“The moral test of a government is how it treats those who are at the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadow of life, the sick and the needy, and the handicapped.” – Hubert Humphrey
passionate pachyderms
Pharmacist Steve steve@steveariens.com 502.938.2414
The Drug Enforcement Administration spent $960,000 to destroy marijuana plants in that state in 2014 as part of its “Cannabis Eradication Program,” according to a recent report by NBC affiliate KGW in Portland, Ore.
The DEA has budgeted $760,000 in marijuana eradication funds for Oregon this year, according to KGW. Considering that marijuana is now legal in that state, many Oregonians are questioning whether that’s a sensible endeavor — including some members of Congress, who are trying to defund the federal anti-pot program that costs about $18 million a year overall.
The DEA defends the cannabis eradication program on the grounds that much of the marijuana grows it targets in Oregon and elsewhere are the products of Mexican drug cartel activity. “This program has proven effective in dismantling and disrupting drug trafficking organizations,” DEA spokesperson Joseph Moses told KGW.
But some are skeptical, saying that federal authorities may be overstating the connection between Mexican cartels and marijuana operations in the U.S. In 2012, the Office of National Drug Control Policy acknowledged that there wasn’t much hard evidence connecting the cartels to marijuana grows in California. “Based on our intelligence, which includes thousands of cell phone numbers and wiretaps, we haven’t been able to connect anyone to a major cartel,” an ONDCP representative told the Los Angeles Times.
Some law enforcement officials in Oregon are dismantling their marijuana eradication programs, according to KGW’s report. “I want to focus on person crimes,” one sheriff told KGW. “Child abuse, sex assault, crimes against people.”
Marijuana, of course, remains illegal under federal law.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. —Thousands of pain patients who have had their legitimate prescriptions denied at the pharmacy are one step closer to seeing relief.
Florida’s Controlled Substances Standards Subcommittee is working to solve the crisis that WESH 2 News Investigates has been digging into for the past eight months.
The group is working to help patients to get their needed medication.
In Tallahassee, a subcommittee of the Florida Board of Pharmacy, made up of doctors, pharmacists and one of the largest drug wholesalers in the country, met to tackle the state’s prescription access problem. The group is trying to develop a way for legitimate patients to fill pain prescriptions, from pharmacists who remain hesitant following the state’s pill-mill crackdown.
“We are now operating in a time where people are afraid to do their jobs,” said Dr. Jesse Lipnick, with the Florida Medical Association.
WESH 2 News asked Lipnick if the group is confident things will improve for patients.
“I think so,” Lipnick said.
To help make things better, the group is proposing that by the end of 2017, pharmacists should be required to take a two-hour class that would focus on ensuring access for all patients with a valid prescription. That class would be required every two years.
The group is also rewriting a rule that Florida pharmacists must follow to help alleviate concerns, writing in part, “Pharmacists should not fear disciplinary action for dispensing controlled substances for a legitimate medical purpose.”
WESH 2 News spoke with Michael Jackson, with the Florida Pharmacy Association.
“If pharmacists are afraid of the DEA, whether that fear is founded or unfounded, will anything you guys do really make a difference then?” WESH 2 News asked.
“We are not sure,” Jackson said.
Jackson concedes it won’t be an easy fix, but he said they’re committed to trying.
“They just can’t continue to turn away legitimate prescriptions,” Jackson said.
While the subcommittee feels a lot was accomplished, their proposals still hinge on a Florida Board of Pharmacy vote. That could happen in two weeks.
The recommendations will be presented to the Florida Board of Pharmacy at its next meeting Oct. 5 in Tampa.
There is a lot going on in the chain pharmacy industry. I got a phone call today about how this law firm who is representing a growing number of Pharmacists in suing a particular every large chain pharmacy/PBM and is looking for more clients. My understanding is that he is taking on these law suits on a contingency basis – no money until you win !
Here are two lawsuits that have already been won by other former employees of this pharmacy chain
Both President Obama and AG Holder has told the DEA to stop enforcing the FED MJ laws in those states where it is now legal.. but.. apparently the DEA has its own agenda. The last time I looked at the command structure of our Federal Government.. the President is technically the BOSS over the AG and the AG is the BOSS over the DEA.. But with all the stuff coming to light about the DEA over the last couple of years.. they seem to believe that they are their own authority and has to answer to NO ONE BUT THEMSELVES …
Although there has been a total repeal of marijuana prohibition in the state of Oregon, a recent report has found that the federal government is still sending the state’s law enforcement well over a half million dollars to be used in the uprooting of cannabis plants.
