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To all of you who have been reading about the recent DEA actions, let me provide a little insider information. We are a pharmacy that provided fulfillment services for various web companies. We did not host any web sites, nor did we pay any Doctors. We received valid prescriptions (in our opinion) from licensed physicians and filled them, we then billed the web hosting company a dispensing fee plus a percentage above the cost of the drug. I will be somewhat vague as I have no idea who reads these posts, but I want to try and clarify a few things for all of you. Two of the web companies we did business with still owe us over 50,000 so it isn't only the consumer who got burned. On 5/20/2004 we were served with by the DEA an order to show cause and an immediate suspension of our DEA registration. The DEA manages controlled substances, these include but are not limited to Hydrocodone, Phentermine, Didrex, Ambien, Sonata, Xanax, Valium, Oxycontin. The immediate suspension of our DEA registration did the following, the DEA agents removed all of our controlled substances, removed our license and removed our Order blanks, effectively shutting us down for any controlled substances, in addition they removed all records related to our prescriptions, we are currently appealing this but are not sure what the outcome will be, it has to be done in an administrative hearing, however we are also pursuing action via Federal court.
The reasons cited by the DEA is that we posed an immediate and future risk as an endangerment to the public (that would be all of you folks). The DEA in 2000 stated that if there was no valid physician/patient relationship a prescription for a controlled substance is invalid. The cite the AMA, the Federation of State Boards of Medical Examiners, the National Board of Pharmacies as examples of those who believe that without a face to face consult there is no valid relationship. However the state in which we practice does not have any regulations that define what is or is not a valid patient/physician relationship. We filled prescriptions in our normal course of business based upon a physician prescription (Please note that we are pharmacists and not physicians so if we decided what a physician did or did not do we would be practicing medicine for which we are not licensed). The Federal government and with the exception of some states do not have any Statues that define what a valid physician patient relationship is or isn't. Because the head of the DEA states that there is no valid relationship because there was no face to face contact is just opinion and not regulatory in nature. The States in which the physicians reside control the licensing of those physicians and the DEA grants to those states the ability to regulate the physicians, however the physician also has a DEA license to prescribe controlled substances. What is most interesting is that in Minnesota, the governor is in direct violation of federal law by promoting seniors and state employees go to canada to purchase certain drugs, all that has happened has been a letter from the FDA to the governor saying he shouldn't do that, in our case we were never sent any warning letter. More to the point, in June of last year we had an audit by our state regulatory authority, we asked at that time are we in any violation of any specific law or statute, we were never informed. We asked again in December of last year again in February and in March, we voluntarily stopped dispensing April 7th, yet we still had our registration suspended. There are several issues at play here, the DEA has worked with FedEX, UPS, the Credit Card companies and are removing the ability of legitimate pharmacies, filling legitimate physician prescribtions to practice their business. With all of that said I would recommend that if you find a practice or pharmacy that requires some sort of face to face consult you probably will be able to get your prescription filled until someone else issues an opinion that that isn't good enough. The primary issue here is that there are no regulations that define what constitutes a patient/physician relationship and there has been a determination by the DEA that without a face to face consult the prescriptions are invalid. We have been informed by our attorney's to prepare for the worst, which is revocation completely of our registration and perhaps criminal charges. If all of you truly feel that you have gotten a service from OP's, I would recommend you contact your congressman/senator and let them know that you have not been harmed by not going to see a physician and that the OP's have been of benefit to you. If you have questions/concerns I will try and answer, but I still have other pharmacies I must work with. Not all of the pharmacies fulfilling prescriptions were shady/illegitimate or had other problems, some of us view online prescriptions as a way to provide assistance to people, not a way to bilk people out of their hard earned money.

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