When the DEA prefer OPINIONS over FACTS when filing charges violating the CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE ACT

Posted on October 12, 2021 by Pharmaciststeve

Many many years ago … many as long ago as the Clinton Admin, some entity was hired/appointed to evaluate numerous agencies and how successful they were in meeting their goal(s)…  and I remember that the DEA GOT A SCORE OF ZERO.  I am sure that it was before the Decade of Pain Law (2001)… which was the end of the Clinton Admin.

since over the years – especially since the Decade of Pain Law expired and was not renewed in 2010…  It would seem that the DEA has stepped up their enforcement on “low hanging fruits’ … prescribers..  In 1980 the DEA estimated that the cartels were generating 12 Billion in illegal drugs and recently I have seen that estimate to be in the 100 billion range…  in FORTY YEARS the $$$ being generated by illegal drugs is up in range of EIGHT FOLD.  In 1980 our population was around 230 million and today it is around 320 million. So our population has grown 40% and illegal drug use – in $$$ – is up EIGHT FOLD ? Does this suggest how efficient the DEA has functioned in the last 40 years… or 80% of the total war on drugs years ?

I made this post a a few days ago about lawsuits in Ohio against pharmacies and quoting the “large number of opiates dispensed” over several years… I did some “reverse math” and reality and “DEA math” really doesn’t “compute”  https://www.pharmaciststeve.com/i-have-heard-something-about-a-new-math-but-the-dea-apparently-has-created-their-own-math-system/

This recent lawsuit https://www.pharmaciststeve.com/7-million-awarded-to-family-of-man-who-killed-himself-after-pain-medication-denied/ stands then it may be a very serious step forward a change in how chronic pain pts are being treated/mistreated by prescribers.  What I find interesting of the decision in this lawsuit is that this clinic is in Louisville, KY  – which has all four of the major TV channels and ONLY ONE reported on the outcome of this trial.  Metro Louisville Ky encompasses some 2+ million population.   Does this represent a bias of the three local channels or a policy coming from the national HQ of these TV channels ?

It was recently reported out of the 93,000 drug OD’s ….  abt 75% involved illegal fentanyl…  It would appear that the DEA is sticking to their original concept from when they were created in 1973… opiates are HIGHLY ADDICTING…. ANY PRESCRIBING OF OPIATES WILL CAUSE ADDICTION…. ADDICTS WILL END UP USING “STREET ADDICTS AND ODing”  The fact that Opiate Rxs peaked in 2011-2012 and DEA has cut opiate production quotas by abt 50% BUT… OD’s involving illegal opiates have have increased exponentially.

The DEA’s Long Game

https://daily-remedy.com/the-deas-long-game/

The canary in the coal mine is a metaphor alluding to the initial sign of an impending calamity.

An apt metaphor for what just transpired. Recently, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) issued a public safety alert informing the public about a, “sharp increase in fake prescription pills containing Fentanyl and Meth[amphetamines]”.

The alert was the canary in the coal mine, but the impending calamity is not what we are led to believe. We knew of a rise in counterfeit prescription pills for many years. It was a rise induced directly by DEA policies inflicted upon patients.

The impending calamity is not the risks counterfeit pills pose to the public, but the legal liability the DEA faces for its failed policies.

For years federal agencies and physician advocacy groups remained in lockstep on the causes of the opioid epidemic. Lax prescription guidelines, overprescribing by willing physicians, and the addictive nature of opioids – we heard it all.

Unfortunately, these purported causes proved erroneous at best or deliberately misrepresented at worst. And implementation of policies based on these causes led to a rise in suicide and clinical stigmatization among chronic pain patients and patients with substance use dependencies.

An atrocity the DEA bears direct responsibility for.

The DEA orchestrated a culture of fear that can be described as medical McCarthyism, in which the fear of prosecution defined the quality of care for stigmatized patients. Accusations formed the basis of convictions as we saw physicians imprisoned for providing care and patients abruptly abandoned without legal recourse.

That is until now.

The American Medical Association (AMA) recently issued a report through its newly formed Substance Use and Pain Care Task Force recommending significant policy changes it believes would more effectively address the nation’s opioid epidemic. Stopping short of outright criticizing the DEA, the report proposes policy recommendations that run diametrically opposite to the DEA’s approach to the epidemic.

The report is simply the latest in a long line of published studies casting doubt on long held assumptions about the opioid epidemic. We know there is no correlation between opioid-related mortality and the number of opioid prescriptions. We know abruptly discontinuing opioids leads to adverse patient outcomes. And we know forcing physicians to reduce the number of opioid prescriptions leads to a rise in counterfeit prescription opioids.

All of which makes the public health alert by the DEA even more curious.

It is absurd to believe the DEA is not aware of the clinical consequences of its failed policies. And to issue a public health alert without acknowledging the basis for such an alert is deliberately deceptive – disrespecting the lives of the patients lost through these policies and conveying a lack of accountability on the part of the DEA.

