Free Republic

The story fit the grim emerging genre of the opioid epidemic: addicted caregivers who imperil their young children, their very public failings instantly held up for excoriation on social media. Tamara and Jacob had abruptly been added to a national tableau, fused in the popular imagination with the Ohio couple slowly turning blue in their SUV while a 4-year-old watched from his carseat; the Milwaukee pair revived with Narcan in front of the woman’s 2-year-old son; the woman who overdosed in the toy aisle of a Lawrence dollar store, while her toddler wailed and pulled at her arm. Much less...

TRENTON — Nondescript minivans pulled up like clockwork outside Newark’s homeless shelters, and the drivers offered a deal few desperate people would turn down: a free health checkup and a guaranteed prescription for painkillers, which can fetch as much as $100 per pill on the street. They were bused 10 miles away, authorities said, to a rundown strip mall in Passaic where the deal went down. A doctor offered a quick, often bogus exam before writing scripts for OxyContin or oxycodone. As a special thank you, he threw in a $10 gift card. His patients could take the drugs or...