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Amid opioid prescriber crackdown, health officials reach out to pain patients

April 24, 2019

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A pharmacist in Celina, Tenn., was one of 60 people indicted on charges of opioid-related crimes last week, in a multistate sting. John Polston was charged with 21 counts of filling medically unnecessary narcotic prescriptions.

He was also Gail Gray’s pharmacist and the person she relied on to regularly fill her opioid prescriptions.

“I take pain medicine first thing in the morning. I’m usually up most of the night with pain,” she said. “I hurt all the time.”

Living in a mountainous community on the Tennessee-Kentucky line, Gray has coped with a degenerative disk disease for more than 15 years, requiring multiple back surgeries. She says the chronic pain is totally debilitating without powerful opioids.

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