According to documents obtained by KGW-TV, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will pay $750,000 to Oregon police this year to continue busting marijuana operations all over the state. This compensation—aimed at thwarting the moonshiners of the cannabis trade—is all part of the DEA’s nearly 40-year-old marijuana eradication program.
The problem, however, is that this government agenda is being paid for by taxpayers in states where the voters have determined that weed should be legal.
“I think the DEA’s marijuana eradication program is a huge waste of federal taxpayer dollars,” Congressman Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California, told KGW. “We have states like Oregon, Washington and Colorado that have legalized marijuana, and then you’ve got the federal government trying to eradicate it. That doesn’t make any sense.”
Last week, Lieu and his Republican counterpart Justin Amash of Michigan introduced a measure to the U.S. House of Representatives aimed at eliminating the DEA’s $18 million cannabis eradication program. This bipartisan effort would not only prevent this agency from spending tax dollars to destroy a plant that has been legalized in some form in over half the nation, but it would also stop them from cashing in on civil asset forfeitures.
Law enforcement in Oregon will spend the majority of its DEA money flying helicopters over the state in search of cannabis grow sites. Essentially, Uncle Sam is providing them with hundreds of thousands of dollars, courtesy of American taxpayers, to be used for seek and destroy missions against a plant that the majority of the population has said should be legal.
In 2014, these types of drug warrior operations cost Oregon around $275,000 in police overtime and $685,000 for the use of a helicopter—all money that could be spent on anything else now that weed is legal.
However, the DEA argues that the continued funding of the eradication program in necessary in order to fight dastardly domestic drug traffickers and ruthless Mexican cartels that use public land to grow weed for the black market. Yet, in 2014, the program only accounted for the destruction of around 16,000 cannabis plants, which is significantly less than the almost 28,000 they uprooted in 2012. This decline in seized plants is likely attributed to cartels involving themselves in the trafficking of methamphetamine and heroin, while leaving marijuana to the gringos in the legal sector.
Some police agencies in Oregon agree that federal money is no longer needed for marijuana enforcement. Jackson County Sheriff Corey Falls said that while they once “needed that money… now we don’t.”
Unfortunately, until the DEA is defunded or a substantial federal reform comes down from the top, taxpayers will be forced to finance the snuffing of stoned America—even those taxpayers who adamantly support ending prohibition altogether. Let’s just hope that Lieu and Amash can collect enough support for their legislation to elicit some essential changes to how the DEA spends our money in 2016.
Mike Adams writes for stoners and smut enthusiasts in HIGH TIMES, Playboy’s The Smoking Jacket and Hustler Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter @adamssoup and on Facebook/mikeadams73.
A new bipartisan bill would eliminate a controversial source of funding for one federal marijuana seizure program. Last week, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) introduced the “Stop Civil Asset Forfeiture Funding for Marijuana Suppression Act.” The bill is quite simple: It would prevent the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from using federal forfeiture funds to pay for its Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program. Additionally, the bill would ban transferring property to federal, state or local agencies if that property “is used for any purpose pertaining to” the DEA’s marijuana eradication program.
Under this program, the DEA receives federal forfeiture funds ($18 million in 2013), which it then funnels to over 120 local and state agencies to eliminate marijuana grow sites nationwide. Last year, the program was responsible for over 6,300 arrests, eradicating over 4.3 million marijuana plants and seizing $27.3 million in assets. More than half of all plants destroyed were in California, which also accounted for over one-third of seized assets and nearly 40 percent of the arrests.
Across the country, drug cops have ensnared countless innocent Americans. In February 2014, the DEA seized a college student’s entire life savings, without finding any drugs or charging him with a drug crime. The student, Charles Clarke, has since partnered with the Institute for Justice and sued to win back his cash. In Georgia, the Governor’s Task Force for Drug Suppression raided an Atlanta retiree’s garden last year after spotting suspicious-looking green plants. But the plants weren’t marijuana: They were okra. The task force received federal forfeiture funding through the DEA’s Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program.
Groups that want to reform the nation’s drug laws, like the Drug Policy Alliance and the Marijuana Policy Project, are backing Lieu and Amash’s legislation. But regardless of how one views legalizing marijuana or the war on drugs, funding programs with civil forfeiture is unconscionable. Unlike criminal forfeiture, which occurs after a criminal conviction is obtained, under civil forfeiture, law enforcement does not need to convict, much less charge people with a crime to take their property.
