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Tag: opioid epidemic

  • “Rock Doc” Continues To Prescribe Addictive Drugs Despite Indictment

    “Rock Doc” Continues To Prescribe Addictive Drugs Despite Indictment

    Prosecutors say his bail should be revoked.

    The man who fancies himself as the “Rock Doc” is seemingly unfazed by the recent federal indictment against him. Since his release in April pending trial, prosecutors say that Jeff Young, a nurse practitioner based in Jackson, Tennessee, is still open for business. Now, they are trying to have his bond revoked.

    In April, Young was one of 60 medical professionals—doctors, nurse practitioners, pharmacists and more—charged with illegal prescribing of controlled substances.

    According to the indictment filed by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, “Young issued prescriptions for controlled substances, including the Schedule II controlled substances Oxycodone, Hydrocodone, and others, and the Schedule IV controlled substances Alprazolam, Diazepam, Clonazepam, and others… outside the course of professional practice and without a legitimate medical purpose. Young’s motives in prescribing controlled substances to his patients were often to obtain money, notoriety, and sexual favors.”

    The Rock Doc—“a brash, tattooed 45-year-old” as the Daily Beast described him—abused his position to promote himself and prey on women, the indictment alleges. “Young used his power to prescribe controlled substances to promote his television pilot and his podcast, and to have sex with women, including women who were his patients.”

    He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

    A 10-minute pilot of a reality show about his practice from 2016 is still available to watch on YouTube. Apparently it never took off.

    Following the indictment, all 60 defendants were released on bond. But Young has continued to write prescriptions haphazardly. Federal authorities say he should be detained.

    While Young is no longer permitted to prescribe opioid drugs, he can still prescribe benzodiazepines like Xanax or Valium, per a 2018 settlement with the Tennessee Board of Nursing. Young has allegedly continued to prescribe these to patients who have been “doctor shopping.”

    Andrew Pennebaker, the Department of Justice trial attorney prosecuting Young, says the Rock Doc’s continued prescribing activity requires special attention. “The Court should do what the Board did not: stop Young from further harming the community by prescribing dangerous substances and exploiting his patients in the process. The only way to ensure this is to detain Young pending trial.”

    Pennebaker cites a history of violence that makes Young a special case. “Even among other defendants presumed to be dangerous, Young stands out: he has demonstrated a history of violence against women, intimidation and threats, and disregard of judicial and administrative orders.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Prescription Opioid Theft Spikes Among Medical Staff

    Prescription Opioid Theft Spikes Among Medical Staff

    The new report found that 67% of prescription opioid thefts are by doctors and nurses.

    A new report found a 126% increase in the theft of opioid prescriptions by doctors and other medical professionals from 2017 to 2018, according to CBS News.

    This problem has directly harmed patients who were prescribed opioid painkillers following surgery or injury, and the report’s authors are warning that their findings are merely the “tip of the iceberg.”

    Lauren Lollini told CBS News about contracting hepatitis C from syringes contaminated by a hospital technician who used them to take the opioids prescribed to Lollini. The tech then refilled the syringes with saline and left them for the patient to use.

    As a result, Lollini went home from her kidney surgery with a liver infection and 10 years later is unable to work due to chronic fatigue.

    “I really was angry at the broken system,” she said. “The hospital that hired her—unbeknownst to them that she had been let go from other jobs.”

    The technician is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence for her crimes.

    The report also found that 67% of these thefts are by doctors and nurses. Dr. Stephen Loyd of Tennessee described how he got hooked on the opioid pills that were incredibly easy for him to steal.

    “There was no requirements on what happened to those pills. They could go down the toilet or they could go in my pocket,” he said. This went on for three-and-a-half years.

    When diverted drugs could be identified, it was found that the most commonly stolen drug was oxycodone, followed by hydrocodone (Vicodin) and fentanyl. Overall, 47 million opioid doses were stolen in 2018 alone. 

