Drug Traffic a real pain along Texas/Louisiana border

Texas has been getting an unexpected flood of business from its Louisiana neighbors. Why would so many Louisianans flood across the Texas border?

It’s the draw of Texas pain management clinics that dispense pills much easier than Louisiana.

“At the height of the problem we were getting 80 to 90 percent of our cars from Louisiana,” said Orange County Sheriff Mike White. “Pain management is when you pay cash and you get the same pain prescription over and over and over.”

In fact, the sheriff’s department seized thousands of suspect pills from stopping so-called pain patients as they left the clinics.

“They get a cocktail of hydrocodone, Xanex and soma,” said White.

The problem – authorities say… the pill traffic is stretching from the Louisiana borders to Houston.

Recently federal authorities raided a clinic in Orange County. It’s out of this space now and business owners are happy about that.”

For the moment, seven out of the nine pain management clinics in Orange are no longer open, thanks to raids and crackdowns.

But with the border part of the pill mill gone, it’s unclear what that means for Houston.