Summary

In stark contrast to the economic and social decline felt by Portsmouth and the rest of rural Appalachia, Dr. David Procter saw his career’s greatest success unfold during the late 1990s. Propelled by the medical community’s new, more relaxed view toward prescribing opiates and a ballooning wave of opiate abuse, Procter continued his well-documented history of not merely overprescribing, but only prescribing; the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure found that Procter did not even record some patients’ weight, height, pulse, or temperature, but rather, he questioned to their pain, wrote prescriptions, collected his $250 cash fee, and repeated the cycle with the seemingly endless line of patients outside of his clinic who waited three hours on average to see him. By 2002, and with an army of ex-employees splintered throughout Appalachia into similar pill mills, David Procter was arrested and plead guilty to conspiracy...