From Oxycontin to Fentanyl - Mariana van Zeller on Being at the Frontlines of the Opioid Crisis

People have a hard time, you know, keeping it together. Yeah. And when something like marijuana comes along. But that doesn't mean that it should be illegal. That means there should be some real counseling and there should be places that people can go where they can talk to someone and therapy and there should be a way to make it legal. I 100% agree. I mean, one thing we know is that the war on drugs hasn't worked. The billions of dollars that the United States has spent on the war on drugs has actually had the reverse effect. And as you know well, the biggest drug epidemic in America's history was created right here in America by the pharmaceutical companies. Yes. Well, that's how I found out about you from the OxyContin Express. That was so eye-opening. And when you did that, what channel were you guys on back then? Current TV was Al Gore's television channel. It was Al Gore's? That's hilarious. It was actually a really interesting experiment. So it was right before YouTube started. And basically they were trying to... The idea was democratizing television. It was giving young kids out there a platform to go out there and explore the world and come back with these stories. So that's how I started. What year was this? This was 2005 or 6. Oh, wow. 2005 when I started, yeah. It was a long time ago. And then YouTube came around. And so that YouTube was a bigger success than Current TV. But I really... The show that I worked on was called Vanguard. And it was all these young journalists who most of us had just graduated. But they basically gave us cameras. And in my case, my husband at the time was my boyfriend. We both applied. They hired us both. And then we traveled all around the world. He would film. I would be on camera. And then we'd come back. I'd edit. He'd write. We'd do these stories together. And one of the stories we did was the prescription bill story of the OxyContin Express, which is how we met. Because he tweeted about it. Well, I think your work really changed the way people were aware of that problem in Florida. And it changed the laws. Because they didn't have databases back then, which was 100% on purpose. Yeah. So you could go from... Yes. You could go doctor shopping. You could go from pill mill to pill mill or pain clinic to pain clinic to buy prescription pills. The amazing thing is my husband is still reporting on this. He's actually had a film on CNN that's coming on HBO Max in April. And it's called American Pain. So I don't know... Do you remember the twins that were running American Pain? It was the biggest pill mill or prescription pain clinic in South Florida. It's called American Pain. And it was run by these two twins who were born... They were born conjoined twins at birth. And then they ran a steroid business. And they got in trouble. And then they realized that actually they could make a lot more money from selling Oxycom than they could from selling steroids. So they opened this little small strip mall pain clinic. And as you saw, people started coming in from all over the country and buying. And the doctors wouldn't even look at them. And they were prescribing pills like it was Tic Tacs. And we found out about them because we were reporting in Kentucky. And we were the sheriff who was... There were overdoses all around them, people dying, devastating his community. And a lot of the pill bottles had this name, American Pain. And we started... We went down there and we took out the camera. My husband took out the camera. And the first shot we got immediately within minutes, this big SUV came with two big guys who were threatening us and started yelling at us and telling us to leave that we weren't allowed to film. So we drove off and I'm driving. And this is actually in the film. But I'm driving. And my husband's filming and they're right behind us. And we decided to film this as the last thing we were heading to the airport. And we're driving down 985 to head to the airport and they start following us. And then I realized I had very little gas. So I stop at the gas station and they stop right behind us and they come out of the car. And these were big guys. And the day before, we'd been watching the surprise. So in my mind, they were coming out guns-a-blazing and they were going to kill us both. So I drove off. I was so nervous and I drove off and they continued following us and I didn't put gas in the car. So we're 995 and we called 911 and said, hey, we're being followed by this car and to explain the situation. And then I ran out of gas as we were filming. And I pulled over to the curb, but they were so sort of surprised. They had no idea, confused by what was happening, that they just parked behind us and they never came out of the car and then the police arrived. And then they made up an excuse that they thought I was an old girlfriend or something like that. But my husband took down their license plates and found out their names and it was the George brothers, Jeff and Chris George, who were running the biggest prescription or pill mill in America's history. They were making, I think, something like $40 million a year out of this small little pill mill pain, you know, strip mill clinic. And it was incredible. And then a year later, they were, they're now, one of them just left prison and the other one was still in prison. So those were the guys that were following you, the guys that owned the organization. They owned American Pain. Wow. The organization was just a strip mill clinic, pain clinic with thousands of patients that would come in and out and, you know, tons of doctors writing prescription pills. And when we were working at the time where we'd been interviewing off the record a DAA agent who didn't want to go on the record, that we later found out was actually investigating them and they had wiretaps. So in Darren's movie, he got his hands on all the wiretaps so you could hear them. And part of it, there's a part where they talk about us and our film and how we were trying to look into them. So it all sort of came. Yeah. That's it. South Florida Pain Clinic. Yeah. So it's South Florida Pain Clinic and then they changed to a new location, a bigger location and called it. Yeah, that's it. Called it American Pain. Such a, what a great name, by the way. Yeah. American Pain. And those are the two brothers down there with the fish? Yeah, that's the two brothers. Those are the guys that were chasing you. Yeah. Wow. Well, they found a loophole. It's a crazy story. So they're in prison and Darren, he sends them an email and says, hey guys, remember that guy that you chased down on? I'm doing a film about you. Do you want to be interviewed? And they did. It's a great film. What did they say? Did they just spill the beans about what they did? They talked a lot about sort of how they grew up and why they did it. Yeah, I think it's interesting. They'd already gotten in trouble, so they had really nothing to lose at that point. But wasn't what they