnails, captions below)

By GAVIN MAXWELL
Cronkite News

PHOENIX – Arizona State University researcher Rolf Halden has been warning the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of the dangers of ingredients found in antibacterial soaps for more than a decade.

His research focuses on how man-made pollutants found in personal care products seep into our natural resources and eventually, our bodies. He said the FDA has been slow to react to the recommendations of environmental scientists, but the agency has finally taken action.

On Friday, the FDA issued its ruling on the safety and effectiveness of soaps and washes containing certain antibacterial chemicals. The ruling effectively bans 19 chemical compounds from the popular over-the-counter products.

Halden, the director of the Center for Environmental Security at the Biodesign Institute, called it a “public health victory.”

Continue reading “ASU researcher applauds new federal rule on antibacterial soaps”

EDS: Clients who used a story slugged Truck Safety Day that moved Monday, Jan, 25, under a PHOENIX dateline, are asked to use the following correction. An updated version of the story has been posted here. The error occurred in the fourth paragraph of the original article.

PHOENIX – A Jan. 25 Cronkite News story about commercial truck safety incorrectly attributed the source of $7.5 billion spent annually on commercial truck safety. The trucking industry nationally spends that amount on crash prevention such as safety training, technology and driver safety incentives, according to the American Trucking Association and Arizona Trucking Association.

EDS: Clients who used a story slugged BIZ-Spa Industry Increases that moved Friday, Oct. 2, under MESA dateline are asked to use the following correction. An updated version of the story has been posted here. The error occurred in the 12th paragraph of the article.

MESA – In an Oct. 2 story about spa industry growth, Cronkite News incorrectly identified Mia Mackman’s title. She is the president and founder of the Arizona Spa & Wellness Association.