NATS: Gun salute, taps, memorial service

Aaron Glantz, reporter:
US army specialist Jeffrey Waggoner received a funeral with full military honors.

(Photos Jeff Waggoner, back to memorial service)

He was medically evacuated out of Afghanistan in 2007, after he sustained a groin injury when a rocket propelled grenade exploded during a house-to-house search.

But that's not what killed him. Waggoner survived his deployment. He died back home. ...

(Exteriors motel, VA hospital Roseburg)

In this motel...just hours after being discharged from a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Oregon.

(Photos Jeff Waggoner, exteriors VA hospital)

While recovering from his wounds, Waggoner's mental state deteriorated. ... He became addicted to painkillers.

And the army sent him to the detox center at this VA hospital in Roseburg to get clean.

But the hospital continued to give him narcotics and after two months they released him with a massive cocktail of drugs, including 12 tablets of the painkiller oxycodone.

(B-roll Jeff Waggoner's parents at cemetery)
Since Jeff's death his father Greg has been trying to piece together what happened.

Greg Waggoner, father:
I couldn't believe the amount of medications that were being prescribed to him.

(BROLL Exterior motel)

GLANTZ: After he left the hospital, Jeff went to the nearby motel.

Waggoner: he picked up a six-pack of beer. // He checked into a room.

(BROLL Exterior Motel)


Waggoner: // has a couple of beers. Decides he's hungry and he goes next door to a restaurant next to the motel, orders up a plate of nachos and another beer and then becomes very groggy, sleepy.

(surveillance video from motel)

GLANTZ: The surveillance footage shows what happened next. Jeff fumbles with the keys to his room, barely able to stand. He nods, then lurches forward and collapses. Waggoner lay on the floor for an hour until the paramedics arrived. They tried to revive him, but it was too late.

The state medical examiner's report stated that in addition to the two beers, Jeff consumed 8 oxycodone pills along with tranquilizers and muscle relaxers that he got from the VA.

(Greg Waggoner at cemetery)

GLANTZ: Greg Waggoner has never watched the video. He believes the VA was complicit in his son's death.

Waggoner: The last thing you would think is that you have a child in the hospital trying to get care, that somebody would call at your door and tell you that he passed away.

(exteriors VA hospital)

GLANTZ: Since Waggoner's death five years ago, the Roseburg hospital's narcotic prescription rate has continued to rise. We tried to interview the hospital director but our request was denied.

Last year, doctors in Roseburg wrote more opiate prescriptions per patient than any VA hospital in the country, according to data obtained by The Center for Investigative Reporting.

(GRAFX VA Roseburg to national view)

GLANTZ: The Center analyzed 12 years of prescription data from the VA and found that Prescriptions per patient for four highly addictive painkillers have surged by 270 percent since the war in Afghanistan began, far outstripping the increase in patients.

(B-Roll Stephen Xenakis)

GLANTZ: Dr. Stephen Xenakis is a psychiatrist and retired Army brigadier general. He says the data shows the agency is over-medicating patients as it struggles to keep up with their need for complex treatment.

Stephen Xenakis, psychiatrist:
They're working in these clinics, they're very busy, they've got time constraints, they've got pressures, and giving a prescription which they know how to do, and they're trained to do, is almost, it's a default.

GLANTZ: Xenakis says that prescription opiates actually hurt most veterans, rather than help them.

Xenakis: If you've been exposed to a number of blasts and are already feeling the effects of the blasts and then you add a medication for pain like an opiate, [..] that's going to make your thinking problems even worse, and not only that, you're going to feel more depressed.

(GRAFX VA study, regs)

GLANTZ: The VA has known about this problem for years ... In 2011, VA researchers published a study showing the fatal overdose rate among VA patients is nearly double the national average.

(NEED B-Roll Here of VA headquarters in Washington DC)
And four years ago the agency adopted regulations designed to get doctors to use alternatives to prescription opiates. ... We spent a month trying to get someone from the VA to go on the record about prescription painkillers. But no one would talk to us.