But lacking accountability is different from lacking awareness. The DEA is clearly aware its aggressive approach to criminalizing the patient encounter has led to a rise in counterfeit prescription medications and adverse patient outcomes.

In Kentucky, a federal judge deemed a pain management practice liable for the suicide of a patient unable to receive adequate pain relief, who then committed suicide as a result of the untreated pain. The judge ruled that the physicians in the practice were liable for the suicide because they inappropriately reduced the patient’s opioid prescription dosage.

A ruling that implies patients have a right to be treated for pain, that when applied broadly to all chronic pain patients would hold the DEA liable for undue harms caused to patients based on its aggressive stance on opioid prescriptions.

Something the DEA is well aware of, but seems bent on assuming no accountability for, hoping the failed policies are seen as well-intentioned policy errors.

But in recently uncovered reports obtained through multiple FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests, it appears the DEA’s aggressive stance extends beyond erroneous policies and the specter of clinical fear – to something far more nefarious, far more deliberate.

For years the DEA colluded with major insurance companies to obtain data on prescribing practices for physicians who treated patients in pain with prescription opioids, contracting covert, third-party data-mining companies to troll medical records without the consent of patients or the knowledge of physicians.

In 2016, these data-mining companies modified the data analysis, changing the definition of a high risk opioid prescriber to encompass a majority of physicians who prescribed opioids. The adjustment was a blatant attempt to coordinate and speed the indictment of physicians, and to strengthen the likelihood of convictions.

It should come as no surprise that this is when we began to see a rise in physician imprisonments and a rise in counterfeit opioids. Both of which are direct consequences of deliberately misrepresenting the trolled medical data.

Now, years later, lacking the support of physician advocacy groups, or the protection of public perception, the DEA finds itself confronting the ugly reality of its failed policies – and the ensuing liability.

But liability comes in different forms. Liability can be characterized as a harmless mistake or as a deliberate misrepresentation. The behavior of the DEA elucidated through the FOIA documents would suggest the latter.

Yet the public health alert provides a convenient rebuttal. A plausible excuse for the DEA to claim its failed policies were an honest mistake. That when the DEA realized its policies were leading to a rise in counterfeit opioid prescriptions, it issued a public health alert, suggesting the adverse clinical outcomes – the suicides and stigmatizations – were nothing more than an unintended consequence, an honest mistake.

For the DEA to issue a public health alert for a crisis that began years ago through its own policies is certainly a curious course of action – something we rarely see from federal agencies.

But a broader analysis reveals that the timing of the alert is less curious, and more strategic. A canary in the coal mine – for the impending liability the DEA will soon face.

Filed under: General Problems | 7 Comments »

You only have ONE LIFE & getting the wrong med could END IT… do chain stores really care about med errors ?

Posted on October 11, 2021 by Pharmaciststeve

No matter the business or profession,  When the staff is expected to “run at 100%+”.. they created “short cuts” and that means that some quality control issues are sometimes skipped.  Every store has at least one tech that “never makes mistakes” – “never” is a ABSOLUTE and it is NEVER POSSIBLE.  I know that when on those rare occasions when they did make a mistake… all I had to do was ask “you want to look at this again”… because they were so proud of being such a good tech… that they would beat themselves up for letting a error get past them.

Then when I was working at a large national nursing home pharmacy, they hired a new Rx input tech that was suppose to have worked for TWO YEARS for a national chain pharmacy and after a while … when there was a documented 20%+ input errors… the pharmacists at the facility went to management and wanted her fired, but management told the pharmacists that they “had too much invested in her training to fire her”…   They eventually moved her to another position that did not involve direct involvement in taking or filling Rxs.

Understaffing at some CVS pharmacies in Virginia has put patients at risk, former employees say

http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2021/10/11/virginia-report-sheds-troubling-light-on-problem-of-understaffing-at-chain-pharmacies/

[Editor’s note: Last year, in a story that referenced worrisome examples from North Carolina, the New York Times reported on how insufficient staffing has brought about big problems at American chain pharmacies that are endangering public health.

This morning, in a new report for the Virginia Mercury, reporter Kate Masters relates similarly troubling developments from our neighbor to the north at a chain pharmacy with hundreds of outlets in North Carolina.]

One location in Virginia Beach was fined $470,000 for serious dispensing errors. Pharmacists say its a systemic problem.

Over the last two years, employees at a CVS Pharmacy in Virginia Beach have raised repeated concerns over patient safety.

At one point, multiple pharmacy technicians told a state inspector that a pharmacist at the store had mistakenly given a patient a hundred extra doses of Percocet — a powerful prescription opioid. Another customer received an antibiotic despite a known history of not tolerating the drug and was taken to the emergency room after an allergic reaction.

In another instance, a patient received the right medication with the wrong instructions, according to another pharmacy tech, who said the oral cholesterol drug came with directions to insert the pills vaginally.

The root of the errors, employees said, was chronic understaffing and an unsustainable workload that made it impossible for pharmacists and technicians to focus on their jobs.

