People who want prescription drugs to get high never go within a mile of a doctor. If you think otherwise you are out of touch with reality. Rounding up friends is so obsolete.  The USA is awash in prescription pills and there is wayyyy more ways (more efficient-less time consuming) than going to a doctor. For an addict, going to a doctor is a last resort. A doctor on the take, generally in my mind, with as much as they oversee the various drugs under Schedule 2, is basically a thing of the past. The real middleman now-is someone who basically gets someone on the take AT the pharmaceutical manufacturing plant itself-then distributes from there-through mail, through mules, and through local distribution. That's why a case such as this is-as far as I can tell-rather rare for a geographically isolated place such as Alaska.