EVERETT, Wash. _ For years, Jevon "Goldie" Lawson dealt crack on the steps of a 7-Eleven in a rough part of this blue-collar town. He smoked the rocks he didn't sell and often appeared as strung out as his customers.
But in 2008, he moved into a $400,000 house, started driving a champagne-colored Humvee, and made himself the star act of his own hip-hop label. He abandoned the crack business. Found something better, he told associates.
What he found was OxyContin from Southern California, where organized drug rings were colluding with rogue doctors and pharmacies to obtain enormous quantities of the drug.
Illicit OxyContin devastated the entire Everett region. At the height of the drug's popularity, it was a factor in more than half of the crimes in Snohomish County. Abuse of the drug touched off an epidemic of painkiller and heroin addiction, which continues to this day.
The crisis swept up many young people, such as Katie McKnight, the daughter of an Everett physician whose dependency outlasted seven trips to rehab, and Brandon Smith, who lost a promising career at Nintendo and, ultimately, his freedom to OxyContin.
Authorities in Everett knew much of the drug was coming from traffickers in the Los Angeles area, but they were unable to determine how pills were getting on the black market. A Los Angeles Times review of court records and law enforcement reports suggests that several people who sent OxyContin from Southern California to Lawson in Everett were buying pills from Lake Medical, a clinic near MacArthur Park that was a front for a drug ring.
The records, along with interviews of law enforcement officials, indicate that Inland Empire Crips gang members drove bags of OxyContin north on Interstate 5 to Washington State and sent couriers aboard planes to Seattle with pills strapped to their bodies.
At the time OxyContin was ravaging Everett, Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, was tracking the voluminous prescriptions written by Lake Medical's doctors as well as the extraordinary quantities of pills ordered by corrupt pharmacies filling those prescriptions. It did not track Lake Medical pills to their final destinations, however.
It wasn't until years later, after authorities brought down the ring, that Purdue shared the information with law enforcement. By then, 1.1 million pills had spilled onto the black market.
