83 Drug shipments from China intercepted in Cincinnati

Huge drug shipment intercepted in Cincinnati

Terry DeMio , tdemio@enquirer.com Published 10:11 a.m. ET March 29, 2017 | Updated 4 hours ago

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DEA released this video to all law enforcement nationwide about the dangers of improperly handling fentanyl and its deadly consequences. DEA


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(Photo: Provided)


U.S. border protection agents seized scores of shipments of drugs, including a deadly fentanyl derivative, at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport this month.
Cincinnati Customs and Border Protection agents said Wednesday that they seized 83 shipments of synthetic drugs.

That includes more than 36 pounds of the highly potent opioid furanyl fentanyl, which the Hamilton County Coroner's Office has discovered in the Cincinnati region. The drugs were seized at a DHL Express consignment facility at the airport. The investigation is ongoing.

"Typically, a lot of designer and synthetic drugs are being shipped through these types of facilities," said Ralph Piccirilli, public affairs liaison for the Chicago field office of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.

The drugs were sent from China and were destined for individuals in 17 states, including Ohio, and also Canada, a customs and border protection release states.

The packages were disguised as "hardware nuts," "snap hooks, "plastic sheet sample" and other items.

"We have technicians and equipment that allows to detect and uncover this stuff," Piccirilli said.

The Cincinnati Customs and Border Protection agents had seized the drugs for nearly a month, from March 6 through Sunday.

Drugs seized included:
• More than 36 pounds of furanyl fentanyl, the deadly opioid that many heroin addicts are unwittingly using on the streets in Southwest Ohio and Northern Kentucky.
• 233 pounds of the so-called "date-rape drug" GBL. It's gamma-Butyrolactone, a precursor to gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid, or GHB.
• Alpha PVP, commonly known as bath salts, which can induce hallucinations, paranoia, seizures, violent behavior and death.
• PVP, commonly called "flakka" or "gravel."
• N-ethylpentylone, a dangerous stimulant.

Sharon Bishop, a Cincinnati Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman, said the express facilities are common drop points for such drugs that are shipped to the United States.

"DHL works very hard with us so that we can pull these dangerous drugs off the street," Bishop said.

The investigation was an effort to prevent synthetic narcotics from landing in popular spring break locations, said Cincinnati Acting Port Director Steven Thompson.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news...nati/99771142/

chinese drug cartels in full operation in this country, they have their people here legally and illegally to distribute shipments. How @ sanctions on these countries bringing in the deadly drugs? This is killer stuff! This is no "weed" that you will be over it in 2 hrs - you are hooked for life, dead from overdose or totally out of it to the point of killing someone from the distortion in your brain.

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Originally Posted by artist

chinese drug cartels in full operation in this country, they have their people here legally and illegally to distribute shipments . . .

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Actually these shipments were brought into the U.S. by DHL Express and would have been delivered right to the customers by them if the feds hadn't interrupted their plans.

Quote:

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The drugs were seized at a DHL Express consignment facility at the airport.

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DHL Express
Courier company

dhl-usa.com

DHL Express is a division of the German logistics company Deutsche Post DHL providing international courier, parcel and express mail services. Wikipedia

Customer service: 1 (800) 225-5345

Technical support: 1 (800) 527-7298

Billing support: 1 (800) 722-0081

Headquarters: Bonn, Germany

Subsidiaries: Blue Dart Aviation, DHL Aviation, DHL Air UK, More

Parent organizations: Deutsche Post, DPWN Holdings (USA), Inc.

And the customers were not chinese? Going to the post office here is like being in china.

Any American drug dealer or drug user can order drugs online from China.

November 3, 2016, 8:57 PM
Buying deadly drugs online from China takes just minutes

http://cbsnews1.cbsistatic.com/hub/i...620651499.jpg#A member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police opens a printer ink bottle containing the opioid carfentanil imported from China, in Vancouver, June 27, 2016.

AP




SHANGHAI -- A few thousand dollars, a few minutes and a decent internet connection are all it takes to source carfentanil online from multiple Chinese vendors.

Two Associated Press reporters, working independently, documented multiple offers from the companies listed below to export carfentanil, a substance so toxic it has been researched as a chemical weapon and described as a terrorist threat.

These are not your typical drug barons. Many come off as solicitous business owners, starting emails with “Hi, dear,” and writing scrupulous follow-up notes to drum up sales.

They sent price lists and photos of their merchandise, and promoted their wares, in English, on major business-to-business websites.

