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By Mark Potter

The Drug Enforcement Administration and other authorities are raiding pharmacies, pain clinics and other facilities in four states as part of an aggressive crackdown on prescription pain drug abuse, federal law enforcement sources told NBC News.

The morning busts in Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi are part of a 15-month operation by the DEA drug diversion unit. The sources said 1,000 agents and officers conducted the raids.

A federal law enforcement source told NBC News that "Operation Pilluted" is the "single largest pharmaceutical operation in DEA history." It is focused on the illegal sale and distribution of pain killers, including oxycodone and hydrocodone.

MORE: How Pill Abuse Touches Every Corner of U.S.

One of the raids in Little Rock took place at KJ Medical Center, where authorities said they arrested one doctor, four staffers and a security guard.

In the last 15 months, 140 people have been arrested, and officers hope as many as 170 others will be arrested Wednesday, according to the sources. The sources said suspects in the operation include doctors and pharmacists.

Watch Cops, DEA Raid Suspected 'Pill Mill'

May 20, 201500:40

Gov. Robert Bentley of Alabama, himself a physician, described the doctors suspected in the raids as “an embarrassment to the medical profession.”

“When they choose to overprescribe narcotics to patients, and they know that these patients may be or are abusing them, then they change from being a physician to really being a drug dealer,” he said.

In Arkansas, federal prosecutor Christopher Thyer described one sting in which undercover officers paid $200 to get prescription drugs from a clinic without ever being examined.

He ticked off sobering statistics about prescription drug abuse in his state. Enough hydrocodone is prescribed in Arkansas every year to give 42 pills to every man, woman and child, he said.

“This is not a crime problem,” Thyer said. “This is truly a public health and community problem.”

There has been good news in the fight against prescription-drug abuse: Deaths from prescription-drug overdoses declined in 2012 after a decade-long climb, and they have since leveled off.

Still, an average of 44 die every day from opioids, including Vicodin, OxyContin and Percocet.

Image: Mark Potter Byline PhotoMark Potter

Mark Potter is an NBC News correspondent based in Miami where he reports for NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt, TODAY, MSNBC and NBCNews.com. He joined NBC News as a staff correspondent in 2004.

During his more than 40-year journalism career, Potter has reported from all over the United States, South America, Central America and the Caribbean, including Haiti, Cuba and  Mexico.  He has also worked in NBC's London and Hong Kong Bureaus, and has reported from China, the South Pacific, the Philippines and Israel. Much of his career was spent with investigative units  at both the national and regional levels, and he has reported on topics including politics, narcotics,  immigrant smuggling, environmental issues, natural disasters, international conflicts and numerous high-profile court cases.

Among the stories he has covered are the Cuban Mariel boatlift, the Grenada invasion, the arrest and trial of Panama's General Manuel Noriega, the Mexican and Colombian drug wars, the Haitian immigration crisis, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Hezbollah-Israeli war, the 1980's Miami riots and cocaine crisis, the Theodore Bundy murder trial, the Oklahoma City and  Atlanta Centennial Park bombing investigations, the regime of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, the Everglades Valujet crash, scores of hurricanes, the Armero volcano disaster in Colombia, the Central American conflicts, the Elian Gonzalez legal battle, several Papal trips, the right-to-die case of Terri Schiavo, the Gianni Versace murder, the U.S. heroin epidemic, the Southwest border-security debate, the U.S.-Cuban political opening and the dramatic prison-tunnel escape of Mexican kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

For 15 years, prior to working at NBC News, Potter was a correspondent for ABC News, reporting for World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Nightline and Good Morning America. He also worked for CNN, where among other duties he served as contributing correspondent for the Emmy-Award winning magazine show, CNN and Time.

Potter is the recipient of the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Award, a Robert F. Kennedy Award, an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, National Headliner Awards, the 2011 national Emmy Award for "Mexico: The War Next Door," a 2015 Emmy Award for "Hooked: America's Heroin Epidemic," numerous Emmy nominations, and six regional Emmy Awards. He also received a 2015 National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence Award. 

Potter has often appeared as a guest lecturer in journalism classes at the University of Miami, the University of Missouri and the University of Kansas. His work is also featured in "Square Grouper," a 2011 documentary film about South Florida marijuana smugglers, and in “Cocaine Cowboys Reloaded,” a 2014 documentary about drug-related violence in Miami and Colombia.

Potter was graduated from the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism and then worked for three local television stations in Evansville, Ind., and Miami before joining network news in 1983.