    A report published in Drug Diversion Digest in September 2018 by the same analytics company found that healthcare employee theft of prescription medications in general cost healthcare organizations $162 million in the space of six months, with nearly 95% of cases involving at least one type of opioid.

    This report also expressed that their findings were only the tip of the iceberg due to the fact that they were only able to research cases where the thefts were discovered.

    Dr. Loyd, who now runs a rehab center, believes that the high rate of opioid diversion is largely due to the high stress of medical professions. That plus easy access to the drugs create a recipe for drug misuse and addiction.

    “They’ve got high stress jobs. A lot of them, like myself, have workaholism. And not only that, you have access,” Loyd explained.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Insys Execs Found Guilty Of Bribing Doctors To Prescribe Fentanyl Spray

    Insys Execs Found Guilty Of Bribing Doctors To Prescribe Fentanyl Spray

    This is the first-ever successful prosecution of a drug company exec tied to the opioid crisis.

    Five former executives of the opioid maker Insys Therapeutics were found guilty of federal racketeering charges last week.

    The criminal charges were brought by federal prosecutors in the state of Massachusetts and stem from allegations that the company bribed doctors to prescribe Subsys, a fentanyl nasal spray.

    “Just as we would street-level drug dealers, we will hold pharmaceutical executives responsible for fueling the opioid epidemic by recklessly and illegally distributing these drugs, especially while conspiring to commit racketeering along the way,” Andrew E. Lelling, the U.S. attorney who tried the case, told The New York Times.

    The verdict came after a lengthy legal battle: the trial lasted 10 weeks, and the jury deliberated for 15 days. During that time, sometimes shocking allegations came to light, including that one Insys sales executive who had previously worked as an erotic dancer gave a lap dance to a doctor who was selling Subsys. 

    On other occasions the company paid for doctors to go to shooting ranges and visit VIP rooms of strip clubs, according to Vice. Insys also paid high “speaking fees” to the doctors who prescribed the most Subsys, and invited them to lavish dinners. 

    “They were a farce really,” Gavin Awerbuch, a doctor convicted of distributing Subsys illegally. 

    Yale law professor Abbe Gluck said that the case highlights the extreme lengths that companies would go to to sell opioids. 

    “The case paints a picture of the kind of troubling industry practices that helped fuel the opioid epidemic,” Gluck said, adding that the verdict “shows that a jury is willing to punish for them.” 

    In addition to unscrupulous sales practices, the company also misled insurance agents in order to get prescriptions covered, even though Subsys was only officially supposed to be used for cancer patients. 

    “Insurers were told about medical things that never happened. They told deception after deception after deception on recorded lines,” prosecutor K. Nathaniel Yeager said during the trial. 

    The company even produced a rap video that was used to promote Subsys. In it, a rapper mentions titrations, the process of putting patients on a higher and higher dose of a medication. 

    “I love titrations, yeah, that’s not a problem, and I got new patients, yeah, I got a lot of ‘em,” the rapper says in a parody of A$AP Rocky’s 2012 single “F—in Problems.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Johnson & Johnson Accused Of Marketing Opioids To Children

    Johnson & Johnson Accused Of Marketing Opioids To Children

    A rep for the company says Johnson & Johnson discussed children’s pain relief, but never targeted children with its drugs. 

    Johnson & Johnson contributed to the opioid crisis in Oklahoma in part by marketing opioid drugs to children, according to allegations made by the state of Oklahoma in a lawsuit against the company. 

    “In perhaps one of the most reprehensible documents produced by defendants, this shows the depths to which J & J would go to earn a profit on their products—target potential ‘replacement customers’ at an early age to get them using (and addicted to) opioids,” one court document reads, according to The Washington Post.

    The company strongly denies this claim. A representative said that Johnson & Johnson, whose subsidiaries manufacture opioid products, discussed children’s pain relief, but never targeted children with its drugs. 

