“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 LSU and Southern University Agricultural Centers are first in line to potentially research and grow marijuana plants for medical use in Louisiana according to Act 261, signed into law June 29.
Gov. Bobby Jindal approved the designated schools with the first right to refusal to grow state-sanctioned marijuana. Recreational use of cannabis remains illegal in Louisiana, and if the schools accept the invitation to grow the plant they will likely be strictly regulated.
The University did not actively seek involvement in the bill, said LSU AgCenter Director of Communications and Public Relations Frankie Gould.
“It was written into legislation the day we found out about it,” she said.
The AgCenter cannot speculate about its potential involvement in the production of marijuana because it is waiting on state agencies to return regulations for the agreement.
Because LSU and Southern are both listed in the bill, they could decide to work together or respond independently if they accept the regulations and direction of state agencies. If the Universities choose to refuse a contract with the state, negotiations will open to private bidders. It is unclear whether the production could be used as a profit center for the Universities or if the finances would be state-controlled.
Potential production is still far in the future as state agencies research the implications and requirements of the project. Under the new law, the Board of Pharmacy will work with law enforcement and the Louisiana District Attorneys to define the reach and direction of the potential production. Gould said LSU will not be able to make any decisions about the production until these state agencies report their positions, which can take up to six months after the signing of the legislation.
At that time, the AgCenter will have to work with LSU President F. King Alexander and the LSU Board of Supervisors to consider their position on the production. The AgCenter hasn’t been able to access its capacity for the added research, and has limited land and resources.
Regulations for cannabis production are expected to be stiff, and the legislation includes requirements for levels of active ingredients in the plants. Growers would have to produce plants with the lowest possible level of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the chemical that produces a euphoric effect sought by recreational users, but will extract oils that have been used to treat conditions like Glaucoma and side effects of cancer chemotherapy, according to the language of the law. Accessing the medication will require a prescription.
There has never been a program like this in Louisiana, Gould said. In some states, schools including the University of Mississippi grow marijuana for research purposes but not consumption, and some states including Colorado have legalized the production of marijuana for recreational use.
A key lawmaker is demanding answers from the Drug Enforcement Administration about alleged improper conduct that was first reported by Fox News on Thursday and may be tied to the resignations of two high-level officials.
A letter from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R- Iowa, raises “important questions” about actions taken by DEA investigators looking into claims of retaliation and harassment made by Darek and Lisa Kitlinski, a married couple, who each work at the agency.
Wants answers: Sen. Charles Grassley fired off a letter to DEA brass. (AP)
Grassley wants Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg to reveal whether a DEA-issued smartphone was used to conduct covert surveillance on the employees. It it was, the senator wants to know under what legal authority.
The letter, which calls for a response by month’s end, also questions whether senior lawyer Letitia Pinkney and Deputy Administrator Thomas Harrigan resigned because of improprieties tied to the Kitlinski investigation.
Darek Kitlinski’s initial claim against the agency was based on his inability to secure an internal transfer. Kitlinski says his status as a Coast Guard reservist brought hostility from superiors and was the source of friction over the transfer.
More than a dozen senior DEA officers have filed lawsuits alleging retaliation, reprisals and career derailments because of their military service. Collectively they suggest the law enforcement agency on front lines of America’s drug war is inhospitable to men and women who also serve in the reserves.
Last fall, after leaving a secure DEA garage, Darek says he noticed a red blinking light coming from under the hood of his SUV. He reached in and pulled out a still functioning Blackberry bearing a DEA identification sticker. The device allegedly traces back to the DEA’s top Human Resources officer.
Skilled hackers can access smartphone externally to monitor its movements and even eavesdrop on conversations.
How do people use, misuse or abuse Hipaa, the federal regulations protecting patients’ confidential health information? Let us count the ways:
■ Last month, in a continuing care retirement community in Ithaca, N.Y., Helen Wyvill, 72, noticed that a friend hadn’t shown up for their regular swim. She wasn’t in her apartment, either.
Had she gone to a hospital? Could friends visit or call? Was anyone taking care of the dog?
Questions to the staff brought a familiar nonresponse: Nobody could provide any information because of Hipaa.
