NJ dealer caught with 83 bricks of heroin gets 6 months of rehab, no prison

http://nj1015.com/nj-dealer-caught-with-83-bricks-of-heroin-gets-6-months-of-rehab-no-prison

TOMS RIVER — An admitted drug dealer who was caught with about 4,150 doses of heroin worth $25,000 was sentenced to just six months of rehab and five years of probation.

Gary Fox, 30, of Toms River, who has a criminal record that includes previous drug convictions, avoided prison by being accepted by Drug Court and pleading guilty to two counts of third-degree possession with intent to distribute and a count of possession.

Fox, however, does face an alternate prison sentence of 10 years in prison with 3 1/2 years of parole ineligibility if he fails to complete the Drug Court program, according to a spokesman for the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office, who added Wednesday that the sentence was not a result of a plea deal with prosecutors.

The Drug Courts, part of Gov. Chris Christie’s reform efforts in the wake of a massive heroin addiction epidemic gripping the state, are meant to provide drug users with rehabilitation instead of placing them behind bars. Drug Courts, however, are not for violent or hardened criminals.

The courts found Fox eligible for the program and he began rehab in November, remaining in custody until his guilty plea in January, prosecutors said. Court records show he spent 168 days in county jail.

Toms River police arrested Fox in May, saying he had 80 wax folds of heroin and $740 in cash. A search of his storage unit found an additional 83 bricks of heroin, which amounted to 4,150 doses and a cash value of close to $25,000, police said at the time.

A month later, police at his Old Street home found another 40 wax folds of heroin, more than 1.5 pounds of marijuana, $2,000 in cash, prescription medications, a scale and packaging materials.

Fox was initially charged with possession of heroin, possession of heroin with intent to distribute, possession of over 50 grams of marijuana, possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, possession of Alprazolam and Suboxone, and possession of drug paraphernalia.

He plead guilty to two counts of third-degree possession with intent to distribute and one count of possession.

Police on Tuesday said they could not provide more details about the investigation.

This is not the first time Fox has been sentenced to rehab as a result of drug charges.

In 2009, he received the same sentence from a different judge in Ocean County for arrests in 2006 and 2007 on charges of possession of cocaine and Percocet.

Fox was represented by the Public Defender’s Office.

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Thank you to all that responded. I appreciate the advice .
The pharmacy we use is not a mom and pop but a large independent one. The letter that was given by the pharmacist to my friend mentioned not only the DEA but also pharmacy wholesalers not supplying to pharmacies with patients receiving opioids above the 90 mme. I have not heard of this component to the issues patients are facing. See the attached portion of the letter he was handed.
He has been with this pharmacy for close to 10 years. They have always been helpful and understanding.
I am just confused as to what the wholesalers role is in denying medications??
Has anyone else heard of this?

Apparently in Georgia the HIPAA covered pt medication information is made available to the Pharmacy board, DEA and numerous pharmacy wholesalers do “data mining” on this database.  Also apparently some entity in Georgia have decided that the CDC opiate dosing guidelines as “standard of care” and “best practices”. The above letter was handed to a pt when the pt’s opiate pain management meds were DENIED…

Someone needs to read the law that established the PMP in Georgia and see if this sort of data mining is authorized by that law… and if so then someone needs to hire a law firm because that may make it in conflict with the Americans with Disability Act and if there is a complimentary state ADA law as well.

The vast majority of pts being prescribed controlled meds… are dealing with subjective diseases… most of which would make these pts covered entities under the ADA law.

So does a state have the legal authority to pass a law that is in conflict with the ADA and does that make the state law – UNCONSTITUTIONAL. ?

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Sheriff was BURIED LAST WEEK  https://www.wpsdlocal6.com/2019/02/19/graves-county-sheriff-dewayne-redmon-honored-at-funeral/

https://www.newsweek.com/kentucky-sheriff-accused-raiding-drug-drop-box-his-own-personal-use-re-1205504

A Kentucky sheriff accused of stealing drugs from a drop box for his own personal use won re-election by a landslide despite the charges pending against him and a public letter from his deputies stating that he has an addiction.

Dewayne Redmon is once again Graves County sheriff after securing 47.2 percent of the vote in the election held on Tuesday. He faced off against six write-in candidates, with second place Jason Clark picking up 26.2 percent and third place Davant Ramage on 18.2 percent.  

