Online Pharmacy Challenges DEA License Suspension
Businesses Raided For Allegedly Filing Illegal Prescriptions
Associated Press
MIAMI -- Wholesale and retail pharmacies raided for filling online prescriptions are challenging the suspension of their licenses by the Drug Enforcement Administration.
C&W Wholesale and Lifeline Pharmacy planned to ask a Fort Lauderdale federal judge Tuesday to reinstate their licenses while they challenge the suspensions at an administrative hearing that has not yet been set.
The DEA alleged the Davie companies were filling prescriptions without patients seeing doctors. The companies say they are caught in a gray area in the rapidly expanding world of Internet pharmacies.
"What the DEA is essentially saying is that the pharmacy has to be a doctor police officer," Richard Hersch, attorney for C&W and Lifeline, said Monday. "We respond to prescriptions issued by licensed medical doctors just like any other pharmacy would."
The DEA referred a call for comment to the U.S. attorney's office, which did not immediately answer a message. The companies said they have already released six of 30 employees since the Oct. 10 raid and will have to get rid of 11 more in the next two weeks unless the suspension is lifted. Lifeline said it began filling online prescriptions in February by logging onto Internet posting boards listing doctor-issued prescriptions. The companies said they had non-Internet revenue of $13 million last year.
A third company, EVA Global Inc., services scores of Web sites offering pharmaceuticals, including sexual stimulants, weight-loss and hair-growth drugs, C&H and Lifeline said. EVA assembles consumer orders and coordinates medical reviews. The DEA alleged Lifeline mailed pills to patients who had only filled out online forms and didn't visit doctors to get prescriptions. Investigators said an undercover agent saw a C&H employee assign doctors' names to orders as they came in. "The DEA has maintained the position that the prescription of medication can only follow from a physical evaluation," Hersch said. But he said that wasn't the case in Florida until Sept. 14 and isn't the law in many other states.
C&H sold at least 5.6 million doses of controlled substances to Internet pharmacies, including its own lifelinepharmacy.com, since May 2002, and the Web site sold 2.9 million doses to online customers in less than three months this year, according to the DEA. C&H opened in 1999 and became a high-volume wholesaler of the sleeping pill Ambien and diet pills, including amphetamines and phentermine, the DEA said. Lifeline filled 1,000 prescriptions a day from 50 online pharmacies.
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