Federal agencies pursue both civil and criminal forfeiture cases, but the former is far more common. Analysis by the Institute for Justice found 78 percent of properties in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) system were seized for civil forfeiture, compared with 22 percent for criminal forfeiture. Recommended by Forbes
Civil forfeiture is fraught with a staggering lack of due process. Under federal law, owners must prove their innocence in court to regain their seized property. Property owners in civil forfeiture proceedings do not have a right to an attorney, rendering it even more difficult to prevail. Meanwhile, seizing agencies can keep up to 100 percent of the proceeds of a forfeited property. That creates a perverse incentive to “police for profit.”
Over the past thirty years, forfeiture has grown tremendously for the federal government. Back in 1985, the DOJ’s Asset Forfeiture Fund had $27 million in proceeds. By 2013, that number topped over $2 billion. This year, in a budget request, the DEA wanted over $210 million in “reimbursable funds” from the Asset Forfeiture Fund.
But the DEA’s slush funds may soon be ending. Earlier this year, the House of Representatives adopted by voice vote an amendment by Rep. Lieu to halve funding for the DEA’s cannabis eradication program. Instead, the amendment would redirect those funds to deficit reduction and to aid domestic violence and child abuse victims.
In January, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) reintroduced the “Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration (FAIR) Act” to overhaul federal civil-forfeiture laws. If enacted, the FAIR Act would require more evidence to forfeit property, shift the burden of proof onto the government (where it belongs), provide indigent owners with access to counsel and deposit forfeiture proceeds into the General Fund of the Treasury. The bill currently has over 80 cosponsors, Democrats and Republicans, in the House. In the months ahead, even more forfeiture reform legislation is expected.
The Stop Civil Asset Forfeiture Funding for Marijuana Suppression Act is a welcome step to curtail an abusive revenue stream for federal drug cops.
FAYETTEVILLE — The state should look into either new criminal laws, a civil lawsuit or both to curb abuse of prescription drugs, the chairman of the state Senate Judiciary Committee said Thursday.
“Prescription drug abuse has become one of the biggest drug problems in the state, and I’ve talked to the state’s surgeon general about what we can do about it,” said Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, R-Benton. “I’m looking into a lawsuit and changes in the law.”
Both Scott Pace, spokesman for the Arkansas Pharmacists Association, and Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is the senator’s uncle and a former head of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, agreed in interviews that abuse of legal prescription drugs has become a serious problem and said they are taking steps to address it.
“The figures we have is that 70 percent of teens have experimented with a prescription drug that is not for them by the time they’re out of high school, at least once,” Pace said. “These are the drugs for parents, aunts and uncles and are presumed to be safe. And they are for the right person in the right conditions, but abusing them can have deadly consequences.”
Sen. Hutchinson convened his committee in the Quorum Court meeting room at the Washington County Courthouse on Thursday afternoon, where members met with Judges Cristi Beaumont and Thomas Smith. Beaumont presides over Washington County Drug Court, and Smith is the judge in Benton County Juvenile Court.
Both judges told the committee analysis of case histories and collection of data about court cases were vital to any success they have had. Northwest Arkansas has not found some secret recipe to lowering recidivism rates among drug offenders or lowering incarceration rates among juvenile offenders, trends committee members praised.
The courts’ successes in those areas come from analysis and trend-spotting specific to the area, they said. For instance, Northwest Arkansas has juvenile facilities that are alternatives to detention by the state, facilities that many other regions do not have, Smith said.
Northwest Arkansas is not immune to going down wrong paths, Beaumont said.
“People think of drug courts as an alternative to prison for first offenders,” she said. “What we found out when we looked at our data was that a lot of our effort was wasted on first offenders. The people who really needed our resources were high-risk, high-need cases such as addicts who will offend again if they don’t get that help.”
Hundreds of people could face jail time and fines due to a computer error which wrongfully accused them of skipping court-ordered drug tests.
Hundreds of people could face jail time and fines due to a computer error which wrongfully accused them of skipping court-ordered drug tests.
Jail Alternatives for Michigan Services, a private contractor which serves as metro-Detroit’s largest provider of court-ordered drug testing, underwent the glitch last August.
However, the issue was not brought to light until Dana O’Neal of Oakland County pre-trial services called JAMS to ask why no positive test results had been submitted in recent weeks, according to Barbara Hankey, manager of Oakland County Community Corrections.
Instead of forwarding test results, JAMS wrongfully sent notices indicating defendants had failed to show up for drug testing. If charged with drunk driving then one should immediately call their lawyer.
O’Neal on Thursday sent a notice out to judges across Oakland County alerting them that between Aug. 26, and Sept. 11, “the JAMS drug and alcohol testing agency experienced a software issue resulting in false reports of no-show tests.”