“The administration says they have to abide by the law, blah, blah,” Ms. Wyvill said. “They won’t even tell you if somebody has died.”
■ Years ago, Patricia Gross, then 56, and a close friend had taken refuge in a cafe at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where Ms. Gross’s husband was dying of cancer. She was lamenting his inadequately treated pain and her own distress when a woman seated at a nearby table walked over.
“She told me how very improper it was to be discussing the details of a patient’s treatment in public and that it was a Hipaa violation,” Ms. Gross recalled.
■ In 2012, Ericka Gray repeatedly phoned the emergency room at York Hospital in York, Pa., where her 85-year-old mother had gone after days of back pain, to alert the staff to her medical history. “They refused to take the information, citing Hipaa,” said Ms. Gray, who was in Chicago on a business trip.
“I’m not trying to get any information. I’m trying to give you information,” Ms. Gray told them, adding that because her mother’s memory was impaired, she couldn’t supply the crucial facts, like medication allergies.
By the time Ms. Gray found a nurse willing to listen, hours later, her mother had already been prescribed a drug she was allergic to. Fortunately, the staff hadn’t administered it yet.
Each scenario, attorneys say, involves a misinterpretation of the privacy rules created under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. “It’s become an all-purpose excuse for things people don’t want to talk about,” said Carol Levine, director of the United Hospital Fund’s Families and Health Care Project, which has published a Hipaa guide for family caregivers.
Hipaa applies only to health care providers, health insurers, clearinghouses that manage and store health data, and their business associates. Yet when I last wrote about this topic, a California reader commented that she’d heard a minister explain that the names of ailing parishioners could no longer appear in the church bulletin because of Hipaa.
Wrong. Neither a church nor a distraught spouse is a “covered entity” under the law.
Last month, Representative Doris Matsui, Democrat of California and co-chairwoman of the Democratic Caucus Seniors Task Force, who has heard similar complaints from constituents, introduced legislation to clarify who can divulge what and under what circumstances. The proposed bill would require the Department of Health and Human Services, which last year issued new Hipaa “guidance,” to make that statement part of its regulations and to create model training programs for providers and administrators, patients and families.
“A lot of times it’s just misunderstanding what is and isn’t allowed under Hipaa,” Representative Matsui said in an interview.
So, what is and isn’t?
Family members can provide information, as Ms. Gray attempted to do. “How does keeping information confidential stop you from listening to someone?” said Eric Carlson, the directing attorney for Justice in Aging, a legal advocacy group in California. “There’s no Hipaa privacy consideration there.”
An assisted living facility or nursing home can report a death. It can also give someone’s general condition and location, assuming the patient remains within the facility. And if, as Ms. Wyvill suggested, residents ask administrators to keep a list of those who want their neighbors to know they’ve gone to a hospital, that’s perfectly legal under Hipaa.
The law gives providers flexibility in disclosing information in the patient’s interest, but it doesn’t require them to. Clinton Mikel, chairman of an American Bar Association group on e-health and privacy, said that providers sometimes decided, “ ‘We could, but we’re not required to, and we think this situation is a mess, so we’re going to exercise that option.’
A caregiver’s strongest defense, Mr. Mikel said, is to be the patient’s personal representative — his health care proxy or guardian, or with power of attorney — or to have the patient himself authorize the release of information. In such cases, providers must comply.
Hipaa doesn’t require patients to give consent in writing. They can verbally ask that a relative or friend receive information. Facilities may legally demand a signature on a form, nonetheless, and many do.
Staff members’ fears of the consequences of an unintended Hipaa violation are probably overblown. Patients can complain to the Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, which lately has intensified enforcement of many aspects of the privacy rules, Mr. Mikel said.
Still, the civil rights office “is not in the gotcha game,” he said. The office generally tries to resolve complaints by fixing problems, not levying penalties.
“Do I see it going after a health care provider for disclosing something to a family member in good faith? I don’t,” Mr. Mikel said. An assisted living staff member or hospital aide isn’t likely to lose her job.
Another common complaint about Hipaa enforcement, by the way, is the lack of access to patients’ own health records, which they have a right to see or copy, though providers can charge copying fees.