“The pharmacists cannot properly concentrate because they have so much to do,” said Kristopher Ratliff, a member of Virginia’s Board of Pharmacy, reading from a more than 600-page investigative report produced by state regulators.

“A staff pharmacist stated hours had been cut to the point where she didn’t know how the pharmacy was supposed to function,” added Mykl Egan, the board’s discipline case manager, reading from the report. “A fourth pharmacist described the pharmacy as a ‘sweatshop.’”

The findings, which covered a single CVS store, resulted in a $427,000 fine for the chain and one unannounced inspection within the next 12 months. CVS “respectfully disagree[s]” with the board’s order, according to spokesman Mike DeAngelis, and is “considering our options” for potential next steps.

But news of the investigation came as no surprise to former CVS employees in Virginia, who said working conditions were so bad that they had affected their mental and physical health. Nor were the problems contained to a single store, according to two former pharmacists, who worked in multiple locations across the state and heard similar concerns from other staff members.

“The sheer number of people who go home and cry because of the pressures they’re under — it’s unbelievable,” said Michelle Harmon, a former CVS pharmacist in the Hampton Roads region who’s still part of a Facebook group for mothers in the industry. “You’re so mentally drained you don’t have time for your family. I was just existing — going to work, coming home, doing whatever I could to hit the numbers so my patients were taken care of.”

Safety and staffing issues at national pharmacy chains have become a growing issue for state regulators both in Virginia and across the country. A 2020 investigation by The New York Times found that at least two dozen states have received multiple complaints from pharmacists and physicians worried that chain pharmacy policies are undercutting patient care.

Photo: (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

In many cases, the errors have had significant consequences. An 85-year-old in Florida died after a Publix pharmacy dispensed a chemotherapy drug instead of the antidepressant she was prescribed. At the CVS in Virginia Beach, a state inspector reviewed 200 hardcopy prescriptions and found 74 mistakes — an error rate of roughly 37 percent. In at least two cases, pharmacists dispensed medications at multiple times over the prescribed dosage, including cyclobenzaprine, a muscle relaxant, and dexamethasone, an anti-inflammatory drug that’s been used to treat COVID-19 patients.

“Now, in my 32 years of practice in retail pharmacy, this is a classic symptom of going too fast, too distracted, to pay attention to what you’re doing,” Ratliff said during the hearing. At one point, he described the working conditions as “unacceptable,” but the board’s secretive disciplinary process makes it difficult to determine how widespread the problems are across Virginia.

Diane Powers, director of communications for the Virginia Department of Health Professions, said that board investigations are complaint-driven. However, complaints against pharmacies are considered confidential under Virginia state code, she said, making it impossible to know whether other CVS stores have experienced the same problems.

The board did release its final order in the case, but refused to provide the Mercury with a copy of the full investigative report, which was referred to repeatedly during the public hearing. Powers also said the report was exempt from disclosure under the state’s Freedom of Information Act laws.

“Investigations are confidential under law and therefore, the board can neither confirm or deny the existence of any ongoing investigations,” she added in a follow-up statement. Nearly half of the board’s disciplinary case decisions involving pharmacies over the last 90 days have been issued in response to violations by large chain locations, including CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid. But it’s unclear if any involved complaints similar to those filed against the CVS store in Virginia Beach.

Both Harmon and another former CVS pharmacist, who requested anonymity because she feared professional repercussions, say understaffing has been a growing problem at CVS for years. It only became worse with the arrival of COVID-19, they said.

Before the pandemic, the company had steadily been reducing the number of hours that pharmacy techs, a non-salaried position, were allowed to work every week. The former pharmacist said it was clear some stores didn’t have enough staff to meet the demands of the job, but that the stress was “manageable” until cases of the virus began to spread.

“Then COVID just made things impossible,” she said. “That tipped it over the edge.” Both pharmacists worked at high-volume stores, where they’d fill anywhere between 500 and 1,000 prescriptions a day. Harmon said her pharmacy sometimes received up to 10 phone calls at a time, which employees were expected to answer by the second ring. The pharmacies also ran drive-throughs and provided in-store services, including flu vaccines and counseling patients on their medications.

When COVID-19 hit, the pharmacies also started offering testing and — eventually — vaccinations. The former pharmacist who requested anonymity said CVS sent in additional pharmacists to administer the vaccines, but billing for the shots and registering them in the state’s immunization system fell to the regular staff.

“Before the clinic started, you’d just get pages and pages and pages,” she said. “All of that paperwork went through your pharmacy that’s filling 900 prescriptions a day.” Harmon left the company later, in July of this year, after a brain hemorrhage she said doctors attributed to stress.

“I have fully recovered and I’m thankful for that,” she said. “But as I lay in that bed, I thought to myself, ‘I’ve got to get out of this environment.’”

They aren’t the only CVS employees to report health issues traced to stressful working conditions. According to the Board of Pharmacy decision, a pharmacist at the Virginia Beach location was diagnosed with anxiety and took a medical leave of absence from the store. A technician also took stress-induced leave, and another was prescribed anti-anxiety medication “because of the stress of working” at the pharmacy.

