FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- It's a new kind of drug deal, and it's happening all over Broward County.

The drugs are prescriptions. The buyers and sellers do their work not only at pain clinics but also on the streets; the problem is pervasive.

All day Thursday, Broward Sheriff's detectives set out to take them down.

Police said one deal went like this: 400 bucks for 40 pills of Oxycodone.

The Bust

Narcotics detectives were following two men -- one called "Hey" -- who allegedly agreed to sell them Oxycodone tablets.

When money was exchanged in a mini-mart parking lot, the suspects fled north on Dixie Highway.

"Damn - these guys are gonna go," said Detective Anthony Costanzo. Costanzo peeled out of the lot in his van, with another detective and a Local 10 crew inside.

In seconds, unmarked police cars blocked in the pair, cuffed them, and arrested them for drug trafficking -- a felony that carries a possible 15-year prison sentence, if convicted.

"This is the marked money used for the deal," Costanzo told Local 10's Janine Stanwood.

A woman in Oakland Park led cops to the suspects in Pompano Beach.

The Lead

An undercover detective, wearing an arm brace and limping, approached a well-dressed woman in front of Garden Drugs. He asked her how he could score some pills.

A detective's voice could be heard on the police radio: "She's telling him she knows someone who's selling them."

Behind her white car, the woman allegedly sold three pills for $40. She didn't know she was selling to a narcotics officer.

"He's got the pills," the voice said.

After the alleged transaction, police continued following the woman and a male companion when they told the undercover officer they could score him more pills. After tailing them for nearly 30 minutes, police pulled them over in a parking lot and arrested them for delivery of Oxycodone.

"It's huge. This is the new crack of the 80s," said the undercover officer, pulling the brace off his arm.

The Law

Police believe addicts and pushers pick pill clinics -- and mom and pop pharmacies -- because narcotics aren't tracked there.

Thirty-eight states have Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs -- PDMPs -- that trace where these potent pills go. The biggest state without one used to be Florida, until a bill to create one just recently passed.

"That would help tremendously. That's why out-of-towners come here to Florida," the undercover detective said.

The Link

Police said when the pain clinics are out of pills, pushers turn to the streets. For example, the woman in Oakland Park snitched on the man in Pompano Beach -- her alleged hook-up --when she couldn't get pills with a prescription.

"It started with a group of people who sold their pills to us. They got arrested and they hooked us up to their alternate sources of supply, which was their street source," Pisante said.

He also said he is confident his team of narcotics detectives are working to break that cycle.

"We're on the front end of this," he said. "We're enforcing those clinics. And if you're doing something illegal with pills, we're going to be there.