by Laurence Hammack | Jun 12, 2001 | Addiction/drug abuse
KNOXVILLE, TENN. — It is 4 a.m. in a bad part of town, and Bill Brooks is waiting at his usual street corner. Leaning back in the passenger seat of a Toyota Corolla, he exhales a cloud of Marlboro smoke that mingles with exhaust fumes floating in the chilly...
by Laurence Hammack | Jun 12, 2001 | Addiction/drug abuse
The 13 steps that lead to Gary Kennedy’s second-story bedroom would be murder without the little beige pills he takes twice a day. “Without OxyContin, I would be in a nursing home,” he said. Kennedy, a 54-year-old retired Army sergeant major with a...
by Laurence Hammack | Jun 11, 2001 | Addiction/drug abuse
By Jeff Sturgeon and Laurence Hammack Some doctors and pharmacists are put off by what they say is an overly aggressive pitch by the maker of OxyContin to sell a wonder drug for a long list of painful conditions. Others say OxyContin is a good product and that its...
by Laurence Hammack | Jun 11, 2001 | Addiction/drug abuse
Drug addicts often risk the dangers of the streets to make a buy. Todd Williams made his in the safety of a doctor’s office. An OxyContin addict from Lee County, Williams heard last year that, just across the state line, a physician was prescribing the powerful...
by Laurence Hammack | Jun 10, 2001 | Addiction/drug abuse
OxyContin is a new medicine made from an old drug. The prescription painkiller described as both a highly effective analgesic and an “angel of death” has an active ingredient called oxycodone, which has been used in the United States since 1938. A powerful...
by Laurence Hammack | Jun 10, 2001 | Addiction/drug abuse
JONESVILLE — The morning sun had just cleared Wallens Ridge when a small army of deputy sheriffs assembled at the Lee County courthouse. They sat stiffly in bulletproof vests, the butts of their holstered handguns scraping against the wooden courtroom benches. A...