DeAngelis, the spokesman for CVS, described many of the complaints in the report as “inaccurate or outdated” (“It should be noted that the underlying complaints from a former employee are nearly two years old and this store location has since had a change in management,” he wrote in an emailed statement).

Harmon, though, said she had experienced many of the same challenges described in the hearing as recently as July. One of the main stressors, for both her and employees at the Virginia Beach location, were the metrics that CVS set for its stores. According to Harmon, expectations were broken down into a 100-point system, from how fast it took to type a prescription into the system to how quickly it was checked by a pharmacist and delivered to a patient.

But as the company cut down technician hours, Harmon and the other pharmacist said those metrics became harder and harder to meet. With the drive-through and COVID-19 testing to run, they said there was sometimes a single pharmacist and technician left to fill hundreds of prescriptions by themselves. On some days, Harmon said it amounted to filling a prescription every minute and a half in an average 13-hour shift.

There was also what pharmacy board members described in the hearing as “busywork” — other tasks that employees were assigned and rated on. The other former pharmacist said the company expected pharmacists or technicians to call at least 100 patients a week to check if they needed a prescription refilled or wanted to switch to a larger, 90-day supply.

At first, she said CVS budgeted additional staff hours for the calls, but they eventually became part of the daily workload. Harmon said patients were also given the option to request drug delivery instead of picking up the medication in-person.

But the company expected deliveries to go out at a certain time every day, and allowed customers to order additional items from other sections of the store.

“So, I’m having to have a technician stop what she’s doing, filling prescriptions, to go package a non-prescription order,” Harmon said. At some points during the pandemic, she estimated her store received at least 20 orders a day.

Employees said the constant distractions made it impossible to meet metrics and fill prescriptions safely. At one point, one of the pharmacists worked in a store with a backlog of more than 700 orders, when that happened, they said it was up to the salaried pharmacists to work extra hours — or come in over the weekend — to get the store caught up.

The former pharmacists said the workloads made it nearly impossible for pharmacists or technicians to take a break during the day.

At the Virginia Beach location, the Board of Pharmacy found one employee was asked to sign a waiver attesting she wouldn’t take a meal break. Another “routinely” ate her lunch behind the pharmacy safe, according to the board’s order, because the store was too busy to stop working. The former pharmacist who asked for anonymity told the Mercury her pharmacy wasn’t allowed to close for lunch, and there were regularly days when she didn’t have time to use the restroom for an entire 13-hour shift.

DeAngelis noted that management had changed at the Virginia Beach location since the investigation. “In fact, our store’s lead pharmacist and its district leader both appeared at the board hearing to refute the allegations,” he wrote. New district leader Paul McCormick told the board that CVS was in the process of unrolling regularly scheduled lunch breaks at pharmacies nationwide, and that the company had reduced both the number of calls and metrics it expected employees to make and meet.

Board members, though, appeared skeptical that the personnel changes had led to a significant shift in culture. And both former pharmacists said many CVS employees weren’t waiting on improvements, with staff leaving for other jobs.

“Nobody wants to make mistakes,” Harmon added. “That’s why we didn’t take breaks. That’s why we didn’t go to the bathroom. That’s why you come in early and stay late. You basically sacrifice yourself to make sure your patients are taken care of.”

Kate Masters is a reporter for the Virginia Mercury which first published this report.

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AMA wants to know – any entity denying/limiting pt’s their pain meds

Posted on October 8, 2021 by Pharmaciststeve

https://youtu.be/iGjKHrD1OW0

AMA is asking for your stories. We are relaying the request. If you have had problems obtaining opiate pain medicines AMA wants to know.
If you have had limitations on your pain medications by pharmacists, insurance companies, ER’s, after surgery or by office doctors or who ever limiting opioid medications send your brief story to AMA to be counted. Your report needs your name (or the name of a representative, if you are shy), city, state, zip, no address or phone. that’s it plus – your primary diagnosis just one or two, what happened to you 1-3 sentences and what medicines were involved( if just a denial to treat at all put “opiate pain medicine”) add the insurance company if they were a problem and thats all. Make it brief they are just counting.

EMail report to: opioidtaskforce@ama-assn.org

They have said they want to hear from as many as possible. JUST DO IT! easy they are primarily counting

Help get others do this, it is ok if if the sick person cannot do it.

Speak up, someone is listening!
National Pain Council supports this effort
http://www.National Pain Council.org

 

Filed under: General Problems | 6 Comments »

Division within the community has apparently just HIT A NEW LOW !

Posted on October 7, 2021 by Pharmaciststeve

A few people have some proof who is behind this …  and the question is… if making such a report of one or more people involved in the protest on Oct 20… could this be considered making a false police report… Could the police – out of caution – everyone showing up for the protest – be charged with a 5150… resulting in a 72 hr involuntary mental health hold.

