Tag: Drugs

Convicted Former W.Va. Pharmacist Fined in Pill Case

A former West Virginia pharmacist convicted in state court of improperly dispensing medications has been fined $336,000 in federal court.

Federal prosecutors say a judge in Wheeling imposed the penalty against 50-year-old David M. Wasanyi.

Prosecutors say Wasanyi worked as a pharmacist in Martinsburg and Charles Town and violated federal law when he filled nearly 1,200 prescriptions for controlled substances for patients who traveled from as far away as Florida. Many of the prescriptions were written for oxycodone.

Wasanyi was sentenced twice in state court in 2016 for delivery of a controlled substance. He was sentenced to up to 11 years for one conviction and up to 75 years for another.

Health Official: Regional Overdose Death Rates Up, But Flattening

Health officials in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia say the number of overdose deaths continued to rise in 2017. The Ohio Valley ReSource’s Aaron Payne reports that one public health official says, however, there is cause for optimism.

Preliminary data from around the Ohio Valley show overdose fatalities continued to climb last year. A new report from the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy says around 1,500 died from drug overdoses last year, up 11.5 percent from 2016.

Preliminary data from Ohio indicate fatal overdoses jumped almost 20 percent last year. And the Bureau of Public Health in West Virginia reports an estimated 32 percent increase in 2017.

Fentanyl, the synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin, is believed to be the driving cause of the increase.

West Virginia’s Chief Health Officer Dr. Rahul Gupta says the total number of fatal overdoses so far in 2018 indicate a higher toll than last year.

But the news is not entirely bleak. Gupta says the projected rate of increase appears to be leveling off.

“They went from 2016-17 up about 32 percent,” Gupta said. “And from 2017-2018 about 6 percent. So we’re certainly seeing a flattening of the curve. Up, but they’re not as up they were from 2016 to 2017.”

He anticipates fewer overdoses in future months due to the evidence-based approaches to the opioid epidemic across the region.

The Ohio Valley ReSource is made possible with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

West Virginia Apartments to House Women in Drug Treatment

Renovations have started on a building that will become apartments for women undergoing treatment for substance abuse in West Virginia.

Marshall University said in a news release Monday its health provider group, Marshall Health, and the Huntington City Mission have begun construction on the 15,000-square-foot building next to the mission.

Each of the 18 apartments will consist of up to three bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room and kitchenette. They will enable women suffering from substance abuse to live with their children.

A grant from the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources is funding the program, called Project Hope for Women and Children. Marshall School of Medicine spokeswoman Sheanna Spence said the $2.8 million grant covers renovations and program expenses.

The statement says some services, including family therapy, will be provided on site while many others such as medication-assisted treatment will be in outpatient locations. The renovations are expected to be completed by October.

The project “will help residents put life skills into practice, give their children a sense of stability and teach them to raise their children in a way that promotes healthy habits early on,” said Dr. Stephen M. Petrany, chairman of the Marshall School of Medicine’s department of family and community health.

In a state of 1.8 million residents, more than 30,000 people are in drug treatment in West Virginia, which has the nation’s highest drug overdose death rate.

Raid Nets Dozens Accused in Huntington Drug Trafficking Network


More than 40 people were arrested in Huntington this week on drug and gun charges in a sweeping joint investigation targeting accused interstate drug traffickers in what officials called a “turning point” for the city — and “in the war against the opiate nightmare.”
 

 
Authorities said they think their work will ultimately break down a “major” drug network that has moved heroin, fentanyl and cocaine from Detroit to Huntington for almost 15 years. Nearly 50 more people were “targeted for arrest” on various charges in an effort involving more than 200 federal, state and local law enforcement officers. Those accused of roles in the “Peterson” drug trafficking organization — named for two brothers — also face charges in Detroit, officials said. 

 
“Huntington, I believe, is a safer city today than it was when this day began,” Mike Stuart, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia, said at a press conference Tuesday.

“Project Huntington” began last month when what Stuart called a “surge of federal prosecutors” arrived in West Virginia’s second-largest city to round up suspected drug dealers selling heroin and fentanyl, the powerful opiate often laced with heroin. 

Huntington’s crime rate soared in 2017, and Cabell County led the state in the number of fatal overdoses for the second year in a row, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported.
 

