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Hire a Los Angeles Prescription Drug Abuse Attorney for your case
If you are a pharmacist facing an accusation that you promoted or facilitated pharmaceutical or prescription drug abuse, you need to seek legal assistance as soon as possible. At the Marcarian Law Firm, P.C., we are uniquely placed to help clients get through these types of situations. Our Los Angeles prescription drug abuse attorney has the resources necessary to fully investigate these situations and defend pharmacists against disciplinary actions or the revocation of their license.
Section 11153 of California’s Health & Safety Code is the “corresponding responsibility” statute.
Under the corresponding responsibility statute, a pharmacist must ensure that a controlled substance prescription is issued for a legitimate medical purpose. There are ways to determine if a prescription for a controlled substance is issued for a legitimate medical purpose, including:
The above includes some of the information a pharmacist needs to consider to exercise his or her professional judgment on whether to fill a prescription for a controlled substance.
Once an accusation is filed against a pharmacist’s license, the California Attorney General’s office represents the California Board of Pharmacy. The disciplinary matter is referred to the Office of Administrative Hearings, and an Administrative Law Judge hears the matter. Trying to handle these accusations without assistance from an attorney is like facing criminal charges without defense counsel.
The administrative process could put a pharmacist’s license in jeopardy of revocation. At the Marcarian Law Firm, P.C., we are one of the few law firms in the state that handles this type of work routinely.
If you are a pharmacist facing an accusation, you should consult a skilled attorney. At the Marcarian Law Firm, P.C., our skilled attorneys have extensive experience handling complex pharmaceutical abuse cases on behalf of the accused. We are ready to step in and handle every step along the way, including any administrative processes and hearings you have to go through. When you need a Drug Injury Attorney California, you can contact us for a consultation of your case by clicking here or calling 818-995-8787 or 800-924-3784.
Armond Marcarian: Prescription drug abuse (sometimes called pharmaceutical abuse) occurs anytime a patient fails to take a medication in the way that it is prescribed. If a physician prescribes a medication to be taken four times a day and a patient takes it three times a day or five times a day, broadly speaking, that is abuse—it is misuse. In prescription drug abuse, you get into areas where a prescription is prescribed for a patient and the patient is not the ultimate user of the drug. Those drugs find their way onto the streets and fetch quite a few dollars per pill, and then they exchange hands. That is certainly prescription drug abuse. When a pharmacist is presented with a prescription, he is required to monitor the patient’s medical history to identify drug-drug interactions and drug-disease interactions and to make a professional judgment about whether or not the prescription that the patient is presenting is likely to end up on the street. How can you tell that? Well, you look at the patient’s drug usage. If, for instance, the patient is taking a lot of Norco, a very highly abused drug, and is found to be taking it very frequently, that is a red flag for the pharmacist that there could be prescription drug abuse for this Norco. The pharmacist needs to call the prescriber, run a CURES Report, and identify other instances where the patient may have obtained Norco (and the sources of the Norco) to determine whether or not there is a case of prescription drug abuse.
Armond Marcarian: If there is a case of prescription drug abuse and the pharmaceuticals involved are controlled substances (such as Valium, Heroin, Morphine, Dilaudid, Vicodin, Vicodin ES, or Soma), once the California State Board of Pharmacy becomes aware that a pharmacist dispensed prescriptions that resulted in prescription drug abuse, the Board does its investigation, sometimes in collaboration with agents from the DEA. And once they complete their investigation, they refer their reports to the California Attorney General’s office. At that point, the Attorney General’s office conducts its investigation to determine whether or not there is cause for discipline. If there is, they initiate a lawsuit; they call their lawsuit an “accusation”. They will file an accusation with the Board of Pharmacy—this would be the people of the State of California against the particular pharmacist or pharmacy. At that point, the pharmacy or pharmacist will be well advised to seek legal help because this is a highly technical area. It would be similar to someone without legal training or experience representing themselves when they are criminally charged or when there is a serious civil lawsuit. The administrative process where a pharmacist’s license is the subject of revocation is a quasi-criminal process, so they are well-advised to seek representation from an attorney who has done these cases and understands the dynamics. In the State of California, I am aware of only maybe three or four other attorneys (other than the Marcarian Law Firm) who do this type of work routinely, and I think three of them are pharmacists. So, there are not too many pharmacist attorneys who do this kind of work. We recommend they get their representation from someone who has experience dealing with this type of case, such as our firm.