Redmon was indicted by a grand jury in August on two counts, reported WKMS. One count was of first degree possession of a controlled substance, a felony, and the second of official misconduct, a misdemeanour.

In September, he pleaded not guilty to the charges and is due back in court Wednesday—the day after his re-election.

The sheriff is accused of taking hydrocodone from a drug drop box for his own use instead of destroying the prescription medication as he was supposed to do. Hydrocodone is an opioid derived from codeine.

“I appreciate the confidence that the voters have once again put in me,” Redmon said after his election, reported The Mayfield Messenger. On the issue of his indictment, Redmon said: “We’ll just wait until the court system plays out to see how it goes any further.”

https://www.newsweek.com/kentucky-sheriff-accused-raiding-drug-drop-box-his-own-personal-use-re-1205504

Sheriff Dewayne Redmon of Graves County, Kentucky, was re-elected despite the drugs charges against him. Graves County Sheriff’s Office

A letter co-signed by a number of deputies in the Graves County Sheriff’s Office was sent out to the media in October accusing Redmon of having an addiction and pledging to support him and his family in overcoming it.

It said Captain Jeremy Prince spotted Redmon with a pill bottle that had “pain” written across the top of it after the sheriff had taken control of responsibility for the drug drop boxes.

Empty pill bottles with other people’s names on them were allegedly discovered in Redmon’s vehicle and the matter reported to Kentucky State Police, which opened an investigation.

“Sheriff Redmon admitted to stealing pain medication from the Sheriff’s Office drug drop box numerous times,” the letter states, according to a copy published by WPSD. “Sheriff Redmon was also offered treatment for his drug addiction, but he stated that he did not need any help because he did not have a problem.

“Once a Sheriff, Deputy Sheriff, Police Officer, State Trooper or other law enforcement officer has violated their code of ethics and their oath, their ability to do their job has been compromised… Once a person commits crimes, no matter the reason, they can no longer be respected and trusted in a law enforcement role.”  

In October, Redmon’s attorney Bryan Wilson responded to the letter, accusing the sheriff’s department of a “blatant attempt to try Sheriff Redmon through the media and to influence the court of public opinion.”

Wilson told WPSD: “The fact that Election Day is drawing near should not be lost on anyone. Make no mistake, this letter was posted for political gain without consideration to the ramifications its contents would have on the pending criminal case.”

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Just picked up my mom from the hospital. She had her appendix out, gallbladder out and a large cancerous mass in her colon removed. AND GUESS WHAT?! They sent her home with no pain medication. She is to take Tylenol if she has pain! I’m so angry!!! Right now she still has iv pain meds in her, but I’m sure she will be in a lot of pain once that wears off. What is wrong with these doctors and our medical system? I guess they think she will either overdose or become addicted if they give her prescription pain medications. If she is in agonizing pain, I will not let them treat my mother like this. I just don’t understand in what world that this is okay. This is inhuman treatment!!! Shame on the Wilkes-Barre General Hospital! Dr. Kline states that, we need to start calling out the people and places that treat patients with gross negligence. We need to stop with the silence. It’s just allowing these entities to continue treating patients in this way. I will no longer be silent!!!

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I was told – by someone I trust – that in Texas … the TX Medical Licensing Board is taking a “hard line” on pharmacists changing a pt’s prescription (LOWERING daily dose/quantity) without contacting the prescriber.

One of the basics of the practice of medicine is the starting, changing, stopping a pt’s therapy.

Apparently when complaints are filed with the TX Medical Licensing Board gets a complaint about a pharmacist changing the pt’s prescription – generally involving a controlled substance, particularly a opiate… they are going after these pharmacists for practicing medicine without a license.

All health professional licenses are managed at the state level… and these various state Medical practice act and what they say is the legal practice of medicine do not vary that much.

So if one state is looking into/doing this… the other 49 states could probably find some statue verbiage in their practice act to take action against pharmacist who are changing a pt’s prescription without conferring with the prescriber.

So if one state is doing it… it is probably within the other states practice acts to take similar actions

It is also against the Control Substance Act for a legally licensed prescriber to prescribe a controlled substance to a pt that they have not done a in person physical exam on. 

Pharmacists have neither the training nor legal authority to do a in person exam and few would not even have the space to do a in private in person exam.

So would a pharmacist found guilty of practicing medicine without a license also be in violation of the Controlled Substance Act ?