Then there is possible damages – defamation – of the American Pain & Disability Foundation name/reputation… that could be sought out as well as the defamation of Bob Sheerin’s name and reputation, now that he has been banned/cut off all of internet media outlets because of all this “misbehavior”

This could be quite interesting in how this shakes out..  It could even be the “FINAL STRAW” that gets the community to come together.

 

Filed under: General Problems | 24 Comments »

Calif. Gov. Newsom signs law ending mandatory jail time for non-violent drug crimes

Posted on October 6, 2021 by Pharmaciststeve

It has been reported that the Kilograms of Illegal Fentanyl coming across our southern border is increasing dramatically and I guess Gov Newson is arranging for more experienced “drug pushers” to be on the streets to help “move” all these extra kilograms . maybe he is expecting all those transactions selling illegal Fentanyl will provide extra revenue into the state’s GDP ?

 

Calif. Gov. Newsom signs law ending mandatory jail time for non-violent drug crimes

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/newsom-signs-law-ending-mandatory-jail-time-for-non-violent-drug-crimes

Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., signed legislation Tuesday ending mandatory minimum jail sentences for nonviolent drug offenses.

The bill, SB73, goes into effect in January 2022 and allows judges to sentence offenders to probation instead of jail time. Under current law, probation is off the table for anyone selling or possessing for sale more than 14 grams of heroin or PCP.

The bill was first sponsored by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, who lauded the governor for his action.

“The racist, failed War on Drugs has helped build our system of mass incarceration, and we must dismantle and end its vestiges, which are still in place today,” Wiener said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “War on Drugs policies are ineffective, inhumane and expensive.”

Wiener also tweeted about the new law, writing, “Mass incarceration of non-violent drug offenders hasn’t reduced drug use or addiction. Time for a new approach. Thx, Governor, for this overdue step.”

“Our prisons and jails are filled with people — particularly from communities of color — who have committed low-level, nonviolent drug offenses and who would be much better served by non-carceral options like probation, rehabilitation and treatment,” said Weiner, according to The Associated Press. “It’s an important measure that will help end California’s system of mass incarceration.”

The California Association of Highway Patrolmen denounced the new law, saying the existing penalties “work as a deterrent or a reason for individuals to get the treatment they need to turn their lives around,” according to the AP. The law enforcement group soberly predicted that the law will worsen drug crimes.

Wiener’s bill “sets a dangerous precedent … and would jeopardize the health and safety of the communities we are sworn to protect,” warned the California Police Chiefs Association.

Wiener has sponsored other controversial legislation in the state Senate, such a law to allow “safe injection sites” for drug addicts.

In 2020, Wiener made headlines for introducing a bill that allowed a judge the discretion to prevent a young adult convicted of gay sex with a minor from registering as a sex offender, which Newsom also signed.

Other bills Wiener threw his weight behind included one decriminalizing psychedelics and another that made knowingly infecting a sexual partner with HIV a misdemeanor instead of a felony.

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The truth will not always set you free – but it might get you FIRED

Posted on October 6, 2021 by Pharmaciststeve

There has seemingly been a rash of Pharmacists walking off and or not showing up for work around me and Rx depts in Walgreens, CVS, Target it has been reported are being opened sporadically.  Of course those pts that patronize generally don’t have to deal with such problems… because the pharmacy/owner of the pharmacy will show up to open the store and work…  because they have a substantial investment in the pharmacy.  In case anyone is interesting in finding a independent pharmacy… here is a link to find one by zip code https://ncpa.org/pharmacy-locator

 

Filed under: General Problems | 3 Comments »

Well… I guess that I can’t say that any more

Posted on October 4, 2021 by Pharmaciststeve

I have often stated while we see abt a cop shot/killed every day…and when is the last time that you have heard about a DEA agent being shot/killed, because they typically go after “low hanging fruit”… prescribers who are typically not armed to the teeth…  Well, today that all changed…  I routinely hear about this sort of things happening at airline terminals, amtrak stations, bus stations… so I did a web search on www.google.com using these words “ DEA confiscating money on amtrak or airline terminals or bus terminals“ and it returned  723,000 “hits”  www.bing.com got ONLY 12,800 “hits”,  www.duckduckgo.com did not give a count for the total “hits” and www.dogpile.com didn’t provide a count for “hits” either although both returned several pages of “hits”

Here is a article below from FIVE YEARS AGO  https://papersplease.org/wp/2016/08/10/dea-recruits-airline-travel-industry-staff-to-inform-on-travelers/    so this is not a new thing or a “one time” incident with the DEA and travelers on many commercial transportation systems getting their cash confiscated. One would think that with all this activity showing up in the media… that at least a few members of Congress would be aware of it, but since abt 40% of Congress is attorneys… maybe they don’t want to go up against their “Brothers & Sisters” in this “judicial fraternity “?  It is claimed that we have THREE DISTINCT branches of the Fed government…until you “get into the weeds”… Legislative (Congress) is 40% attorneys, Supreme Court is mostly attorneys – besides the nine that sits on the bench & US Marshall Service, Executive branch which includes DOJ ( FBI, Secret Service, DEA, and another “pot of attorneys”  There is a old saying… “Those that holds the GOLD, writes the rules” … perhaps with the USA…”those that holds the BADGE… selectively enforces the rules ”  After all they always says that we are a country of rules/laws… I once saw a quote that we have 12 -15 million laws, rules, regulations to enforce the TEN COMMANDMENTS and Congress typically add a few hundred new laws every year  !