Within families, decisions about how much health information to share, and with whom, often become complicated, as a recent study in JAMA Internal Medicine found. When researchers working to design online patient portals convened two sets of focus groups — one for people over age 75, another for family caregivers — they heard the usual tension between older adults’ need for assistance and their desire for autonomy.
“Seniors say, ‘I don’t want to burden my kids with my medical issues,’ ” said Bradley Crotty, the director of patient portals at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and the study’s lead author. “And the family is saying, ‘I’m already worried. Not knowing is the burden.’ ”
The older group wanted help but not second-guessing or “spying,” Dr. Crotty added. They might agree to disclose the medications they take — just not all of them.
Moreover, the dynamic often changes with increasing disability or a health crisis.
“Say a senior has a serious medical condition — a stroke, for instance — and requires a lot of help and support,” Dr. Crotty said. “He could recover enough to want to take back control of his health information. It may go back and forth.”
Such negotiations require continuing discussions of what patients want to divulge and what families need to know. Personal relationships are tricky terrain.
The law, on the other hand, is comparatively straightforward.
“Providers may be disinclined to give out information anyway, and this provides an easy rationale,” Mr. Carlson, the Justice in Aging lawyer, said. “But Hipaa is more common sense than people give it credit for.”
Correction: July 17, 2015 An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the circumstances under which a health care provider may disclose medical information to a relative or friend. A provider may not disclose such information if the patient objects and is not incapacitated. It is not the case that even if the patient objects, providers may use professional judgement to disclose information.
almost every section of the country is subject to different types of natural disaster(s)… The standard recommendation from the AMERICAN RED CROSS .. is listed below…. including Medications (7-day supply) and medical items.. that would suggest that for every ONE MILLION population affected by the disaster .. each day abt 11,000 chronic pain pts would be running out of the necessary medications.. Given the current small “window” (1-2 days) that pts are allowed to refill their medications.
The American Red Cross recommends, at a minimum, you should have the basic supplies listed below:
Water—one gallon per person, per day (3-day supply for evacuation, 2-week supply for home)
Food—non-perishable, easy-to-prepare items (3-day supply for evacuation, 2-week supply for home)
Flashlight
Battery-powered or hand-crank radio (NOAA Weather Radio, if possible)
Extra batteries
First aid kit – Anatomy of a First Aid Kit
Medications (7-day supply) and medical items
Multi-purpose tool
Sanitation and personal hygiene items
Copies of personal documents (medication list and pertinent medical information, proof of address, deed/lease to home, passports, birth certificates, insurance policies)
Cell phone with chargers
Family and emergency contact information
Extra cash
Emergency blanket
Map(s) of the area
Depending on your family, you may need to add supplies to your kit. Consider some of the following items if needed:
Medical supplies (hearing aids with extra batteries, glasses, contact lenses, syringes, etc)
A daughter sitting beside her 93 y/o terminally ill father.. who consumed a “bottle” of liquid morphine to “end it all”… Hospice nurse shows up for a visit… calls for a ambulance… sent pt to hospital who is giving Naloxone and survived for another 4 days. The nurse also called the police and daughter was arrested for assisting suicide..
Could it be that family members that are near, around or aware of a family member’s suicide by drug overdose and is “persuaded” by authorities to allow the death certificate to be labeled and a “accidental overdose”… or the family members may investigated … charged… arrested for assisting a suicide.. and all the legal expenses that goes along with it… even if the charges are dismissed or they are found not guilty at some point in the future.
The owner of a chain of pipe shops in Oklahoma whose business is at risk of being snuffed out by law enforcement has received a temporary victory in federal court.
The owner of a chain of pipe shops whose business is at risk of being snuffed out by law enforcement has received a temporary victory in federal court.
Agents with the Drug Enforcement Agency attempted to muscle Ziggyz Pipe Shops stores out of business by contacting the stores’ landlords, owner Chelsey Davis alleges in a federal lawsuit July 1. Davis purchased the business after a raid on the previous owner.
Davis’ attorney, Micheal Salem, accused the agents of abusing their power by acting as judge and jury—allegations that U.S. Judge Joe Heaton described as troubling. Agents mailed letters to some of the landlords, prompting them to evict or refuse to negotiate new leases with Davis.
