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4 Investigates: Pill-pushers turn to Internet
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According to the DEA, a growing number of pill pushers have moved from the street corner to the information superhighway.
Jimmie Fox directs the DEA Operations in Louisiana and the central Gulf Coast region. He says the so-called rogue pharmacies ignore the laws legitimate pharmacies follow, such as requiring a doctor-patient relationship to fill prescriptions.
"I think this poses a great challenge for this country, this society as a whole," Fox said. "This in my opinion is certainly the largest form of drug trafficking in the 21st century."
Fox said very seldom is there a face to face consultation with a doctor. It's done solely over the internet.
The increase in online pharmacies illegally selling prescription drugs is fueling a national epidemic of addiction.
Addictive disease specialist Dr. Ken Roy said many of the patients he sees have bought drugs over the internet.
"It makes their addiction come sooner and progress faster and is associated with much greater devastation," Roy said.
Roy, with Addiction Recovery Resources of New Orleans, says the availability of drugs over the Internet, especially certain pain killers, makes it easier for people to feed their addiction, making a bad situation even worse.
"If, for instance, somebody has an addiction to narcotics, all they have to do is go on the website, in the privacy of their bedroom, send in their credit card number and the drugs are supplied right to their door by the postal service," Roy said.
The New Orleans D-E-A is now going high tech to catch the high-tech pushers with a special tactical diversion squad that surfs the web for rouge pharmacies.
"The problem is a lot of these internet pharmacies, the drugs are shipped from overseas," said Warren Rivera, a DEA special agent. "So you don't know what the origin of these drugs are. You may not even be getting the drugs that you ordered."
Rivera says the Internet pharmacies couldn't care less about the people who buy their pills.
"We'll buy pain meds for 30 days, let's say a 30 day supply, but within two or three days, we get emails from the online pharmacy saying it's time to refill," Rivera said. "That right there shows you they're in it for the money."
We found site after site, selling all kinds of controlled pharmaceuticals, including pain medication like Ocycontin, Vicodin, and Xanax.
"These individuals set up systems where a potential customer will be transferred to one link from another link and in some cases three different links in order to get to the particular website that they actually intend for these customers to use," Fox said.
The DEA is aggressively shutting down businesses that supply drugs to online dealers. Agents raided one such supplier in River Ridge in October 2006.
Investigators say Elite Pharmacy sent out a huge amount of illegal prescription pain-killers for an online drug dealer in Florida.
According to the DEA, the pharmacy dispensed nearly 5 million doses of Hydrocodone in a one-year period. Many of the pills were bought on the Internet by drug addicts in Louisiana.
Fox says Elite Pharmacy followed a familiar pattern.
"A legitimate, brick and mortar pharmacy tends to fill approximately fill about 189 scripts a day and 11 percent of those scripts tend to be a controlled substance," he said. "Rogue pharmacies fill roughly 450 scripts a day, with 425 of those scripts being a controlled substance, roughly 95 percent."
The doctor behind the internet operation, Juan Antonio Ibane, has since pleaded guilty to a long list of drug charges -- and is now serving time in a federal prison.
But the case against elite pharmacy is still on-going.
"We're in the process of identifying all of their assets that have been obtained by those illegal means and we are also in the process of seizing those properties associated with this particular investigation," Fox said.
Roy says while the other addiction specialists work on the demand side of the equation, it's important for the feds to go after the source of the narcotics.
"It's a huge public health problem," Roy said. "The solution is, in part, restricting supply. So the solution should involve people who shut down those sites and make drugs less available."
Last year, the DEA coordinated more than 90 online pharmacy investigations, resulting in the arrest of 64 people and the seizure of $30 million worth of pills.
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