(Stock Footage: Capital Building, to Senate hearings)

Senator Bernie Sanders:
I want to get back to over-medication...

GLANTZ:  The issue is drawing interest on Capitol Hill. In March, Dr Robert Petzel, the VA's undersecretary for health, testified before the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs.


Dr. Robert Petzel, undersecretary for health:
Let me deal first with opioides, which is the most dangerous in my mind of our over medication issues

GLANTZ: Petzel says the VA uses opiates only as a last resort.

Dr. Robert Petzel, undersecretary for health:
When you're not able to manage the pain in any other way, it's opioides. And then there are very careful protocols about how that prescribing should be done.

(B-Roll AG heads to Newport, Newport town, Tim Fazio)

GLANTZ: But the data shows the rate of prescriptions for opiates continues to rise. And across the country, we found veterans locked in a life and death struggle, addicted to painkillers they got from the VA.

(B-Roll Tim Fazio in kitchen, then watches TV)

GLANTZ: In Newport, New Hampshire, Tim Fazio is trying to stay clean. Fazio is a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two years after he came home, he went to the VA for help. Since then, VA doctors have provided him with nearly 4,000 oxycodone pills.

Tim Fazio, marine corps veteran:
I thought the painkillers were okay because the doctors were prescribing them to me. // If the doctors are giving it to me, I'm gonna take it, you know, and I mean [..] if it makes me feel good I'm going to take 15 of them, you know what I mean?

(Photos Fazio in Fallujah, Afghanistan)

GLANTZ: Fazio deployed to Fallujah and he survived a three-day firefight in Afghanistan. He wasn't severely wounded in the war. He says he took the pills to blot out the guilt and shame of surviving when so many of his fellow marines died after coming home. His medical records show the VA knew he was an addict, and yet continued to dole out more opiates.

GLANTZ:  At Tim's family home in Western Massachusetts, his father Mike Fazio has built a basement shrine to his family's military legacy.

MIKE FAZIO: This is my son Tim, when he - this is when he got out of boot camp, he was so proud...

GLANTZ:  Fazio says his son's life started spiraling out of control, after Tim's best friend from the marine corps died.  He encouraged Tim to get help at the local VA hospital where doctors loaded him up on painkillers.  

MIKE FAZIO: .. that was the beginning and the end for him.

GLANTZ: Tim was addicted and overdosed again and again. His parents kicked him out and he moved in with Eric Demetrion, another former Marine.

(B-Roll Tim parents, cut to AG walks to Eric Demetrion grave)

GLANTZ:  The two fed each other's addictions, and when they ran out of pills, they bought heroin. Eventually, Tim realized he needed to move out

GLANTZ: Three months later, Demetrion was dead of an overdose.

(B-Roll Fazio and friends, pill bottle)

GLANTZ:  Today, Fazio is living with his girlfriend. He's been clean for six months now, but staying off opiates hasn't been easy. .. In July -- after a violent confrontation landed him in a VA emergency room -- he was shocked when an agency doctor again prescribed Oxycodone. Tim says he filled the prescription and then stared at the bottle.

Fazio: I opened it a couple of times a day for probably three or four days to take one out. I said, if I take this I'm not going to be living where I am now. I'm going to be off and running again. They're going to send me on my way. So I flushed it.

(B-roll Tim stands outside, waits for VA van)

GLANTZ:  With his mind no longer deadened by opiates, flashbacks and anxiety make him angry and explosive. And so, despite that recent history, Fazio still turns to the VA for help. He's up early this morning, waiting for a shuttle to take him to the VA.

Fazio (inside van): My goal is to figure out where this rage, anxiety and all this is coming from when I've been sober. [..]I got to figure out where that comes from and how to cope with that, I guess.

(B-roll Tim arrives at VA hospital, exterior VA sign)
GLANTZ:  The Department of Veterans Affairs remains a refuge for Tim, he says it's a place where he can surround himself with other veterans, men and women who have survived war, only to battle addiction at home.