On Point: Pill Mills

"The drug abuse pipeline grabbing headlines this spring is not out of Afghanistan or Mexico, but out of pain clinics and doctors’ offices in sunny Florida.

Prescription drug abuse is sky-rocketing in the United States as accidental overdose deaths now exceed crack deaths in the 1980s. Pharmaceutical pain killers are now churned out of “pill mills”.

The hottest pipeline brings drugs from Florida into poor counties of West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee. Oxycodone and its cousins are wreaking havoc.

Today, On Point: the pipeline and price of a pain killer epidemic.

– Tom Ashbrook