    However, Bradley Beckworth, an attorney who is representing Oklahoma in the lawsuit, said that targeting children with dangerous products is not unheard of. 

    “The recruitment of children… is the same kind of thing the tobacco industry did,” he said. “It’s the same kind of thing that other drugs companies do. Just marketing opioids to cancer patients and surgery patients was not enough. They wanted to expand the customer base.” 

    The allegations stem from a lawsuit that Oklahoma brought against Johnson & Johnson, Purdue Pharma and Teva Pharmaceutical, which makes and distributes generic opioids.

    In March, Purdue Pharma settled with the state for $270 million without admitting wrongdoing. 

    Since then, the state has been focused on Johnson & Johnson and Teva Pharmaceutical. The lawsuit alleges that both companies, which provided materials for opioids, contributed quietly to the crisis behind the scenes. 

    “Johnson & Johnson helped create the worst public health crisis in United States history,” said Bradley Beckworth. “They grew the demand. They spread the lies and they fed it with their own product… We’ll show that at trial.”

    The state’s lawsuit aims to hold the drug manufacturers liable for the harm caused by their products under the state’s public nuisance laws. University of Oklahoma College of Law professor Andrew M. Coats said that the case is fairly solid. 

    He said, “It has a good deal of merit to it, because our statute on public nuisance is pretty broad,” he said.

    However, a representative for Johnson & Johnson said that the company was following the law. 

    “The production of raw materials and active pharmaceutical ingredients used to manufacture Schedule II medications in the U.S. is strictly controlled, limited and monitored by the DEA, FDA, and other regulators,” a statement from the company read. “The DEA sets quotas based on the agency’s assessment of the need for medicines containing these substances, and our businesses complied with these laws and regulations.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Doctor Receives 20-Year Sentence For Reckless Opioid Prescribing

    Doctor Receives 20-Year Sentence For Reckless Opioid Prescribing

    The Manhattan doctor was convicted on 10 counts of unlawful distribution of oxycodone without legitimate medical purpose.

    A family doctor based in Manhattan’s Upper East Side was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Tuesday (April 30) for recklessly prescribing opioid painkillers that played a role in one patient’s fatal overdose.

    Dr. Martin Tesher, 83, was convicted in July of 10 counts of unlawful distribution of oxycodone without legitimate medical purpose to five patients, including 27-year-old Nicholas Benedetto.

    In March of 2016, two days after visiting Tesher and receiving prescriptions for oxycodone and fentanyl patches, Benedetto fatally overdosed on the drugs.

    According to SILive.com, one month before his death, Benedetto’s mother called Tesher asking him to stop giving her son prescriptions because he needed treatment. She told authorities that her son was smoking the fentanyl patches.

    Tesher prescribed oxycodone and fentanyl patches to Benedetto and four other patients “after he learned, or had reason to believe, that these patients were addicted to drugs,” according to the Justice Department.

    An expert witness testified that none of them “had verified medical conditions that would require the prescription of Schedule II opioids.”

    Benedetto, while under the doctor’s care, tested positive for cocaine, heroin, morphine and methadone in addition to the oxycodone and fentanyl prescribed by Tesher.

    Twenty years was the minimum sentence Tesher faced for his crime. The maximum was life in prison.

    “In the midst of an unprecedented opioid epidemic, Dr. Tesher used his medical skills to harm, not heal and in doing so he cost a young man his life,” said U.S. Eastern District Attorney Richard Donoghue. “Such criminal conduct is an utter betrayal of the trust our society places in doctors and it warrants the severe sentence imposed today.”

    The DOJ has recently cracked down on health care providers and drug companies accused of playing a role in fueling the opioid crisis.

    Also last month, 60 people were indicted for the illegal prescribing of painkillers including doctors, pharmacists, nurse practitioners and other licensed medical professionals.

