Opioid Crisis Continues: Hudson Valley Doctor Pleads Guilty
A Hudson Valley doctor is facing a long prison term after his recent arrest. Dr. Marc Laruelle of Yonkers stood in federal court and pleaded guilty to distribution of narcotics. The charges against Dr. Laruelle carry a maximum 20 year sentence behind bars.
Official Charges
Dr. Laruelle was officially charged with "distribution of narcotics without a legitimate medical purpose while acting outside the usual course of professional practice". The drugs that Dr. Laruelle was selling specifically were oxycodone, amphetamines and Xanax.These drugs are obviously incredibly powerful. Oxycodone for example, is a painkiller prescribed to individuals after massive surgeries. My own father recently had an entire knee surgery and he was prescribed the same medication for pain post surgery, though he didn't use it.
Lucrative Business
It wasn't specifically described how or what method Dr. Laurelle used to distribute these drugs out of practice, but it goes without saying that drug trafficking and selling drugs is or can be incredibly lucrative. The rules of supply and demand work the same with drugs just like they do with economics. Whether legal or illegal, if there's a demand from the people, it's only a matter of time before someone or even multiple someone's comes along to supply that demand.
Opioid Danger
The selling of the drugs also speaks to the larger issue of the drug or specifically the opioid epidemic we have currently in America. Oxycodone is classified as an "opioid" which means its job is to control pain. Like Oxycodone, Fentanyl is an opioid however it is stronger than Oxycodone by leaps and bounds. According to American Addiction Centers Laguna Treatment Hospital, "fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine and morphine is 1.5s's more potent than oxycodone". In addition, they also state that in 2017, opioids like fentanyl...
...over 29,400 overdose deaths involved synthetics opioids (not including methadone), and most of these involved fentanyl.
American Addiction Centers also included information to the National Institute on Drug Abuse which further dove into the numbers behind overdose deaths and death rates. What this all comes down to is this; Dr. Laurelle got caught red handed and pleaded guilty for his crimes, however he's just a small component to massive problem we all face. When or if that problem gets solved is anyone's guess, however for all our sakes hopefully it happens sooner rather than later.