It has been reported that some of the chain pharmacies have implemented corporate policies mandating that  their employee pharmacists MUST NOT DISPENSE CERTAIN CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES ABOVE A CERTAIN DAYS SUPPLY AND/OR MGS/DAY.

I have also been told my some pts that some pharmacists will call the prescriber and tell the prescriber and demand that the prescriber LOWER the pt’s dose and if the prescriber refuses the pharmacist threatened to call the DEA on the prescriber.

Of course, if neither the pt nor the prescriber file complaints with the state Medical Licensing Board NOTHING WILL CHANGE !

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These states have been hit the hardest by the opioid epidemic

https://www.ksat.com/health/these-states-have-been-hit-the-hardest-by-the-opioid-epidemic

While there’s early evidence that the explosive rate of opioid deaths has started to slow, opioids killed more than 49,000 people in the United States in 2017, according to preliminary data. A new study reveals which part of the country has been affected the most by the ongoing epidemic.

In a study of opioid deaths from 1999 to 2016, “we found that, in general, opioid mortality is skyrocketing,” said Mathew Kiang, a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Population Health Sciences.

Synthetic opioids are manmade drugs such as fentanyl, as opposed to semi-synthetic opioids such as hydrocodone and oxycodone, or natural opioids such as codeine and morphine.

Fentanyl is up to 50 times more powerful than heroin, and just ¼ of a milligram can be deadly. For comparison, a standard low-dose aspirin is 81 mg. If you were to cut that tablet into 324 pieces, one of those pieces would equal ¼ milligram.

“One thing I do want to highlight is that, despite the large differences in deaths across states, there’s no evidence to suggest that there’s differences in use,” Kiang said. “What we think is happening is that the heroin just continues to get more and more potent in the eastern United States, whereas heroin [in] the western United States has traditionally been this brown tar heroin. It’s much harder to lace with fentanyl or other synthetic opioids.”

At the national level, opioids were responsible for shaving 0.36 years off Americans’ life expectancy in 2016, the study says. That’s a greater loss of life than caused by guns or motor vehicle accidents.

New Hampshire and West Virginia saw the biggest drops in life expectancy, of more than a year, due to opioid deaths. Montana and Oregon were the only states to see a decline in opioid deaths from 1999 to 2016.

According to the report, “emerging research … suggests the opioid epidemic has evolved as a series of 3 intertwined but distinct epidemics, or waves, based on the types of opioids associated with mortality”:

• 1990s-2010: Prescription painkillers
• 2010-present: Heroin
• 2013-present: Synthetic opioids

Utilizing data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics and the US census, Kiang and his colleagues identified 351,630 opioid-related deaths from 1999 to 2016. Over that 18-year period, deaths from opioids increased by 455%. Men, on average, died at age 39.8, women at age 43.5.

Kiang said that, if anything, the number of opioid deaths is probably underreported because synthetic opioids require additional testing by a medical examiner. He hopes testing for synthetic opioids will become standard whenever the cause of someone’s death is classified as an overdose.

Dr. Andrew Kolodny, the co-director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative at Brandeis University, said, “to talk about solutions, you have to frame the problem the right way.” To him, that means looking at the opioid crisis not as an overdose epidemic but as an addiction epidemic.

“Preventing opioid addiction is necessary for the long term, so that this crisis ultimately comes to an end. And preventing opioid addiction really means much more cautious prescribing.”

Kiang agrees that there are multiple factors at work. “We need to make treatment at least as accessible, available and affordable as heroin,” he said. “It shouldn’t be harder to get help than it is to get heroin.”

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Facebook Tells Law Enforcement to Quit Using Phony Accounts

https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2019/feb/14/facebook-tells-law-enforcement-quit-using-phony-accounts/

Facebook recently told law enforcement to stop using fake accounts as a ruse to bust people on its service. The social media giant also shut down several law enforcement accounts that violated its policy against phony accounts.

The fake accounts came to light in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Tennessee against the Memphis Police Department. The ACLU uncovered evidence that fake Facebook accounts were created to gather intelligence on activist groups. When Facebook was made aware of the fake accounts, it shut them down and issued a notice to Memphis police to stop creating fake accounts.

In a letter to Memphis Police Director Michael Rallings on September 19, 2018, Facebook requested the department to “cease all activities on Facebook that involve the use of fake accounts or impersonation of others.” Facebook reminded Rallings that its policy forbids users from misrepresenting their identity, misusing Facebook profiles, and impersonating others on its service—and that “Facebook has made clear that law enforcement authorities are subject to these policies.”

