How the opioid black market actually works, according to a former pill mill owner
Jason Votrobek, a former pill mill owner, shares insights into the opioid black market and his experiences in drug trafficking. He discusses the rise of pain clinics that exploited the demand for prescription opioids and the subsequent legal repercussions faced by companies like Purdue Pharma. The opioid crisis continues to have devastating effects, with over 107,000 overdose deaths reported in 2023, primarily due to opioids like fentanyl.
- ▪Jason Votrobek was convicted in 2014 on drug trafficking and money laundering charges.
- ▪He co-owned Atlanta Medical Group, a clinic that distributed large volumes of prescription opioids.
- ▪Purdue Pharma agreed to pay up to $6 billion in a settlement related to the opioid epidemic.
- ▪The pill mill era peaked in the early 2010s, but its consequences are still felt today.
- ▪Over 107,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2023, with opioids being a major contributor.
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| Original publisher | Business Insider |
| Canonical URL | https://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-opioid-black-market-works-from-a-former-pill-mill-owner-2026-5 |
| Publication time | Sat, 23 May 2026 11:00:01 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-23T11:42:26.397Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-23T11:42:26.397Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | Zen8Rx1VXCwg |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Jason Votrobek was convicted in 2014 on drug trafficking and money laundering charges and later sentenced to 15 years in federal prison.Votrobek talks to Business Insider about his early days smuggling cocaine and his role in the prescription opioid trade. Votrobek co-owned and operated Atlanta Medical Group, a Georgia clinic that distributed large volumes of oxycodone and other prescription drugs.He describes how pain clinics capitalized on the demand for prescription opioids. Lawsuits against companies like Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, led to several changes in the system. Purdue and its owners agreed to pay up to $6 billion in a settlement tied to claims over their role in the opioid epidemic.Although the "pill mill" era peaked in the early 2010s, the consequences persist.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Business Insider.