{"id":19231,"date":"2019-04-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medgoo.com\/index.php\/2019\/04\/18\/sixty-people-charged-in-massive-opioid-painkiller-investigation\/"},"modified":"2019-04-19T16:08:28","modified_gmt":"2019-04-19T16:08:28","slug":"sixty-people-charged-in-massive-opioid-painkiller-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medgoo.com\/index.php\/2019\/04\/18\/sixty-people-charged-in-massive-opioid-painkiller-investigation\/","title":{"rendered":"Sixty People Charged in Massive Opioid Painkiller Investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Individuals linked to about 350,000 prescriptions and 32 million pills<\/h3>\n<p><b><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b><\/b><\/p>\n<p>THURSDAY, April 18, 2019 (HealthDay News) &#8212; Fifty-three medical professionals, including 31 doctors, are among the 60 people charged by U.S. authorities for their alleged involvement in the illegal prescribing and distribution of opioid painkillers.<\/p>\n<p>The medical professionals are linked to about 350,000 prescriptions and 32 million pills in the largest ever takedown of illegal drug prescribers, according to U.S. Attorney Benjamin Glassman of Cincinnati, the <i>Associated Press<\/i> reported.<\/p>\n<p>The doctors involved are &#8220;white-coated drug dealers,&#8221; said Robert Duncan, U.S. attorney for eastern Kentucky. In some cases, prescriptions were written in exchange for sex, investigators allege.<\/p>\n<p>Arrests were being made and search warrants were carried out as authorities announced the charges at a news conference, the <i>AP<\/i> reported. The operation was conducted by the federal Appalachian Regional Prescription Opioid Strike Force, which was launched last year.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.apnews.com\/59e04c9fcb7c4e3792873d2ba5276bb8\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><i>AP News<\/i> Article<\/a><\/p>\n<p><i><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Copyright \u00a9 2019 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.healthday.com\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">HealthDay<\/a>. All rights reserved.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Individuals linked to about 350,000 prescriptions and 32 million pills<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":19247,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[11],"class_list":["post-19231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medgoo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medgoo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medgoo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medgoo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medgoo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medgoo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medgoo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medgoo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medgoo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medgoo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}