    According to the Washington Post, the indictment included “doctors who prosecutors said traded sex for prescriptions and a dentist who unnecessarily pulled teeth from patients to justify giving them opioids.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Lower Prices Contributed to Opioid Crisis, According to White House Report

    Lower Prices Contributed to Opioid Crisis, According to White House Report

    A new report by the President’s Council of Economic Advisers examined the driving forces of the national opioid epidemic.

    A drop in out-of-pocket expenses for prescription opioids helped drive the first wave of the opioid epidemic, according to a new report released by the White House.

    The report, written by the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, found that increased insurance coverage for opioids resulted in lower costs on the legal market and the black market.

    “Out-of-pocket prices for prescription opioids declined by an estimated 81 percent between 2001 and 2010,” report authors wrote. “The falling prices were a consequence of the expansion of government health care coverage, which increased access to all prescription drugs—including opioids. We argue that these falling out-of-pocket prices effectively reduced the price of opioid use not only in the primary market but also in the secondary (black) market for diverted opioids, from which most people who misuse prescription opioids obtain their drugs.”

    During this time, more people had their prescription drugs covered by government insurance programs through Medicare and Medicaid. In 2001, 17 percent of prescription opioids were covered using government insurance. That rose to 63 percent by 2015.

    This increased access made opioid use more affordable.

    “A person on Medicare would only pay $9.78 per gram, or between $1,785 and $3,570 per year (in 2007 dollars), to fund an opioid addiction,” the report authors note.

    The authors estimate that lower prices can account for between 31 and 83 percent of the rise in opioid deaths between 2001 and 2010, but other factors were also at play during this first wave of the opioid epidemic.

    “Falling out-of-pocket prices could not have led to a major rise in opioid misuse and overdose deaths without the increased availability of prescription opioids resulting from changes in pain-management practice guidelines that encouraged liberalized dispensing practices by doctors, illicit ‘pill mills,’ increased marketing and promotion efforts from industry, and inadequate monitoring or control against drug diversion,” they wrote.

    Cost also played a part in the second wave of the epidemic, when people who had become hooked on pills turned to even less expensive street drugs, including heroin and fentanyl, to get their fix.

    “The reduction in prescription opioid misuse had the unintended consequence of raising demand for cheaper, more readily available substitutes in the illicit market and thus opened a market opportunity for illicit drug suppliers to fill,” report authors wrote.

    Today, access to opioids is tightly controlled for people on Medicare, following legislation passed in 2018. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Sackler Family Wants To Settle Opioid Lawsuits

    Sackler Family Wants To Settle Opioid Lawsuits

    While the Sacklers are interested in settling, a rep for the family insists that they are not at fault for the opioid epidemic.

    Members of the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma, want to settle the onslaught of opioid lawsuits against them, according to recent statements from a family lawyer. 

    Speaking with Reuters, Mary Jo White of Debevoise & Plimpton, who represents four members of the family, said their clients are interested in settling the lawsuits, but also insisted that the company and the family are not at fault for the opioid epidemic. 

    “The objective is and remains to try to achieve a global resolution,” White said. “Purdue and the Sackler family members, given this litigation landscape, would like to resolve with the plaintiffs in a constructive way to get the monies to the communities that need them, to the people that are addicted… rather than to pay attorneys’ fees for years and years and years to come. You’re talking 2,000 cases. How long will they take to go through the court system?”

    White said that given the scope of the lawsuits against the Sackler family and Purdue, settling is going to be a long and complex process. 

    She said, “You have municipalities and counties as well as state AGs involved in these matters, and getting all of those plaintiffs in a global resolution is very difficult.”

    Despite the family’s willingness to settle, White said that they are not interested in accepting fault. White said that the lawsuits twist and misconstrue normal business documents to shine a negative light on the company. She added that the lawsuits are politically motivated. 

    “Let’s be clear: There is a major public health crisis that we’re all dealing with. But in terms of litigation, what you always want are all of the motivators to be merits-based so that politics are not playing a role, incentives are not playing a role that alters the outcome,” she said. “Let’s see what the real problem is and what the real solutions are rather than playing a litigation blame game with the fingers pointed in the wrong direction.”

