To Alan McGonigal, an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the district's civil division,
the rampant abuse of prescription drugs required a more holistic strategy, one that he had often used in prosecuting health care fraud: Find the gatekeepers.
While
rampant abuse of heroin and
prescription opiates dominates public attention, dependency on benzodiazepines — a group
of tranquilizers that includes
drugs such as Ativan, Klonopin, and Xanax — remains less widely acknowledged or understood.