DRUGS ARE SO SEDUCTIVE AND ADDICTIVE, PEOPLE COME BACK FOR MORE

If you saw these people in the mall, you wouldn't look twice.

There's a 30-something woman with long hair, a bearded middle-
agedman clad in a thermal vest, and a 42-year-old woman wearing a
shapeless dress over white socks and white sneakers.

But their acts, allegedly helped by Dr. James Graves, cost you money
and threatened public safety.

Here's a man who struck nine different objects during a ride along U.S. 29.

This woman passed out from an overdose of drugs while she was behind
the wheel of a car. Fortunately, she was stopped at a traffic light.

And there's a woman in jail for crimes related to her drug habit.

They're just a few of the people in the steady parade of witnesses
testifying in the case of Graves, accused of committing manslaughter
and other crimes while giving out innumerable prescriptions for
painkillers and other drugs.

Watch the witnesses testify and two points quickly become clear:
Drugs are so seductive they overpower many people, and sometimes
people bring some of the troubles on themselves.

Taxpayers and ratepayers helped pick up the tab. Witnesses testified
they paid for their care with insurance or federal programs such as
Champus. One woman used Medicaid to pay for her pills, and then sold
half of them for $20-$40 apiece, giving her a $1,000 profit.

"I made quite a bit," said the woman, now in jail on a swindling charge.

Their testimony shows some people were unsuspecting victims but
others were eager to get the drugs, particularly Oxycontin, an
especially powerful high when the pill is ground into a solution and
injected.

"They said he (Graves) gives Oxy," recalled the 30-year-old woman,
who said she got her first taste of Oxycontin from an uncle.

People kept going to this doctor even though he seldom conducted
detailed examinations, preferring to talk about the Excel telephone
service he hawked. And they often bought into the Excel program
because, as one woman said, "I wanted him to keep writing me 'scrips."

Sometimes Graves even had their prescriptions written before they got
to his office, they said.

"It eased the pain, but it's not what I wanted. I wanted my arm
fixed," said a man whose collarbone was broken when he was hit from
behind by someone wielding a beer bottle.

Defense attorneys Ed Ellis and Mike Gibson kept shoveling questions
and refutations against the tide of evidence presented by the
prosecutor, Assistant State Attorney Russ Edgar.

One woman agreed with Ellis that she exaggerated her level of pain to
get drugs from Graves.

"I probably lied to him," she said.

She didn't quit even after she mixed alcohol and drugs and collapsed
at a nightclub.

"I woke up a couple days later at Sacred Heart Hospital," she said.

Even though she is a college graduate, she was surprised that mixing
pills and alcohol was so risky. "No one ever told me not to do that."

Others accepted a share of responsibility for their acts.

One woman, who was arrested for driving under the influence of drugs,
said Graves never warned her about this potentially deadly
combination. Still, she took the pills to ease her chronic migraine
headaches. "It was the state of mind I was in," she said.

Another woman said she blamed Graves for prescribing drugs she didn't
need, yet took the ultimate responsibility herself.

"If he was any kind of doctor he would have known I was lying," she said.

Nevertheless, "it was my own choice to stick the rig in my arm."