    However, Paul Hanly, who is representing municipalities suing Purdue, said that the cases against the company are solid. 

    “Our cases assert strong legal, not political, claims against the Sacklers and all of the other defendants,” he told Reuters. “Ms. White’s comments are belied by the facts that Judge Polster [overseeing the federal cases in Ohio courts] has denied motions to dismiss brought by any number of defendants also claiming that the allegations are without a proper legal basis… and such motions have met the same fate in the New York state coordinated cases.” 

    Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who is leading a lawsuit against the company, was not impressed with White’s statements. 

    “For years, members of the Sackler family tried to shift the blame and hide their role in creating and profiting off the opioid epidemic,” she said. “Our lawsuit exposed their illegal deception, and we will aggressively pursue our case against them.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Should Big Pharma Cover The Costs Of The Opioid Crisis?

    Should Big Pharma Cover The Costs Of The Opioid Crisis?

    A new poll revealed that 70% of Americans believe drug companies should cover the cost of naloxone and addiction treatment.

    More than half of Americans believe that drug companies should be held liable for their role in fueling the national opioid epidemic, according to a new poll by NPR and the global market research firm Ipsos.

    Drug companies like Purdue Pharma (the maker of OxyContin), Johnson & Johnson and McKesson are facing more than 1,600 civil lawsuits filed by city, state and county officials across the United States.

    These companies are accused of putting profits over public health—whether they aggressively marketed opioids without regard to the risk of addiction or failed to report unusually large amounts of opioids going to pharmacies.

    The poll found that 1 in 3 Americans have been affected by the opioid epidemic. “One in three have been personally affected in some say, either by knowing someone who has overdosed or by knowing someone with an opioid addiction,” said Mallory Newall, lead Ipsos researcher on the survey.

    And 57% of Americans believe that the drug companies should be held responsible for their role in exacerbating the drug crisis.

    “It’s something, no matter your age, your gender, no matter where you live, your party affiliation, that people believe in large numbers,” said Newall.

    Even more people than that—70%—said they believe the drug companies should cover the cost of naloxone, the opioid overdose-reversing drug, as well as addiction treatment.

    On Tuesday (April 23), a drug distributor and two former executives were hit with drug-trafficking charges.

    “This prosecution is the first of its kind: Executives of a pharmaceutical distributor and the distributor itself have been charged with drug trafficking—trafficking the same drugs that are fueling the opioid epidemic that is ravaging this country,” said U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman at a news conference.

    Rochester Drug Cooperative, one of the 10 largest drug distributors in the U.S., allegedly ignored suspicious activity from pharmacy clients who ordered excessive amounts of opioids. According to the indictment, under the direction of former CEO Laurence Doud III, who retired in 2017, the company became “the knight in shining armor” for pharmacies that could not get business elsewhere.

    Doud and other top Rochester executives “made the deliberate decision” to turn a blind eye to red flags or alert federal regulators that clients were ordering opioids to distribute for non-medical use, AP News reported.

    Doud has surrendered to New York authorities and is awaiting arraignment on two counts of conspiracy related to drug trafficking. If convicted, Doud faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Trump On Opioid Epidemic: We're Making Tremendous Progress

    Trump On Opioid Epidemic: We're Making Tremendous Progress

    Trump discussed the opioid epidemic and addiction treatment funding during the Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit.

    This week, the Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit convened in Atlanta, Georgia. The annual summit (April 22-25) is attended by everyone who has a stake in the national drug crisis—people from the mental health field, law enforcement, health care, government, research and people in recovery.

    Among this year’s speakers are James Carroll, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. President Barack Obama and Patrick Kennedy have also attended the conference in years past.

    On the third day of the summit (April 24), Donald Trump and First Lady Melania came to address the summit.