“That is not the way to enforce the law,” Salem said. “That is an effort to stomp Ziggyz out of existence.”
On July 10, the judge issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting the DEA from contacting the landlords or attempting to seize the landlords’ property. Heaton, who was once a federal prosecutor, will consider the issues more fully at a hearing scheduled for July 28.
Defending the government officials named in the lawsuit, assistant federal prosecutor Matthew Anderson said the letter written by the DEA agent was simply reiterating the information from a search warrant, which has not been made public.
Davis had to know he was making a risky investment when purchasing the business, Anderson said, and restraining the government from pursuing civil forfeiture wouldn’t prevent the landlords from evicting Davis.
“I don’t fully understand what they think success looks like,” Anderson said.
Davis also asked the judge to address whether any items in his inventory are illegal paraphernalia, a request that the judge said could take weeks. Under state statute, whether an item constitutes drug paraphernalia depends on context and other factors.
Heaton’s ruling could impact several other pipe shop owners facing charges in connection with recent raids at other stores.
Ziggyz had 12 locations across Oklahoma when state and federal law enforcement agents descended on the businesses April 22. Law enforcement involved in the raid included the DEA, Homeland Security, Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control and the Oklahoma City Police Department.
No charges have been filed, and the search warrant remains sealed.
However, a public notice on a government forfeiture website details tens of thousands of seized items—six semitrailer loads, according to court records—including pipes, bongs, vaporizers, rolling papers, and detox drinks collected from Ziggyz stores in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Broken Arrow and Sand Springs. No drugs or synthetic marijuana are listed.
Ownership switch
Two weeks after the raid, owner Xiang Yu Ren, also known as Johnny Ren, sold the business and remaining inventory to Davis, who operates a gold business in one of the same retail strip centers as Ziggyz, Salem said. Ren occasionally bought or sold gold at Davis’s store.
Seeing a business opportunity, Davis purchased Ziggyz for 20 cents on the dollar, according to court testimony. He assumed the remaining inventory was legal; otherwise, wouldn’t the DEA have seized those items, too?
Davis formed two new corporations for Ziggyz on May 6, according to the Secretary of State’s office.
He restocked a few items, such as pipes and rolling papers, which Davis believes to be legal based on their prevalence in convenience stores, Salem said.
Davis was in the process of negotiating new leases when he discovered the DEA had sent letters to his landlords, alleging the property “has been used, or is being used, to distribute synthetic cannabinoids,” another name for synthetic marijuana, and drug paraphernalia. The letter warns the landlords that their property could be seized if the activity continued, and the landlord could even be sent to prison or fined.
One of the letters, dated May 19, written on official DEA letterhead and signed by Richard W. Salter, assistant special agent in charge, is evidence in the court case.
Reacting to the letters, landlords began eviction proceedings or giving Davis notice to move out, the lawsuit alleges. Davis already has shuttered five stores, and three others are in litigation.
“Why would anybody want to come down and tangle with the DEA?” Salem asked the judge at the July 10 hearing, pleading for some form of protection for the landlords. If the judge, ultimately, does not side with Davis, the entire business will likely have to fold.
Prior to filing the lawsuit, Davis invited federal agents to his stores to identify illegal products, offering to pull those items from the shelves, court records state. “The agents refused specifics and kept stating everything is paraphernalia, period,” court filings show.
Ziggyz, at 924 SW 59, was open July 10. A clerk was busy answering customers’ questions about rolling papers and pipes displayed in a glass case. Other items for sale included jewelry, stickers and incense.
The raid on Ziggyz is part of a recent law enforcement effort to crack down on pipe shops. Police in Norman recently raided two stores there—McCloud’z Pipes and Fatt Hedz— and took part in a raid at a second Fatt Hedz location in northwest Oklahoma City.
Both Norman stores closed and the owners are facing charges.
Prosecutors charged Tamichael McCloud with a felony: possession of marijuana within 1,000 feet of a park, alleging in court records a pipe containing marijuana residue was found in his vehicle during the raid. McCloud’z was located on Norman’s Main Street near Legacy Trail Park, a public walking trail with no playground equipment.
