Crackdown on pain clinics

TAMPA - Hillsborough Sheriff's deputies say it's the new crack cocaine: prescription drugs flying out of so-called pain clinics across Florida.

Undercover deputies are infiltrating other clinics, and making arrests in the parking lots.

They say it's a scene repeated hundreds, thousands of times a day outside many local pain clinics: lots of traffic, and drug deals in the parking lots.

"These are Oxycodone pills," says the undercover detective as he pours one of his latest buys out onto his boss's desk. "They cost about a dollar, but they sell for $30 dollars and up out of state."

He shows a videotape shot inside an undercover car. Deputies say the man in the video, along with a carload of friends, drove all night from Virginia, which, unlike Florida, tightly regulates its clinics. The deal is captured on tape,

"They were going to go back and sell it for 30 dollars a pill, so they were looking at a 25-thousand dollar profit," said Major Donna Lusczynski.

The scene switches to a young woman who is tells the undercover deputy that she is a single mom of four, and she is selling pills to pay the bills.

As they arrest her, she says "oh my God" over and over.

Outside the same clinic where she was arrested, the pills just keep coming. Just after lunch, a FedEx truck pulls up, and a large box, presumably full of pills, is delivered.

Deputies say barely qualified people do most of the ordering from knowing drug companies and distributors who just turn the other cheek to take the profits.

"People that have no more than a certificate from a junior college in some cases or someone who is a pharmacy technician, not a licensed pharmacist," Sheriff David Gee said.

The tally so far for "Operation Side Effects" is 87 arrests, more than 192 charges filed, and 50 more arrest warrants pending.

The undercover deputy says he was shocked at the amount of illegal drug activity outside the clinics.

"The Oxycondone pills, the illicit prescription drugs in Hillsborough County now are the new crack. You'll find a lot of the dealers that we've dealt with in the past are now doing the prescription pills instead of crack, because there's more money to be made," the deputy said.

The sheriff says the lure of easy money without state regulation puts law enforcement at a disadvantage.

"We're bailing out a battleship with a bucket," Gee said. "There's no doubt about that."

Still, many at the clinic defended it, like Danny York, who said he suffers pain from a broken back and crushed foot.

"I understand people sell it, they have a right to jail for that, but the medicine I get, I need, I have to take it. Without it, I can barely walk."

So until Florida tightens regulations, deputies say the pills and the parking lot deals will just keep coming.