A judge commonly orders defendants accused of drunken driving or drug-related offenses to undergo alcohol and drug testing while they await trial which will be efficiently handled by the professional lawyers from the Colorado Springs law firm handling dui cases. Not reporting for these tests can result in being jailed for failing to follow court orders. You can read more about DUI and see what are the legal steps and procedures.
Defendants rely on organizations such as JAMS to provide courts with the results. They don’t necessarily get a receipt for taking the test, according to defense attorney and drunken-driving law expert Robert Larin.
He suggests that defendants who are accused of failing to appear for a drug test seek a hearing before a judge to dispute the claim.
Several months ago, Troy District Judge Kirsten Nielsen Hartig stopped allowing defendants in her court to work with JAMS due to inaccurate reports.
O’Neal’s notice told judges that her group was “working diligently to correct these inaccurate reports.”
“It is strongly recommended that prior to negative consequences being imposed that all tests be confirmed with our office,” she wrote.
As of Friday, JAMS general manager Michelle Foster had not responded to voice mail and e-mail messages delivered to her by the Detroit Free Press.
Society may be getting more politically correct, but there’s new evidence that hasn’t trickled down to hospital operating rooms.
A medical journal published an anonymous essay last month by a physician recounting other doctors’ crude and sexual comments and behavior with patients during obstetric and gynecologic surgeries.That prompted five Pittsburgh doctors to respond that their residency program director’s inbox was flooded with confessions of bad behavior after she asked everyone in the program to comment on the article. In June, a Virginia colonoscopy patient was awarded $500,000 in a court case because the audio tapes of his colonoscopy procedure showed the anesthesiologist crudely disparaged him throughout.
Whether it’s angry outbursts, lewd remarks or passive aggressiveness, bad conduct by those in the medical community is called “disruptive behavior.” It’s considered such a risk to patient safety that hospitals must have a system for addressing it in order to meet accreditation standards. Some of the most egregious examples include:
• A surgeon who disparaged a male nurse, who had a special needs son, by telling the nurse during a tense time in an operation that he was “a retard just like your boy.” The nurse wrote up the complaint, because he considered the remark an “impediment to safety,” and Kathleen Bartholomew, a Seattle-based nursing and safety consultant, who hand-delivered the complaint to the hospital’s administration.
• A surgeon at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville did not wash his hands before an operation, and when a nurse quietly offered him gloves instead of calling him out on it, the surgeon dropped the gloves in the trash.
•An OB/GYN patient was screaming in pain while the doctor stitched her up without enough anesthetic, a medical student told Bartholomew. When she asked the doctor about it, he joked that she could give her the memory-erasing drug ketamine to make her forget.
“We believe it’s very under-reported.” says Ronald Wyatt, medical director in the commission’s healthcare improvement division at the Joint Commission, “I can’t overstate the importance of it.”
Disruptive behavior leads to increased medication errors, more infections and other bad patient outcomes — partly because staff members are often afraid to speak up in the face of bullying by a physician, Wyatt says. That “hidden code of silence” keeps many incidents from being reported or adequately addressed, says physician Alan Rosenstein, an expert in disruptive behavior.
The anonymous essay in the Annals of Internal Medicine broke some of the silence, said Gaetan Sgro, a physician at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and one of the five physicians who responded to the essay. “Our secrets started spilling,” Sgro wrote. “There were accounts of physicians who needed forgiveness, and others who needed forgiving.”
Hard to quantify
While workers in almost any industry could relate to the stress of financial and time pressure at their jobs, Rosenstein says the literal life-or-death situations surgeons deal with every day make bad behavior far more dangerous in the medical world.
Most experts estimate that up to 5% of physicians exhibit disruptive behavior, although fear of retaliation and other factors make it difficult to determine the extent of the problem. A 2008 survey of nurses and doctors at more than 100 hospitals showed that 77% of respondents said they witnessed physicians engaging in disruptive behavior, which often meant the verbal abuse of another staff member. Sixty-five percent said they saw nurses exhibit such behavior.
Most said such actions raise the risk of errors and deaths.
About two-thirds of the most serious medical incidents — those involving death or serious physical or psychological injury — can be traced back to communication errors, according to a health care accrediting organization called the Joint Commission. Getting nurses and other medical assistants rattled during surgery can be a big safety risk, Bartholomew says.
Medical school is “such a hazing experience,” it’s little surprise that the “people who make it through are not the ones with the best personalities,” says Rosenstein. After all, “emotional intelligence” isn’t what’s rewarded, he says.