Brandon Chandler, who owns Fatt Hedz, is charged with six counts of possession or selling paraphernalia in Cleveland County and one count of drug paraphernalia and illegal possession of drug proceeds in Oklahoma County.
Another store, Mr. Coolz in Oklahoma City, was the focus of a multi-agency raid March 24.
Thousands of packages of synthetic marijuana were seized and the owners were accused of money laundering, court records show.
SINKING SPRING, Pa. — As the end of each month nears, Megan Short frets. Her 1-year-old daughter, Willow, cannot afford to miss even a single dose of a drug she takes daily to prevent her body from rejecting her transplanted heart.
Because of stringent rules from her drug plan and the pharmacy she is required to use, Ms. Short cannot order a refill until her monthly supply is three-quarters gone. Yet processing a refill takes about seven days, making it touch and go whether the new shipment will arrive before the old one runs out.
“You just feel like every month, you’re hoping that they don’t mess it up,” said Ms. Short, who lives in this town about 70 miles northwest of Philadelphia.
Ms. Short is not dealing with her corner drugstore but with a so-called specialty pharmacy, a new breed of drug dispensary that has arisen to handle the exploding number of medicines that cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and are used to treat complex or rare diseases like cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia and H.I.V.
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Ms. Short measures dosages of Tacrolimus so she can anticipate exactly when to order a refill.Credit Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times
Such specialty medications, as they are called, now account for one-third of all spending on drugs in the United States, up from 19 percent in 2004 and heading toward 50 percent in the next 10 years, according to IMS Health, which tracks prescriptions.
The trend has led to a corresponding boom in the specialty pharmacy business, which by one estimate grew to $78 billion in sales last year from $20 billion in 2005. Insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, hospitals, retail drugstores — even supermarkets — are scrambling to start or acquire specialty pharmacies or to expand the ones they have.
And the pharmacies have an alluring pitch: They promise to help save health plans money by teaching patients how to inject their medicines when necessary, helping them deal with side effects and ensuring the drugs are not wasted. Some studies, usually paid for by the pharmacies themselves, show that patients served by specialty pharmacies are more likely to keep taking their medicines and have better health outcomes than those dealing with a retail pharmacy.
“We generally find that people have high satisfaction rates with any specialty pharmacy, and a lot of that is because they’re getting very hands-on, personalized care,” said Dr. Alan M. Lotvin, an executive vice president at CVS Health, whose specialty pharmacy Ms. Short uses.
But as specialty pharmacies proliferate, questions are emerging about their role and business practices.
Interviews with patients, patient advocates and doctors suggest that specialty pharmacies do not always live up to their billing. There can be onerous refill policies that require hours on the phone, shipments that are delayed or error-ridden, and difficulty reaching a pharmacist or other representatives.
Moreover, many patients are limited to one specialty pharmacy — often one owned by their insurer or pharmacy benefit manager and requiring delivery of drugs by mail. That leaves patients without options if they are dissatisfied.
Consumer Watchdog, a consumer advocate group, has sued four insurance companies over their policies of restricting the pharmacies that patients can use to obtain drugs for H.I.V. Three of the companies — Anthem Blue Cross of California, UnitedHealthcare and Aetna — have since changed their policies to provide more options for H.I.V. patients. The most recent of the lawsuits, against Cigna, was filed in April.
There are also questions of potential conflicts of interest, since many of the bigger specialty pharmacies are owned by insurers or pharmacy benefit managers like CVS and Express Scripts. Pharmacy benefit managers, or P.B.M.s, are supposed to help health plans control drug costs. But will they have the zeal to do that if they are making money dispensing these expensive medicines?
The Biggest in a Booming Pharmacy Field
The specialty pharmacy business grew to an estimated $78 billion in sales last year from $20 billion in 2005. A list of the top 10 specialty pharmacies.
“Forcing people to use a P.B.M.’s own specialty pharmacy creates a situation where the fox is guarding the henhouse,” said David Balto, an antitrust lawyer in Washington. He represents independent specialty pharmacies, some of which claim that insurers and pharmacy benefit managers funnel business to their own pharmacies, even if others may provide better service.