Armond Marcarian: Prescription drug abuse and substance abuse are huge problems nationally. It has resulted in thousands and thousands of cases of death from overdose. Unfortunately, the average age population where you are seeing this happen is college students and young adults in their late twenties. It affects a lot of people but in most instances younger individuals.
Armond Marcarian: As far as prescription drugs, some of the most commonly abused are Norco, hydrocodone-containing products, Soma, Dilaudid, morphine sulfate, various preparations of morphine sulfate, and one in particular that has received tremendous coverage over the years is MS Contin. There is a cough syrup called Promethazine, and it is a potentiator. People who take Promethazine typically mix it with morphine sulfate, Dilaudid, or Norco to potentiate the drowsiness and grogginess side effects of those drugs. As a result, it is potentially a deadly combination. As far as over-the-counter drugs that have the potential for abuse, Sudafed is a drug that is a decongestant that is sold over the counter. About three or four years ago, all pharmacies in the country were ordered to remove Sudafed from their shelves and place it in the back of the pharmacy because people were buying massive quantities of Sudafed and using it to manufacture speed and crack cocaine. Now, if anyone tries to buy Sudafed, there is a limited supply you can purchase and you need to present the proper identification to the pharmacist. OxyContin is a morphine-containing product and has been by far the most commonly abused controlled substance for the past seven or eight years. Going back about twenty-five or thirty years ago, Quaaludes were very popular and highly abused. Today, OxyContin is today’s equivalent of the Quaaludes of the past. The reason why a lot of pharmacists have had their licenses revoked and their pharmacy permits revoked is that they filled out illegitimate prescriptions written by some physicians who have been arrested, charged, and convicted of second-degree murder and manslaughter over the past two years. Nearly all of those cases were related to OxyContin abuse.
Armond Marcarian: Section 11153 of California’s Health & Safety Code is what we call the “corresponding responsibility” statute. There are ways of trying to determine if it is issued for a legitimate medical purpose by going through the patient’s profile, running a CURES Report to identify prior usage of the same drug or similar drugs; finding out whether that patient is obtaining that particular controlled substance from other sources, from other doctors; and if so, how frequently does that patient receive those prescriptions. Those are some of the analyses or work that the pharmacist needs to do under that corresponding responsibility statute to formulate a professional judgment before he dispenses a prescription to that patient. In addition, the corresponding responsibility statute was never tested in California, nor to any significant extent anywhere in the country, until our office had such a case. We initially lost the case, but the California State Board of Pharmacy determined that that case should have what they call a “precedential value”. It was called the Pacifica Pharmacy Case and is cited now not only in California but elsewhere in the country. There has been much talk about that case because it was a case that was fully litigated. It did not get to the Court of Appeal, but there was a pretty well-developed record for that case and the main issue there was “corresponding responsibility” under subdivision “a” of California Health & Safety Code Section 11153. The California State Board of Pharmacy is taking this statute and the corresponding responsibility of the pharmacist very seriously. They are very aggressive in their prosecution under this particular statute.
Armond Marcarian: A person should seek legal assistance from attorneys who have done this type of work, meaning representing health care professionals in the administrative arena. The practice in the administrative arena is a little different than what you do in a criminal setting or a civil setting. Certainly, understanding a little bit about medications, drugs, and prescriptions has an advantage for the attorney. To my knowledge, none of the State Attorney General’s deputy attorneys have a background in medicine, so there is a tremendous advantage to those licensees and permittees who seek out an attorney who understands the medicine and pharmacy part of it, such as the Marcarian Law Firm.
Contact our Best California Pharmacy Defense Attorney in Los Angeles, California
Contact our Drug Injury Attorney California or Marcarian Law Firm, P.C., for a consultation concerning your particular situation at 800-924-3784.