Brad Heath reports in USA Today that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been recruiting airline and other travel industry staff to inform on travelers. The DEA has been using these tips from industry insider informers with access to travel reservations as the basis for searches, seizures, and “civil forfeiture” proceedings to confiscate cash from travelers on the basis of allegations that it was somehow associated with illegal drugs:

USA TODAY identified 87 cases in recent years in which the Justice Department went to federal court to seize cash from travelers after agents said they had been tipped off to a suspicious itinerary. Those cases likely represent only a small fraction of the instances in which agents have stopped travelers or seized cash based on their travel patterns, because few such encounters ever make it to court.

Those cases nonetheless offer evidence of the program’s sweep. Filings show agents were able to profile passengers on Amtrak and nearly every major U.S. airline, often without the companies’ consent. “We won’t release that information without a subpoena,” American Airlines spokesman Ross Feinstein said.

In almost none of these cases has the DEA actually brought any criminal charges against the travelers whose cash has been confiscated:

A DEA agent is killed in a shooting aboard an Amtrak train in Arizona

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/04/1043188813/dea-agent-killed-amtrak-arizona-shooting

A Drug Enforcement Administration special agent was killed Monday when a passenger, who also died, opened fire as officers were doing a routine inspection for illegal contraband on an Amtrak train in Tucson, Arizona, authorities said. A second agent and a Tucson police officer were wounded.

“It’s very horrific and we’re all just coming to terms with just how terrible a loss this is,” Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus said. “But I also want to reflect on the really heroic actions of the officers at the scene. They literally ran towards the danger, into the car, where there was an active shooting situation going on.”

Magnus spoke outside the hospital where the wounded agent and Tucson officer had been taken. The agent was listed in critical condition while the officer was in stable condition. He said authorities would not be releasing their names.

The shooting, which sent passengers fleeing, happened just after 8 a.m. on a train stopped at the station in the city’s downtown. A regional task force of DEA agents and Tucson police officers had boarded one of the cars to do a typical check for illegal money, weapons and drugs. It’s a common occurrence at all transit hubs, Magnus said.

Officers were in the middle of detaining a man on the upper level of the double-decker car when a second man pulled out a handgun and began firing. He exchanged several rounds with police and then barricaded himself in a bathroom on the lower level, Magnus said.

He was later found dead inside.

The other suspect has been arrested. It wasn’t immediately known what charges he faces or his relationship to the second man.

Two officers embrace near the scene of a shooting aboard an Amtrak train in Tucson, Ariz.

Evan Courtney/AP

Magnus praised Tucson police officers for getting the injured DEA agent off the train and rushing him to the hospital in the back of a patrol car. The hospitalized Tucson officer had been on the platform when he heard the shooting. He was shot when he ran into the car to help.

There were about a dozen other passengers in the car where the shooting occurred.

“I just think it’s kind of incredible here there weren’t other people who were hurt, even though we’re completely so saddened by the loss of the officer,” Magnus said.

Amtrak spokesman Jason Abrams also confirmed there were no reported injuries to the crew or passengers.

The Sunset Limited, Train 2, was traveling from Los Angeles to New Orleans, and arrived at the Tucson station at 7:40 am, Abrams said. There were 137 passengers and 11 crew members, he said. All have been evacuated to the station.

Evan Courtney was in a lounge car when people suddenly came running in yelling: “Shots fired!”

“I grabbed my backpack and ran,” Courtney told The Associated Press via Twitter direct messaging.

He said he huddled with other passengers while looking out the window. He saw several tactical police officers with assault rifles behind barricades. After 15 minutes, “police ran to us and told us to get out of the car and run in the opposite direction.”

Courtney later tweeted a photo of nearly two dozen officers including two embracing.

Dramatic video taken by a camera at the Southern Arizona Transportation Museum shows some of the shooting.

Multiple shots can be heard from inside a train before a man, who appears to be a security officer with a dog, boards in the middle of the second-to-last car through an open door. Two bystanders back away and then run past a baggage cart, joining four others as they usher each other into the last car and the door slides shut, the video shows.

One shot is heard and the security officer, holding a gun, backs off the train with the dog still on the leash. He runs behind a structure on the train platform as a man appears at the passenger car door, fires three shots toward the fleeing man and dog, and disappears back inside.

The camera belongs to Virtual Railfan, which operates more than 50 cameras livestreaming train operations around the country for train buffs. Kathy Abbott, operations manager, said both Tucson police and Amtrak police have asked for any footage to be made available.

Virtual Railfan’s cameras do capture crime but “maybe not this dramatic,” Abbott said. “This was definitely an adrenaline rush.”

