Finding the real major dealers

The Weekend Edition of the Appalachian News-Express featured a pair of stories that served to remind us of the toll the drug epidemic is taking on our communities. And though each had a local connection, the distinction between the two could hardly have been greater. The first was about a drug roundup of some locals Chief Deputy Melvin Sayers alleged were “small” dealers, while the second would had to have concerned an alleged “major” dealer.

That alleged major dealer was a former doctor from Mingo County, a Dr. Kathryn Hoover. Hoover was said to have written 335,130 prescriptions for pain pills between 2002 and 2010, a record for that state that still stands to this day.

Hoover lost her medical license in West Virginia, not because of her alleged ability to crank out pain pill prescriptions, but oddly enough because of an alleged attempt to solicit a female patient as a paramour for her son. Not that prosecutors have forgotten her lightning-fast abilities to diagnose and prescribe, as they are seeking to seize assets from the doctor in the neighborhood of $2.2 million.

Presumably, those people who she saw each day, whom she charged $450.00 each for the first visit and a paltry $150.00 for each additional visit, were not unlike those small dealers rounded up in Pike County. These people and the Doctor are hardly likely to run into each other at a lavish cocktail party though, because those who now reside in the Graybar Motel in Pikeville would never have had the wherewithal to travel in the circles Doctor Hoover must inhabit.

That would currently be, by the way, in the Bahamas, where she and her husband own an island. The feds would like it if she would return to West Virginia to give a deposition, since she was due to give one in May, but so far no luck in getting her back. Can’t imagine why, either.

There has to be other groups in these stories, though, and they aren't mentioned in either, but they are terribly important to both. This would be the Big Pharmaceuticals (Big Pharms) and their salesmen, who are the rugged individuals who travel through the country calling on medical doctors while doing the bidding of their masters back at HQ.

These sales staffs always followed the instructions given them, too. From Purdue Pharma, we had trained sales people advise doctors to prescribe the highly addictive semi-opioid, Oxycontin, for moderate pain. You know the kind that any over the counter product would be able to control?

There were a myriad of questions that came to me as I read about the alleged exploits of Dr. Hoover. For instance, who was on the sales staff from the Big Pharms that dealt with what must have been some colossal orders because of Dr. Hoover? Didn’t that raise any red flags with them? What about the people back at HQ? Didn’t they bother to ask the good Doctor why she was writing so many prescriptions for addictive substances?

Or were they too busy counting money to notice that they were the pipeline in this drug trade? Too bad, because they might have been able to have helped at one time. Lucky for them they aren’t targets of federal or state investigators, either. Wonder why not?