Pill mill kingpin Jeff George will not be sentenced for at least another six months on second degree murder charges in the 2009 death of a clinic patient.
George, several of his relatives and others connected to the East Coast Pain Clinic are facing federal charges from “Operation Oxy Alley,” an investigation that involved local and federal drug agents. Florida state prosecutors also charged George and two other people with murder in the death of Joey Bartolucci. The 24-year-old was found dead with half-filled prescriptions for Xanax and Dilaudid prescribed by one of East Coast Pain Clinic’s physicians.
George pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors in exchange for a plea agreement that made his potential prison sentence at a maximum of twenty years. Now George will not be sentenced until June of 2012.
Posts Tagged ‘pain management’
Pill Mill Kingpin’s Sentencing Delayed Six Months
Tuesday, December 20th, 2011South Florida Fighting Back Against Pain Clinics
Friday, February 11th, 2011
The town of Davie hopes to control pain clinics in the community. The town currently has a moratorium on pain clinics that will expire in June, but hopes the council this week will approve new regulations.
Future pain clinics would be required to operate at least 1,000 feet from churches, schools, parks, homes, day care centers and libraries. It would also require that clinics cannot open within 2,500 of each other. Pain clinics would be limited to normal business hours. The clinics would be limited to giving patients only three days worth of medication. It would also require that the pain clinics be run by a state licensed physician who is board certified in pain management.
Florida has long had a problem with pain clinics across central and southern Florida. People travel down the East Coast to the Florida pain clinics, creating huge headaches for addiction specialists and law enforcement.
More Americans Turning to Alternative Therapies
Thursday, February 10th, 2011
A new study says that more Americans are turning to alternative and complimentary medicine. According to the National Institutes of Health, there was an 18.1 percent increase among Caucasians using alternative medicine between the years of 2002 and 2007. During that time period, there was a 17.2 percent increase among Asians, a 6.6 percent increase among blacks and a one percent increase among Hispanics.
Alternative medicine therapies include massage, acupuncture and chiropractic care. The therapies are utilized for many reasons, including chronic, long-term medical conditions, like cancer and fibromyalgia. The study discovered that people turned to these alternative therapies when their access to conventional medical treatment was restricted. Alternative and complimentary medicine has gained acceptance in traditional medical society in recent years.
Growing Dangers From Innocent House Products
Thursday, February 3rd, 2011There is a growing danger from a product as innocent as bath salts. But these powders are menacing, and are being snorted, injected or smoked by abusers across the country.
The effects of the bath salts are as powerful as methamphetamine because of the stimulants mephedrone and methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV). The bath salts are sold legally at convenience stores and online and a small package costs as little as $20 dollars. They are sold under enticing names like Ivory Wave, Bliss, White Lightning and Hurricane Charlie and cause hallucinations, paranoia, fast heart rates and thoughts of suicide.
State lawmakers in both Mississippi and Kentucky are looking at banning the dangerous powders from sales. Bath salts were recently outlawed in Louisiana by an emergency order after more than 125 calls came into the state’s poison control center in the last three months of 2010.
The stimulants contained in these powders are currently not regulated by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. It could take years for regulation to happen.
Restrictions of Pain Clinics in Florida
Tuesday, January 11th, 2011The new state law restricting operations of pain clinics in Florida is not perfect. The law went into effect on Oct. 1 and limits clinics to giving just three days’ worth of medication. Physicians can still write a prescription for a month’s supply of pills, but patients will have to get the rest of their medication somewhere else.
Many pain clinic owners are finding ways to sidestep the new law and opening pharmacies in new locations. Detectives in Palm Beach and Broward counties have, to date, been unable to know exactly how many new pharmacies have opened in the area to avoid the new restrictions.
“They pop up so fast it’s hard to keep track of,” said Broward Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Richard Pisanti.
Teens Dying from Prescription Drug Overdoses
Friday, January 7th, 2011A report from the Nueces County (Texas) Medical Examiner’s Office finds that teenagers in the area are dying from prescription drugs in increasing numbers.
“It seems like left and right people are overdosing on these drugs. It’s no longer cocaine and heroin and those sorts of things, it’s prescription drugs,” said Stafanie Wiser of the Medical Examiner’s Office.
Each year the coroner is doing more autopsies on teenagers. The cause of death is prescription drugs, often mixed with alcohol.
“Typically it appears in a younger crowd. It doesn’t apply just to them but there are more under the age of 30 that are accidentally dying from these cocktails,” Wiser said.
In Nueces County in 2008, there were 40 deaths from a prescription drug overdose.
Illegal Sale of Prescription Drugs Causes Company to Close It’s Doors
Thursday, December 30th, 2010A former pharmacist in the Chicago suburbs has pleaded guilty to methadone possession. Prosecutors have dropped nine other felony charges against Mark Burger, 43, the former lead pharmacist for Burger Drugs. The pharmacy was a family-owned one that was a part of the community in St. Charles for 70 years. Burger Drugs closed its doors in 2008.
Authorities started investigating Burger after getting information that he was selling large amounts of Vicodin. In April of 2008, law enforcement seized large quantities of prescription drugs and $10,000 dollars in cash. Burger is free on $10,000 bond pending a trial.
Meditating and Pain Management
Thursday, December 23rd, 2010A new study finds that meditation changes the way the brain processes pain signals. The research was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego and found that meditating for just four days affects pain responses in the brain.
Meditation has been found to reduce anxiety, promote relaxation and helps people regulate their emotions. Meditation may reduce pain by reducing the effects of the pain.
“It’s really all about the context of the situation of the environment,” said Fadel Zeidan, the author of the study and a postdoctoral candidate at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. “Meditation seems to have an overarching sense of attenuating that type of response.”
Opioid Abuse Becoming Fatal
Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010
A new study has found that people who use opioids had higher incidences of serious problems than people who take other types of pain medication.
“In the past decade, people have increased their opioid use, and I think that’s partly based on the fact that other drugs were [found to be] dangerous, but no one has done an analysis of opioids,” said Dr. Daniel Solomon, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the lead author of the study. “But now opioids aren’t looking so good either.”
The use of Vicodin and Oxycontin almost doubled between 2001 and 2006. In 2006, one in five adults in this country received a prescription for a painkiller. The number of fatal opioid overdoses more than tripled from 4,000 to 13,800 deaths between 1999 and 2006.
Painkiller Being Pulled Off the Market
Wednesday, December 1st, 2010The company that makes Darvon is yanking the painkiller off the market due to concerns that the drug causes potentially fatal heart rhythms. The Food and Drug Administration said that Xanodyne Pharmaceuticals has agreed to stop the marketing of Darvon and Darvocet.
In 2009, about 10 million people in the United States received prescriptions for Darvon and similar painkillers. Britain and the countries in the European Union have already banned the drug because of overdoses and suicides.
The action comes on the heels of a study that found that the drug interferes with the electrical activity of the heart. This can cause a fatal heart arrhythmia.
“With the new study results, for the first time we now have data showing that the standard therapeutic dose of propoxyphene can be harmful to the heart,” said the Food and Drug Administration’s Dr. Gerald Dal Pan.
Dal Pan said that people currently taking Darvon should continue taking the drug until their physician prescribes an alternative drug. Other opioid painkillers that are commonly prescribed, and abused, are oxycodone and morphine.