Tucson, home to the University of Arizona, is about 110 miles south of Phoenix.

Filed under: General Problems | 1 Comment »

Here is yours truly: 15 minutes of “fame”

Posted on October 3, 2021 by Pharmaciststeve

A conversation with Pharmacist Steve Ariens

https://daily-remedy.com/podcast/a-conversation-with-pharmacist-steve-ariens/

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I have heard something about a “new math”… but the DEA apparently has created their own math system

Posted on October 3, 2021 by Pharmaciststeve

I love “DEA MATH”… lets look at the 2012-2016 is FIVE YEARS – 1825 days… it is estimated that there is abt 100,000,000 chronic pain pts… abt 30% of the population.. so of those 265 doses for every person would be abt 900 doses for each chronic pain pt – leaving nothing for acute pain.. so doing the simple math…. 900 doses for every chronic pain pt would mean that they MAY HAVE been prescribed a SINGLE DOSE EVERY OTHER DAY for five years.

For the county of 400 dose for every person … may have received FIVE DOSES EVERY WEEK for five years. – again leaving no opiates to treat acute pain for anyone post surgery or accident.

the typical chronic pain pts that is classified as intractable chronic pain – abt 25-35 million pts (8%-10% of our population) – requiring up to 3 long acting opiates and up to 4 short acting for break thru pain..

Ohio has population of abt 12 million …. meaning that they have a estimated 1- 1.2 million intractable chronic pain pts living in Ohio.

This link is to a article that states that 75% of opiate OD’s is from ILLEGAL FENTANYL.. and the last time I checked neither drug wholesalers nor pharmacies sell/dispense illegal Fentanyl

Could better chronic pain management – prevent thousands of OD’s (suicides) EACH YEAR ?

Are these opiate lawsuits just a bureaucratic “money grab”… the money from the 1998 Tobacco settlement where bureaucrats sued companies producing a LEGAL PRODUCT for the “believed” health issues they adversely affected.  Of course, tobacco already had a “sin tax” put on it years ago. That settlement was to be paid out over 25 yrs and that “free money annuity” is about to run out… the vast majority of the states in that settlement agreed to put that money toward getting people stop smoking, but it would appear that abt 95% of all that money just got “dumped” into the state’s general fund.  The states and feds apparently were able to “double dip” on that money… since all the law firms took the case on a contingency basis – they took a percentage of the settlement – and the bureaucrats would have gotten taxes paid by the law firms on their profits from handling those lawsuits.

Have these bureaucracies really got financially addicted to all that “free money” ?  Maybe they didn’t want to raise taxes or cut services to deal with the reduced cash flow as the tobacco settlement comes to a end.

This whole opiate lawsuit is over getting money to help the “poor addicts” and some are already speculating that 95% of the money will get dumped into the state’s coffers and I have read where this money will be paid out over 18 yrs…  and the bureaucrats will “double dip” once again via the taxes that the law firms’ profit from the settlement.

So what industry, that is selling a legal product, be the next to get sued – starting in about 12 yrs… so that another “free money annuity” can be in place when this opiate money dries up. Since the use/abuse of alcohol currently contributes to more annual deaths than all drug overdoses…  give you an suggestions ?

 

Pharmacies face 1st trial over role in opioid crisis

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/pharmacies-face-1st-trial-role-opioid-crisis-80364447

A bellwether trial is set to start Monday in federal court in Cleveland to determine whether retail pharmacy chains are liable for costs related to the opioid crisis in two Ohio counties

CLEVELAND — So many prescription painkillers were dispensed in Lake County, Ohio, between 2012 and 2016 that the amount equaled 265 pills for every resident. Just to the south, the flood of prescription opioids during the same period equated to 400 pills for every resident of Trumbull County.Attorneys say efforts to address the ensuing overdose epidemic has cost each of the financially struggling counties at least $1 billion. Now those counties want major national pharmacy chains that were involved in much of that distribution to pay.In a bellwether federal trial starting Monday in Cleveland, Lake and Trumbull counties will try to convince a jury that the retail pharmacy companies played an outsized role in creating a public nuisance in the way they dispensed pain medication into their communities.This will be the first time pharmacy companies, in this case CVS, Walgreens, Giant Eagle and Walmart, have gone to trial to defend themselves in the nation’s ongoing legal reckoning over the opioid crisis. The trial, which is expected to last around six weeks, could set the tone for similar lawsuits against retail pharmacy chains by government entities across the U.S.The trial will center on the harm to the counties and the response by the pharmacy chains, which have argued in court filings that their pharmacists were merely filling prescriptions written by physicians for legitimate medical needs. The trial also has a human dimension, watched closely by those whose family members are part of the roughly 500,000 Americans whose deaths are attributed to opioid abuse over the past two decades.

“People need to realize that drug addiction is a family disease, and everyone in the family is affected by it,” said Sharon Grover, whose daughter died after becoming addicted to prescription pain pills and then heroin. “I’m never going to be the same.”