Untouchable doctors
Many people think of disruptive behavior as bullying and intimidation — “throwing, spitting and cussing,” says Gerald Hickson, a doctor and senior vice president for quality, safety and risk prevention for Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He prefers a wider definition that includes any behaviors that undermine a safety culture.
Bartholomew says she spent a day consulting at a hospital where nurses complained doctors were doing “unethical surgeries” — involving very old patients with dementia — but two of the surgeons were bringing in more than $30 million a year between them “so are untouchable,” she says.
Other experts agreed that powerful, revenue-generating doctors are often considered off-limits to hospital administrators. Physician shortages, especially in poor rural areas, make it even more unlikely that a hospital or medical practice will risk losing a doctor, particularly a big-billing one. Hickson says highly productive doctors may be more likely to bring complaints because they are busier and more stressed, meaning more things can go wrong.
Along with the safety risks, disruptive behavior can wreak havoc on hospital staffs, forcing nurses or others who have to deal with a bully to lose focus during critical medical procedures, call in sick or even quit.
Effects on patients
It can have an even more devastating effect on patients.
The Virginia patient whose anesthesiologist mocked him during his procedure had left his cellphone audio recorder on so he would remember the doctor’s instructions later. Driving home with his new fiancee, he was devastated to turn on the recorder and hear the doctor suggesting he had a venereal disease and needed to be more masculine, and saying she had put a false diagnosis of hemorrhoids on his chart.
One of his attorneys, Mikhael Charnoff, said the man was so traumatized, he plans to delay getting a recommended followup another doctor said he needed.
Most anesthesiologists are well aware that patients can react differently to sedation, and that’s especially true in the “twilight” form of anesthesia that’s common in colonoscopies.
“Hearing is the first thing that comes back,” says Ursula Munasifi, an anesthesiologist at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Va. “I believe if you say negative things about the diagnosis or outcomes, it can integrate in (the patient’s) memory.”
She makes it a point to talk to patients about vacations as they are becoming sedated, “so if they remember something, they remember Hawaii,” she says.
What to do?
At Vanderbilt, Hickson says there’s a slowly-escalating system to deal with complaints about such behavior. First, trained professionals simply talk to the alleged offender over a cup of coffee and ask the person what happened, which “has been powerful because it sends a message that we respect each other.”
A second offense brings a warning, subsequent offenses bring a letter outlining the problem and possibly interventions such as mental and physical screening, and offenders who don’t stop their behavior may eventually lose staff privileges. Complaints are made against medical professionals of all ages, research shows, with slightly more complaints against men than women.
Hickson says 90% of team members don’t get any complaints, 6-8% get occasional complaints and 2-3% account for more than 40% of complaints. Of that 2-3%, more than three-quarters turn their behavior around and don’t have recurrences. Only a couple medical professionals out of about 1,600 lose their staff privileges each year, meaning they are no longer able to see patients, for this sort of behavior, he says.
Jason Wayne Smith, a general surgeon with University of Louisville Physicians, says serious disruptive behavior cases like the one involving the Virginia man “would be out of the ordinary. You just don’t see that very often.” Despite stereotypes of surgeons as bossy and abrasive, he says, “in general, we try and maintain a relatively professional atmosphere no matter where we are.”
Most hospitals have a system — which may or may not be anonymous — where employees can register complaints about disruptive behavior by others. Munasifi says she clicked the button on Virginia Hospital Center’s computer system to complain about a nurse once and she was later fired.
Health care facilities have made strides in dealing with the problem, with strong programs at many places, including Vanderbilt, Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and the University of Michigan, Wyatt says. Effective strategies aren’t just punitive, he says; they are also designed to help offenders by, for example, sending them to anger management classes or directing them to counseling — or, in some cases, getting them help with medical or addiction problems.
Another potential solution involves closer monitoring of medical professionals as they work. Wade Ayer, whose sister Julie Rubenzer died in 2003 after an overdose of a powerful anesthetic during a breast implant surgery, has been pushing for hospitals to audio and videotape surgeries. He believes “it should be patients’ and consumers’ protected right to know what happened to them and what happens in the room when they are under sedation,” says Ayer.
A bill is pending in the Wisconsin state legislature that would require hospitals to do so if patients request it and the footage would become part of the permanent medical record, which could be use in court cases.
“Videotaping surgeries makes sense far beyond malpractice investigation,” says Leah Binder, CEO of the Leapfrog Group, which rates hospitals on safety. “Videotaping is an excellent quality improvement tool.”