Yet another issue is that some drug companies are choosing only a few specialty pharmacies to handle their products. That could give pharmacies an incentive to position themselves as allies of the manufacturer more than of the patient or health plan.
Federal prosecutors are seeking as much as $3.3 billion in a whistle-blower lawsuit against the drug maker Novartis, saying it provided financial incentives to specialty pharmacies to keep patients on two of its drugs, or to switch them to a Novartis drug. The prosecutors say that nurses hired by the specialty pharmacies to call patients read scripts that neglected to mention certain serious side effects of one of the drugs, Exjade, which is used to treat iron overload in the blood.
Accredo, the specialty pharmacy owned by Express Scripts, agreed in April to pay $60 million to settle civil fraud charges in this matter. BioScrip, a smaller specialty pharmacy, settled previously for $15 million. Novartis disputes the charges, saying incentives were to help the pharmacies do a better job in patient care, one aspect of which is to help patients stay on their medicines. It says that doctors, not the pharmacies, decide which drugs patients should get and how long they should take them.
Diplomat Pharmacy provides a glimpse into the explosive growth and financial workings of the industry because, unlike many specialty pharmacies, it is publicly traded and not part of a bigger company. Started as a single drugstore in Flint, Mich., in 1975, Diplomat now is a nationwide business with $2.2 billion in revenue last year and a stock price that has nearly quadrupled since its initial public offering in October.
The average prescription Diplomat fills cost nearly $2,800 in 2014, up from about $1,300 in 2011, in part because of drug price inflation. Of the $2,800, it kept $167, the difference between what it paid for the drug and what it sold it for. That is about 10 times the gross profit of a retail pharmacy, according to Adam J. Fein, of Pembroke Consulting, an expert on drug distribution.
However, most of that money was absorbed by the cost of services, like nurses, that Diplomat provided. In the end, its overall profit margin was not that much different from that of a retail pharmacy, Mr. Fein said.
Executives at the specialty pharmacies say their surveys show more than 90 percent customer satisfaction. They say their pharmacists and nurses, who specialize in particular diseases, are more knowledgeable about those conditions than general pharmacists and nurses.
They say the health plans often require patients to use a single specialty pharmacy to keep costs down, just as health plans are limiting the choice of doctors, hospitals and drugs. They also say it is often the health plans that restrict early refills, so that the expensive drugs are not wasted.
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The Short family released balloons in May to celebrate the first anniversary of Willow’s heart transplant. Obtaining her drugs can be stressful.Credit Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times
“You don’t want people to be stockpiling drugs in their house,” said Dr. Lotvin of CVS. But he added, “None of us want people to get down to their last dose.”
Still, executives concede there is room for improvement. Many specialty pharmacies are going through a voluntary accreditation process to demonstrate that they meet certain standards for patient care, such as providing 24/7 customer service.
Dr. Lotvin said CVS was working to allow nearly everyone to renew prescriptions online. CVS also has started to allow customers to pick up their specialty drugs at a nearby CVS retail pharmacy rather than have them delivered by mail. Some patients prefer that because they do not want to wait at home for delivery and do not want a package worth thousands of dollars left on their porch if they are away. CVS has found that offering a choice made patients more likely to keep taking their medicine compared with mail delivery only.
Mariah Leach of Louisville, Colo., said she would have preferred to pick up Enbrel, the drug for her rheumatoid arthritis, at her grocery store pharmacy, along with all her other prescriptions. But her insurer required her to get that one drug by mail from a specialty pharmacy. She said she did not need the hand-holding provided by specialty pharmacies. “I feel that’s really more my rheumatologist’s job,” she said.
Ms. Leach recently switched to a drug that does not require her to deal with a specialty pharmacy. But when she did, she said, she was constantly frustrated by the inability to reach people on the phone or by errors in shipments or billing.
“Too bad my insurance forces me to get my Enbrel though this particular pharmacy, otherwise I’d have ditched this place after strike two,” she wrote in a blog post in October 2013. “By my count, we are on about strike six, but I have no choice but to stick with them.”
Some customers, however, praise the service they receive. Susan Day, a fourth-grade teacher in Williamsport, Md., has been using Accredo for more than 15 years for her son, John, who has pulmonary arterial hypertension and needs a drug pumped into his lungs.
