His license was suspended due to overprescribing. Michael Lazzopina, a former Fort Lauderdale doctor, ranked third for buying 1,557,300 pills. The state health department revoked his license after he was found to have prescribed at “ inappropriately or in excessive or inappropriate quantities.” John Peter Christensen, a former West Palm Beach doctor, came in second with 1,622,000 pills. Boyce’s license was suspended after he was found to have overprescribed oxycodone and Xanax. The top three doctors in the state bought opioids in record numbers years before they faced consequences.Īlfred Boyce, a former Fort Lauderdale physician, bought 1,692,900 pain pills, the most pills of all practitioners. Hall said his research showed 25 of the country’s top 50 opioid-dispensing physicians were based in Broward in 2009-10.Ī look at the medical practitioners in Florida who bought the largest amounts of pain pills reveals a list of disgraced doctors and physicians who have since been banned from practicing medicine for overprescribing. Broward County emerged as a particularly troublesome spot. That same year, 90 of the top 100 doctors buying oxycodone nationwide were practicing in Florida. South Florida became the go-to place for out-of-state addicts and dealers, who road-tripped down interstates 75 and 95 in search of cash-only deals through pain clinics.īoth prescription opioid overdoses and opioid prescriptions in Florida peaked in 2010, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, when providers in the state wrote about 88 prescriptions for every 100 Floridians. During one raid, law enforcement found $4 million stashed in cardboard boxes in an attic, Hall said. Some clinics raked in $50,000 a day passing out pills. Shady operators recruited unscrupulous doctors through places like Craigslist to pump out prescriptions. “That was the setup for the pain clinics,” Hall said.
Pill mills found fertile ground in Florida, where doctors were once allowed to prescribe and dispense the opioids in the same place. While the data shows most pills went to chain pharmacies like Publix and Walgreens, individual doctors and physicians also ordered millions of doses to their offices.
“Florida was a key supplier of diverted powerful prescription opioid medications that supplied not only users in Florida, but throughout East Coast,” said Jim Hall, a drug abuse epidemiologist at Nova Southeastern University.
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