Grover, who lives in the small Trumbull County community of Mesopotamia Township, said she believes her daughter, Rachael Realini, started using prescription painkillers around 2013, but missed any signs of her addiction. By 2016, she told her mother she needed help. When pain pills became scarce, she turned to heroin to feed her habit.

“She looked terrible,” Grover said of her daughter, a registered nurse and mother of two small children. “We hugged, and I told her we would get through this.”

Attempts at rehabilitation in Ohio and Florida failed. Realini was found dead at her home in April 2017 from a fentanyl overdose, an autopsy showed. No other drugs were found in her system.

An attorney for the counties, Frank Gallucci, said that is similar to the pattern seen throughout their communities: Heroin and synthetic fentanyl have largely replaced prescription painkillers, which have been harder to obtain as the industry has been forced to dial back on dispensing.

Another major pharmacy chain, Rite-Aid, settled with Lake and Trumbull counties, which are located outside Cleveland. The Trumbull settlement was $1.5 million; the Lake County amount has not been disclosed.

The trial starting Monday before U.S. District Judge Dan Polster is part of a broader constellation of federal opioid lawsuits — about 3,000 in all — that have been consolidated under the judge’s supervision.

Jim Misocky, an attorney and special projects coordinator in Trumbull County, along with Lake County Administrator Jason Boyd, said the ongoing opioid crisis has been a burden financially. They cited increased costs for their courts, jails, foster care, law enforcement and addiction treatment

The financial burden is especially acute in Trumbull County, where there have been thousands of job losses in recent years in steelmaking, auto manufacturing and automotive supply companies.

“It’s been a big hit on the budget,” Misocky said. “We don’t have a lot of wealth in this community.”

Trumbull County has had to hire a part-time pathologist in the county coroner’s office, Misocky said. When the county morgue fills up, bodies are sent to Cleveland or Lake County for autopsies.

Lake County’s Boyd said addiction treatment facilities there are “well beyond capacity.”

“That’s an issue we hear about continuously,” he said. “‘Where are we going to treat these people?’”

Attorneys for the two counties say 80 million prescription painkillers were dispensed in Trumbull between 2012 and 2016, according to data made public earlier through the court. In Lake County, it was 61 million pills. In trial briefs, the pharmacy companies argue that they followed guidelines established by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the state of Ohio in how their stores dispensed painkillers.

Attorneys for CVS, based in Rhode Island, said the allegations against the company “are completely unfounded.”

“The evidence presented at trial will show not only that CVS met the legal requirements for distributing prescription opioid medications in Lake and Trumbull Counties, but that it exceeded them,” attorneys for the company wrote.

Attorneys for Illinois-based Walgreens said the two counties were using “confused and contradictory legal theories against other defendants before they landed on the idea to sue retail pharmacy chains.”

The trial will be the fourth in the U.S. this year to test claims brought by governments against different players in the drug industry over the toll of prescription painkillers. Verdicts or judgments have not yet been reached in the others.

With trials ongoing and others queued up, many of the most prominent defendants have already reached settlements. Sometimes, they involve a small number of governments or just one defendant such as Rite Aid.

The nation’s three largest drug distribution companies, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson, along with drugmaker Johnson & Johnson, reached a $26 billion nationwide settlement earlier this year. A federal bankruptcy judge recently approved a settlement for Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, that is potentially worth $10 billion. The global consulting firm McKinsey & Company earlier this year agreed to pay nearly $600 million for its role in advising drug makers on how to boost sales of prescription opioid painkillers.

And in Ohio, lawsuits filed by two larger counties, Cuyahoga and Summit, against drug distribution companies were settled for $260 million before the start of trial in November 2019.

Grover believes the pharmacy giants bear a large responsibility for her daughter’s addiction and is glad they’re on trial.

“The pharmacy companies are the biggest drug dealers there are,” Grover said. “They’re white collar drug dealers, and they need to be held accountable.”

I love “DEA MATH”… lets look at the 2012-2016 is FIVE YEARS – 1825 days… it is estimated that there is abt 100,000,000 chronic pain pts… abt 30% of the population.. so of those 265 doses for every person would be abt 900 doses for every chronic pain pt – leaving nothing for acute pain.. so doing the simple math…. 900 doses for every chronic pain pt would mean that they MAY HAVE been prescribed a SINGLE DOSE EVERY OTHER DAY.

For the county of 400 dose for every person … may have received FIVE DOSES EVERY WEEK. – again leaving no opiates to treat acute pain for anyone post surgery or accident.

the typical chronic pain pts that is classified as intractable chronic pain – abt 25-35 million pts (8%-10% of our population) – requiring up to 3 long acting opiates and up to 4 short acting for break thru pain..

Ohio has population of abt 12 million …. meaning that they have a estimated 1- 1.2 million intractable chronic pain pts living in Ohio.

BTW… who is producing opiates in a “pill” form ?… the last – maybe only – pill dose available was a Ex-lax dose in “pill form”

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Interesting read FROM SIX YEARS AGO

Posted on October 2, 2021 by Pharmaciststeve


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