Accredo sent a nurse to the Days’ home to teach Ms. Day and her husband the complicated process of mixing her son’s medication and putting it into the pump. It also helped set up a plan with John’s school when he entered kindergarten.
“This is life-sustaining medication,” said Ms. Day, who spoke to a reporter at the request of Express Scripts. “I want someone who knows this medication inside and out.”
Ms. Short, meanwhile, continues to struggle with CVS Health. Last month, after she filled syringes of Willow’s medication, Ms. Short discovered that the pharmacy had mistakenly sent enough for only 14 days, not 30. CVS mailed some overnight, but the experience left Ms. Short rattled.
“Every single month it seems like it’s something,” she said.
HALF of all drug overdoses are contributed to legal medications… this article tends to skip over – or ignore – the fact that most people who OD.. do so on a cocktail of substances… including alcohol… So it appears that no matter how many substances a OD’er has in their system… legal meds gets the “blame” if there is only one in the cocktail…
(ANTIMEDIA) A new study has shown that pharmaceutical drugs cause more overdoses and more deaths than all of the illegal drugs on the market combined. According to the government’s own statistics, listed on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website, deaths relating to pharmaceutical drugs rose to roughly 23,000 last year, which accounts for over half of the total overdose deaths in the country for that time period.
Additionally, a recent study conducted by researchers with the University of Virginia, University of Arkansas, the Partnership for Drug Free Kids, and the American Institutes for Research reconfirmed the known dangers of pharmaceutical drug abuse.
The study concluded that, “Teens need help before they reach these tipping points for prescription drug abuse. Adults spotting teens with very high levels of anxiety and at least moderate use of other restricted substances should realize that these are students with a high likelihood of prescription abuse. Male teens with a high need to be popular and teens in general appear to be at exceptional risk. Campaigns must target parents as well, since they clearly underestimate both the physical risks of prescription drugs and the likelihood that their children will abuse these drugs.”
Sadly, the authors of the study described any average teenager, however, it does give us some insight into the root causes of teenage drug abuse.
As the study noted, teens are being pushed towards drug use by the high-stress environment that is created by modern culture and government schools. Many times, these students are even prescribed a wide variety of these medications to help them cope with the stresses of teenage life, which means that doctors are essentially putting their stamp of approval on daily teenage use of amphetamines like Adderall or tranquilizers like Xanax.
A study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) highlighted this phenomenon, pointing out that “Prescription drugs are seen as blessed by a trusted institution, the FDA, while increasingly aggressive advertising by drug companies simultaneously floods parents and children with messages that these substances are safe, popular, and beneficial.”
John Vibes is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war. In addition to his writing and activist work he organizes a number of large events including the Free Your Mind Conference, which features top caliber speakers and whistle-blowers from all over the world. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. You can find his 65 chapter Book entitled “Alchemy of the Timeless Renaissance” at bookpatch.com.
Including the long acting Oxycontin… Oxycodone has NINE DIFFERENT STRENGTHS… but according to this article the DEA only looked at the number of doses a pharmacy purchased… apparently of all strengths.. Another DEA fishing expedition ?
Federal authorities have searched a Martinsburg pharmacy to “verify the correctness of controlled substance inventories, records, reports and other documents,” authorities said in a July 6 filing with U.S. District Court in Clarksburg.
City Pharmacy was flagged when a Drug Enforcement Administration agent took note of the pharmacy’s oxycodone purchases: Lindsey Malocu, DEA Diversion Investigator, said in an affidavit supporting the records check the pharmacy had purchased 237,500 dosage units of oxycodone in 2013, and 130,600 doses the following year.
The average retail pharmacy in West Virginia purchased 80,550 doses in 2013 and 80,203 in 2014, Malocu said. The national average was 69,881 dosage units in 2013, and 71,128 in 2014.
The pharmacy had never been inspected by the Drug Enforcement Administration, Malocu wrote in the supporting affidavit.
U.S. Attorney William Ihlenfeld II declined to comment, saying that, “Due to the ongoing nature of the case, we do not have any comment at this time.”