Memphis isn’t alone. The Drug Enforcement Administration, as well as police in Georgia, Nebraska, New York, and Ohio, also were found to be using the same tactics. Even prosecutors have endorsed the practice.

At the 2016 Indiana Child Support Conference, a slide presentation told prosecutors that “police and federal law enforcement may create a fake Facebook profile as part of an investigation even though it violates the terms and policies of Facebook” in order to gather evidence in a case.

Facebook has since updated its policy banning fake accounts to be more clear that everyone— including law enforcement—must follow its policies, or their accounts will be deleted.

Whether this will deter law enforcement from creating fake accounts is questionable, considering their blatant disregard for the rules in the past. 

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Supreme Court Limits Drug War’s Civil Asset Forfeiture

www.filtermag.org/2019/02/22/drug-war-civil-asset-forfeiture-supreme-court/

On February 20, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously to limit a key drug war policy that allows state and local law enforcement agencies to seize items or property that they deem connected to crime.

The Court has previously limited the ability of federal law enforcement to do the same.

The justices concluded that the eighth amendment’s prohibition on “excessive fines” also applies to states, under the due process clause of the 14th amendment. In the case at hand, law enforcement had seized a $42,000 Land Rover owned by plaintiff Tyson Timbs. The Supreme Court did not rule on the question of whether the seizure of the vehicle actually amounted to an “excessive” fine, leaving that up to lower courts. But they did say that it was “grossly disproportionate to the gravity of Timbs’s offense,” which included dealing in a controlled substance—heroin—and conspiracy to commit theft.

To be clear, the Court’s ruling does not ban outright civil asset forfeiture, a practice notorious for being abused for the financial benefit of public law enforcement.

“People are still going to lose their property without being convicted of a crime, they’re still going to have their property seized,” Timbs’s lawyer, Wesley P. Hottot of the Institute for Justice, told The New York Times. “The new thing is that they can now say at the end of it all, whether I’m guilty or not, I can argue that it was excessive.”

The Times article references two other cases, one involving a woman who was almost dispossessed from her home because an illicit drug sale occurred on her property, and another where a family in fact lost their house because of a drug purchase made by their teenaged son.

It’s no surprise that so many forfeitures are associated with cases involving drug charges. That’s because the war on drugs invented civil asset forfeiture as we know it today. In an amicus brief filed in the Timbs case, a coalition of organizations including the Drug Policy Alliance, the NAACP, and the Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP)* noted that Congress developed the “federal asset-forfeiture regime” with the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 in an effort to “cripple drug trafficking organizations and their kingpins.”

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) claims it operates its current civil asset forfeiture program “to disrupt the financial dealings and dismantle the financial infrastructure of illegal drug traffickers.” Seized items often include firearms, computers, and vehicles. But it is unclear how some items seized are implicated in the “financial infrastructure of illegal drug traffickers.”

For example, the DEA and collaborating agencies seized huge sums of high-priced jewelry, totaling over $560,000 in the fourth quarter of 2018. Other items included “assorted televisions” and designer shoes.

But luxury items aren’t the typical seizure. Rather, the usual assets are mostly those of lower-value. That’s because low-income people and those indirectly involved in drug trafficking—rather than “kingpins”—are the ones swept into the DEA’s asset forfeiture program. And in around 80 percent of cases, the owner is not even charged with a crime.

“These days,” explains the amicus brief, “states do not seize the assets of drug kingpins (if they ever did), but of ordinary Americans, often with little or no connection to criminal activity. And, because the proceeds of a forfeiture proceeding often go to the enforcement agency itself, state agencies employ these proceedings as a mechanism for funding their operations—with assets seized predominantly from the poor and people of color.”

Additionally, DEA’s civil asset forfeiture program exploits the particular circumstances of the drug trade to maximize the value of assets seized. According to a Drug Policy Alliance report, California police were incentivized to carry out “cash grabs,” or in other words, to wait for the completion of a drug transaction to intervene. That way, the agency accrues cash, instead of drugs—which they’re required to destroy.

While some of the media reports on the Supreme Court’s decision may have over-hyped its significance, it is nevertheless an important step for the Court to recognize, as Justice Ginsberg wrote in the Court’s opinion, that “[p]rotection against excessive punitive economic sanctions […] is, to repeat, both ‘fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty’ and ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.’”

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