Early Tuesday, helicopters hovered the skies above Huntington. Guyandotte Elementary was placed on lockdown “as a precaution” after seeing police presence in the neighborhood, said Jedd Flowers, spokesman for Cabell County Schools. He said the school system was not notified in advance of raids by agencies involved and that the county school board did not call for lockdowns. 

 

Officials seized at least 450 grams of fentanyl — enough “to kill more than 250,000 people,” Stuart said.

The arrest “have resulted in the destruction of a supply network, the supplier of suppliers of illicit drugs,” he said in the news release. “The peddlers of poisons like heroin and fentanyl are in the crosshairs of this Administration and law enforcement. We still have work to do but the days of havoc, chaos and misery caused by the peddlers of illicit poisons are soon to be over.”

 


Federal, state and local law enforcement officials attended the press conference.

More W.Va. Towns, Counties Sue Over Opioid Crisis

Two West Virginia counties have joined numerous others in suing pharmaceutical companies, drugstores and the West Virginia Board of Pharmacy over the state’s opioid crisis.

The Exponent Telegram reports that Barbour and Taylor counties have hired lawyers from West Virginia and Florida to seek temporary and permanent restraining orders to curb practices they say are fueling the crisis, restitution, punitive damages and an insurance award from the Board of Pharmacy.

The lawsuits filed Tuesday says the defendants, including McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal, knew opioids were addictive, yet still flooded the state with the drugs through unscrupulous practices.

The pharmaceutical companies have denied similar claims.

Eleven local West Virginia governments are also suing drug companies who they say failed to follow state and federal law to prevent the distribution and abuse of prescription pain medication that’s created the state’s opioid crisis.

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports the lawsuits filed in the federal court this week come from governments around the state. The municipalities include Quinwood, Rupert, Rainelle, Milton, Smithers, Sutton, Logan, Summersville and Parkersburg, in addition to Nicholas and Braxton counties.

Feds to Bulk Up Prosecuting Crime in West Virginia City

More federal prosecutors will be used in a crackdown on gun and violent crime and drug trafficking in one West Virginia city.
 

The number of prosecutors focusing on those cases in Huntington will be doubled immediately and tripled within weeks, U.S. Attorney Mike Stuart said Thursday. He didn’t provide specific numbers.

Stuart said the goal of the Project Huntington initiative is to make West Virginia’s second-largest city the safest one in America. The effort will be led by assistant U.S. attorney Monica Coleman.

“The instructions to my team could not be more clear — put violent criminals behind bars, off the streets and in prison as long as possible,” Stuart said.

Speaking at a news conference along with Huntington interim Police Chief Hank Dial and Mayor Steve Williams, Stuart said “this is about teamwork.”

The city of Huntington, population 48,000, had a record 19 homicides last year, up from three in 2015.

“I can’t say enough about how excited I am about the partnership and the solutions that this is going to create,” Dial said.

Dial said existing efforts to slow down violent crimes in Huntington already appear to be working – there’s been a 27 percent reduction in such arrests in the first two months of this year compared to the same period of a year ago.

Last year U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions instructed federal prosecutors to bring the toughest charges possible against most crime suspects. The move was a reversal of Obama-era policies and was assailed by critics as a return to failed drug-war policies that unduly affected minorities and filled prisons with nonviolent offenders.

Sessions also announced last year that federal prosecutors would be added in West Virginia’s southern district and other areas of the country ravaged by addition to focus exclusively on investigating health care fraud and opioid scams that are fueling the nation’s drug abuse epidemic.

In addition, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has established a new field office in Louisville, Kentucky, to oversee opioid abuse investigations in Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia.

Cabell County has been hit hard by the opioid epidemic – on one day in August 2016, more than two people in Huntington overdosed on heroin during a five-hour span. In November, the sheriff’s office had its largest-ever drug seizure at a Huntington residence. West Virginia leads the nation by far in the rate of drug overdose deaths.

Williams said drug dealers must be stopped before reaching Huntington.

“This is a complex issue,” he said. “People are suffering from addiction and there are so many things that we have to do. We have to have prevention and intervention, we absolutely have to have treatment. But make no mistake about it. We have to have law enforcement.”

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