The Hill News

Garrett Harney’s last words of despair to his mother were, “Mom, I can’t be helped.” Shortly after, Garrett fatally overdosed on OxyContin and Xanax.  Since the tragedy, Garrett’s mother, a Sarasota, Florida resident, has dedicated her life to spreading awareness about the nationwide epidemic of prescription drug abuse in the hope of sparing other parents the ordeal she and her son faced.

While Florida is infamous as “ground zero” in the prescription drug battle, the problem is escalating throughout the country. Earlier this year, a former Needham, Massachusetts doctor and his nurse practitioner were charged with distributing medically unnecessary painkillers to people they knew to be drug addicts or dealers. Before federal authorities raided the practice, six of their patients died of prescription drug overdoses. 

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