    “Everyone here today is united by the same vital goal—to liberate our fellow Americans from the grip of drug addiction and to end the opioid crisis once and for all. It’s happening. It’s happening,” said Trump.

    The president outlined his administration’s efforts to mitigate the crisis thus far.

    “My administration is deploying every resource at our disposal to empower you, to support you and fight right by your side, and that’s what we’re doing,” he said.

    Trump cited the unprecedented amount of funding dedicated to fighting the opioid crisis under his administration—including a two-year plan to use $6 billion to fight opioid abuse—and didn’t hesitate to take credit for making “a tremendous amount of progress” in pushing back the deadly epidemic.

    “We have results that are unbelievable. Numbers that I heard, two weeks ago, that I was shocked to hear. We’re making tremendous progress,” he said.

    Naturally, the border wall was a highlight of Trump’s anti-drug plan. The president claimed that 90% of heroin is coming through the southern border, and said that construction is “probably ahead of schedule” on building “almost 400 miles of wall built by the end of next year.” The barrier will have a “tremendous impact on drugs coming into our country,” Trump promised. “You’re going to see some very, very big differences in the coming months.”

    Another feature of his plan to mitigate the painful effects of drug abuse across the U.S. was negotiating “a very big trade deal” with China—where “almost all fentanyl” comes from, according to the president—to prevent the synthetic opioid from being shipped to the U.S.

    In October 2017, Trump declared that the opioid crisis was a public health emergency.

    While he has brought attention to the national opioid crisis, critics aren’t convinced that the government’s anti-drug efforts have actually made a dent.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Feds Undertake Four-State Study to Address Opioid Crisis

    Feds Undertake Four-State Study to Address Opioid Crisis

    The $350 million research project aims to find a way to reduce opioid deaths by 40% within 3 years.

    The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is gearing up to dole out $350 million to Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York and Ohio to figure out how to stop opioid deaths by 40% in those states over the next three years.

    By disbursing the money to the University of Kentucky, Boston Medical Center, Columbia University and Ohio State University, the NIH hopes to curb fatalities from drugs like fentanyl and heroin, which took the lives of about 47,600 people in the U.S. in 2017.

    Researchers will get deeply involved with 15 communities that have been hit hard by the opioid crisis to figure out how best to effectively prevent and treat addiction there. They’ll also take a hard look at how factors like unemployment and the justice system contribute to the continued crisis, and experiment with distributing anti-overdose medications to first responders, police, and even schools.

    “The most important work to combat our country’s opioid crisis is happening in local communities,” said Alex Azar, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary. “We believe this effort will show that truly dramatic and material reductions in overdose deaths are possible, and provide lessons and models for other communities to adopt and emulate.”

    The program will proceed no matter what kind of budget cuts the NIH faces, according to Azar. This is welcome news as some experts believe there is no time to waste.

    “We are in such a period of crisis that we need to know in real time what is working and what is not working,” said Dr. Alysse Wurcel of the Tufts Medical Center in Boston.

    The opioid crisis is a major issue that requires a multi-faceted approach to solve. On his show, Last Week Tonight, John Oliver called for holding members of the Sackler family, the minds behind OxyContin, accountable for their alleged aggressive and irresponsible marketing of their powerful opioid painkiller. Oliver had several celebrities dramatize testimony given by Richard Sackler.

    “The launch of OxyContin tablets will be followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition,” performed Michael K. Williams, repeating Sackler’s infamous proclamation. “The prescription blizzard will be so deep, dense and white.”

    Some solutions to the opioid crisis may seem unorthodox and unintuitive, such as a Canadian public health expert’s suggestion to install opioid vending machines in Vancouver, home to “one of North America’s densest populations of injection drug users.” Only proven chronic drug users could scan themselves to get clean drugs for safer consumption.

    “We’re acknowledging people will go to any extreme to use this drug. To tell them not to use because it’s unsafe is ridiculous,” said program mastermind Dr. Mark Tyndall.

    View the original article at thefix.com