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Play VIDEO
Elephant tranquilizer blamed for recent wave of heroin overdoses

Carfentanil -- whose median October price from the companies below was $3,700 per kilogram (2.2 pounds) -is banned from general use in the United States, where it is suspected in hundreds of overdoses . Fentanyl, acetylfentanyl and alpha-PVP are controlled substances in both China and the U.S. Many vendors also bragged openly about their ability to circumvent customs authorities around the world.

The companies’ cheery let’s-do-business attitude changed when the AP followed up with questions about the legality of the sales.

The AP did not actually order any of these products, nor test to see if they were genuine.

In Utah Thursday, police said the cause of death for two 13-year-old boys in September was a new deadly synthetic drug bought overseas.

Ryan Ainsworth and Grant Seaver died of acute intoxication of a drug called U-47700, sometimes known as “pink,” Park City Police Chief Wade Carpenter said in a statement, citing results from the Utah Office of the Medical Examiner.

The drug got to Park City after other local teens ordered it from China, according to search warrants. One teenager has been charged with distribution of a controlled substance and reckless endangerment as police investigate a group of kids in the picturesque town known for hosting the Sundance Film Festival.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/buying-d...-just-minutes/

Odd how they can know everything we are doing online but this is missed. Sure there are direct buys but also mega drugs are coming in thru chinese living in this country and thru sales to mexican cartels, that is where they get the cut fentanyl.

Also have the direct from big pharma connection......money, money, money

Lawsuit: She died from fentanyl, pushed by a drug rep in her Cherry Hill doctor’s office

Updated: March 30, 2017 — 12:33 PM EDT

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by Don Sapatkin, STAFF WRITER dsapatkin@phillynews.com

Sarah Fuller's doctor asked her to come in to discuss a new prescription for her chronic pain, but a drug company sales rep did most of the talking.

“She didn't say anything about risk,” said David Fuller, who accompanied his 32-year-old daughter to the Cherry Hill medical office.
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Sarah was given Subsys, a fast-acting opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin. Fifteen months later, Sarah's fiance found her dead in their home.

Now a lawsuit targets her doctor and a mail-order pharmacy in New York but places ultimate responsibility for her death on Insys Therapeutics Inc., the pharmaceutical company that makes Subsys, a brand-name version of fentanyl.
“Insys infiltrated the medical community with lies, misinformation, kickbacks and financial rewards,” according to the suit, which says the company routinely sent its reps to talk directly to patients.

"Start them high and hope they don’t die."

— Unidentified Insys sales rep quoted by Sen. Claire McCaskill in a letter to the drugmaker's CEO

Deaths from fentanyl have been surging, but nearly all of them are tied to illicit versions of the drug, which is cooked up by cartels overseas and mixed with heroin sold on the street.
Pharmaceutical fentanyl has been routinely — and safely — used in surgery for decades. New brands have been approved in recent years specifically for “breakthrough pain” due to cancer and they come with bold, black-box warnings and require prescribers to receive special training. Subsys is sprayed under the tongue, allowing it to be absorbed instantly through the mucous membrane for short but sudden pain spikes.
“I can’t imagine a reason to use transmucosal fentanyl for chronic pain management,” said Daniel P. Alford, a professor at Boston University School of Medicine and director of its opioid education program, who was not involved in Fuller’s care.
Head and neck pain

Fuller had suffered for a decade with head and neck pain from two nasty car accidents. She had to quit her job as a certified nurse’s aide when she could no longer lift patients, but was well enough to live with and care for her grandparents until they died.
Meanwhile, a series of painkillers took a toll on her kidneys. She went cold turkey several years ago, and her mother found her a new doctor, internal medicine physician Vivienne Matalon.

Sarah read and processed information slowly, the result of a developmental disability, and both her parents accompanied her to the first meeting with Matalon in August 2014. Given her previous experience, the doctor “said she would keep her off all these drugs,” recalled her mother, Deborah Fuller.
But the physician began prescribing Percocet and OxyContin — both opioids — two months later, according to the lawsuit filed last week in New Jersey Superior Court in Middlesex County. The State Board of Medical Examiners, citing Fuller’s case and two other patients who stopped taking Subsys, suspended Matalon’s license last October.
Douglas C. Maute, an attorney representing Matalon, declined to comment, as did a representative of Linden Care, the specialty pharmacy named in the lawsuit. Insys Therapeutics did not respond to phone and email messages.
Sarah’s father recalled that the Insys sales rep described the drug as a treatment for chronic pain, never mentioning that the Food and Drug Administration approved it only for severe cancer pain. Sarah would have to take it every four hours, six times a day (her parents said she would set the alarm clock at night and would begin shaking if she was just a few minutes late). Monthly supplies would be delivered in big boxes by FedEx.