were doing legal? No. It was, what they were, so that is the difficulty and that's why actually so little people, so there should have been a lot more people that went to prison. Unfortunately, they didn't. The government gets you through other things, racketeering charges, bribery, mail fraud. It's always these other... That's the biggest, I think, outrage about the whole opiate crisis is that there have been almost no pharmaceutical executive that has been gone to prison. The pharmaceutical companies are the ones that were actually making the big money, right? And it's not just the Sacklers of Purdue. It's also the generic companies that were making even more. And nobody was actually... Nothing practically happened to them. No one did time in prison. And it's so sad when you find out how many people lost their lives and how many people, even if they're alive, their lives are destroyed. I mean, Joe, having traveled and reported on this, the opiate crisis for so long, it's whole communities that have been devastated. It's horrible. It's just sort of outrageous thing that has happened in America. And it was made here. Again, we can blame others, but it was made here because we allowed it to happen. It's just amazing the deception that was involved too. They tried to claim that they weren't addictive and they were just passing them out to people. I mean, I talked before about this. I had my nose fixed. I had a deviated septum. When I got out of the operating room, I was kind of shocked that it wasn't painful. I was like, this is fine. This is just a little mildly uncomfortable. And the doctor tried to give me two different prescriptions for opiates. And I was like, I'm not going to use those. Because I had had knee surgery and I also didn't take pain pills. I don't mind pain. What I really don't like is feeling stupid. And when I took, I think it was, I don't remember, it was Percocets or Vicodin. I don't remember. But one of my first knee surgeries, they gave me one of those. And I took it and I remember being on my couch when I lived in New York and just sitting there watching TV like this, feeling so stupid and thinking, oh my God, I'm never taking this shit again. Like, whatever this is doing to me, first of all, I don't think it really stopped the pain because I remember getting up because I had to go to the bathroom and it was like liquid fire was going through my knee. And I was like, if it still fucking hurts like this and I'm dumb as shit, like I am not taking these anymore. I know. It's the ease with which they were dispensed and are still being dispensed to some degree. My doctor was trying to force me to take them. He was like, just, you really should take these. Like you're going to be in pain. I go, well, it's just a little pain. Like is it worse than this right now? And he goes, it could be. I'm like, how could it get worse? Why is it going to get worse? Yeah. Like if it just is mildly uncomfortable now. And like, so the doctor was just like, you should take this. And I was like, why would I take that? But I didn't understand why. Like couldn't I come back to you if I'm in pain? Like if I'm not in pain now, why do you want me? It was this weird conversation where it was like, I don't know if he was incentivized to try to prescribe them. If he felt like it would be good for him. I didn't understand it. Like couldn't you just, if you wrote the prescriptions and I didn't take it, like what do you care? But he wanted me to take him. Yeah. It was weird. So strange. I mean, that's what was happening with OxyContin. That's what was happening later on. We did another story on fentanyl. That was what was happening with fentanyl too. You had a company and we investigated one particular company. I think it's the only CEO of a company that he's now in prison actually for what he was doing. But yeah, he was bribing essentially. And he was charged with bribing. He was a bribing doctors. And there was a quota. And he was basically telling them if you prescribe more of our product, which was fentanyl, a spray fentanyl called Subsys, if you prescribe more, we will give you more money. He was paying them out and taking them on trips, luxurious trips around the world and telling them not only to prescribe this medication to people who have headaches and back pain, a medication that is made in FDA approved only for breakthrough cancer patients. And yet you go to the doctor and you say you have a headache and this guy knows that he can get a kickback from the company and say, oh, you should take this drug. How much of a kickback was it? It was significant. It was in the thousands of dollars. Some doctors got hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so they were incentivized. Yeah, there was a big incentive to do it. Yeah. And they were also invited to these luxury vacations and to go to speaking fees. What they said is that they were paying them for speaking fees, which basically was code bribes. I have a good friend who used to be a pharmaceutical representative and he explained to me how it works that he would not just know the doctor, but he got to know, he knew who the doctor's kids names were. He would show up at their baseball games and he would give them gifts. He would take them out to dinners. And it was all about cultivating these relationships and that it was all about like, I'm your friend. And they wanted to have this sort of weird cronyism, weird sort of relationship where even if it wasn't illegal, like clearly he was influencing them to sell more pills. It's so crazy. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy and it's crazy that it's still happening. And it's just shocking that not more people have gotten in trouble because of it. What has changed in Florida? Because they did change and they made a database, right? Yeah. There's a database right now, which was the biggest thing that didn't... So you could go to 10 doctors in one day and get 150 pills from each doctor. At the end of the day, you'd have 1,500 pills and no one would know about it. And then you'd grab those pills and go and sell them to other places of the country where you could get 20 times more for the same drugs. Yeah. So the database is just much harder. I think there's one of the things that I remember that we reported on, that you shouldn't be able to prescribe and dispense at the same location because it's a conflict of interest, right? If you're going to make money out of the selling of those pills, it shouldn't be at the same place where you're prescribing them because then there's an incentive for you to prescribe because you're making money from the sale of those pills. So that was happening in Florida as well and it's not allowed in a lot of other states. And then the horrible truth is that a lot of those people became addicted and then they had to get it on the black market. So then they were getting fentanyl- Heroin. Yeah. And massive amount of overdoses. Yeah. The progression was Oxycontin and then it was fentanyl and then it was heroin and then it became fentanyl.