Deborah Fuller said her disabled daughter was covered by Medicare, which paid more than a quarter-million dollars for Subsys between January 2015 and her death in March 2016.
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ELIZABETH ROBERTSON / Staff Photographer

Deborah Fuller holds pictures of her daughter Sarah, taken when she was 12. Twenty years later, her fiance found her unresponsive in the house they shared in Stratford.

'Triple ethics whammy'

Bioethicist Arthur Caplan was shocked to hear of a drug rep counseling a patient.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” said Caplan, director of New York University School of Medicine’s Division of Medical Ethics, who spent decades on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. The Fuller case, described to him by a reporter, was “like a triple ethics whammy,” he said, combining “a dangerous drug, a vulnerable person, and then an unqualified person taking on communication responsibilities.”
Insys Therapeutics trained its sales reps to speak directly to patients, according to a lawsuit filed last year by the Illinois Attorney General’s Office. The suit quotes a 2012 email in which an Insys supervisor tells sales reps to track when patients who might be switched to Subsys would be visiting their doctors, and then, “ ‘... be in the office/when the patient is coming in (with coffee/bagels, etc.),’ to ensure the patient is prescribed Subsys.”
$462 million in sales

Several other state and federal investigations around the country have found that Chandler, Ariz.-based Insys or its representatives engaged in illegal marketing practices to drive sales of Subsys. Approved in January 2012 for a limited category of cancer patients, the drug exceeded $462 million in sales in 2015, the latest year available from QuintilesIMS of Plymouth Meeting, the data company formerly known as IMS Health. An estimated 80 percent of prescriptions were written “off-label” for unapproved uses.
Among the allegations against the company:

• Insys paid doctors to promote its drug for pain patients who were not supposed to get it, according to a $1.1 million settlement with the State of Oregon in 2015.
• The company set up an elaborate “Reimbursement Unit” whose employees, posing as staffers from physicians’ offices, called insurers to obtain prior authorization by fraudulently claiming that patients had cancer, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Boston last year.
• In December, federal prosecutors in New York arrested and charged six former Insys executives and managers, including a former CEO, with conspiracy in a nationwide scheme to bribe doctors to inappropriately prescribe Subsys.
• At least two other civil suits have been filed against Insys on behalf of patients who died or were injured.

Subsys is the company’s only product on the market. Last week it won preliminary FDA approval for Syndros, a synthetic form of marijuana, after donating $500,000 to an organization that unsuccessfully fought the legalization of marijuana in Arizona, the Washington Post reported after analyzing campaign-finance records.
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RICHARD HOLLAWELL

The last box of Subsys shipped to Sarah Fuller before she died. FedEx packages with the under-the-tongue fentanyl spray came monthly.

Senate investigation

This week, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.) announced a wide-ranging investigation of marketing practices behind the top five prescription painkillers sold in the U.S. in 2015, including Subsys. Her letter to Insys interim CEO Santosh Vetticaden requesting a variety of internal documents said that evidence shows “an industry apparently focused not on preventing abuse but on fostering addiction as a central component of its business model,” and quoted a sales rep’s approach to patients as “ ‘Start them high and hope they don’t die.’ ”
Attorney Richard Hollawell, a partner in the Marlton firm Console & Hollawell, began targeting the prescription-painkiller industry several years ago, after learning that two childhood friends from Northeast Philadelphia had died of opioid overdoses after seeing the same Center City doctor. When he found a document in another patient’s file that suggested inappropriate marketing of Actiq, another fast-acting brand of fentanyl, he filed suit last fall against Teva Pharmaceuticals, an Israeli company with U.S. headquarters in North Wales, Montgomery County, which had acquired the manufacturer.
That case was dismissed March 23 by a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge, who ruled that it was preempted by federal law; Hollawell said he plans to appeal.
He filed the suit against Insys, on behalf of Sarah Fuller’s estate, that same day. “It's really a huge fraud that this pharmaceutical company has been involved in, from the top on down to field sales reps,” Hollawell said.
Deborah Fuller said she hopes that families whose loved ones are taking the drug for chronic pain will read her daughter’s story and act on the danger. Perhaps the lawsuit will get Insys’ attention, she said:
“Apparently since their major motivation is money, maybe this will make them take notice.”
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