Another Major Spammer Busted

Iphtashu Fitz writes "25 year old Christopher William Smith, considered one of the worlds biggest spammers by the Spamhaus Project, is now sitting in a jail without bond. Smith allegedly had a doctor issue 72,000 prescriptions in the space of one year in conjunction with orders obtained through spamming. The doctor, Philip Mach, had a license to practice medicine in New Jersey but he provided prescriptions to people throughout the United States without ever evaluating them, both of which are big no-no's. Federal authorities have already seized over $3 million in cash, luxury cars, and houses."

Comments

Only in jail?

[Shads]

I'd rather see him rot in hell.

I hate spammers.

As if print ads weren't bad enough in your mailbox.

2500/day and counting *sigh*.

Re:Only in jail?

[Anonymous Coward]

2500/day?

As someone who works for a hosting company, we're looking at about that many per hour ...

Today, unsurprisingly, doesn't look any quieter than yesterday.

Re:Only in jail?

[Shads]

No, i'm talking to me PERSONALLY.

I'm not including what goes to other addresses than me at the domains I host.

Re:Only in jail?

[Anonymous Coward]

Print adds in my mailbox are 100 times worse than electronic spam... At least the only resources being pissed away by e-spam are electricity, network bandwidth, and time.

Snail Spam wastes trees, oil, electricity, & time and ultimately only serves to keep the postal service in business and keeping landfills a growth market. I somehow manage to recieve 5 times more physical spam than electronic spam in my personal mailboxes.

I hate both, but if I had to choose which one to erradicate, it would be the physical variety.

Re:Only in jail?

[Tackhead]

> I'd rather see him rot in hell.

"Hey, it;s bad enough down here!"
- Satan

Re:Only in jail?

[Just Some Guy]

2500/day and counting *sigh*.

That's your own choice. I hate spammers, too, but I've chosen to do something about it; you can, too. Trust me - you can dislike them just as much while getting 2-3 spams per day instead of 2500.

Re:Only in jail?

[rsrsharma]

Here's a little trick to stop spam that I literally discovered yesterday: take your mail server down for a while. Seriously. (Of course, this assumes that you have your own mail server, but I'm guessing a significant number of /.ers do.) Mine was unreachable yesterday because I forgot to renew my domain (heh, oops). Today I only recieved one piece of spam, and I'm sure that anything meaningful that didn't make it through yesterday got bounced back and will be resent. I dunno if it will last, but hey, its worth a shot.

I also remember hearing on TWiT that some guy has blocked all HTML e-mail outside of his whitelist to avoid spam, and it works. Seems a little too harsh though.

Re:Only in jail?

[Shads]

Oh I didn't say i actually *read* them. With greylisting, content filtering, uri blacklisting, baysian filter on server and client, i see 1-2 a day now. It's just annoying that I should *need* to do all that to keep my self sane.

Re:Only in jail?

[Anonymous Coward]

Print adds in my mailbox are 100 times worse than electronic spam... At least the only resources being pissed away by e-spam are electricity, network bandwidth, and time.

Spoken like a true spammer or spam apologist. Print ads cost the sender a significant amount of money per item mailed, so they're much more likely to listen to people who don't want their garbage. Not only that but they're the ones who foot the bill for the delivery of the junk mail.

Spam costs the spammer pretty much the same amount of money whether they send out one thousand or one billion e-mails. The owners of the mail servers that the spam goes through end up footing most of the cost of delivery, and it's not all that uncommon for spam floods to crash mail servers, delay the processing of legitimite e-mail, etc. Guess who ends up paying the added costs associated with bandwidth, increased storage, etc. needed to deal with spam? You and every other internet user pays. AOL has publicly stated that something on the order of 25% of their monthly subscription fees go directly to cover the cost of their spam fighting. I don't know about you, but I think a lot of people would prefer to save 25% EACH MONTH if they didn't get spam. How much does receiving junk mail in your snail-mail box cost you?

Re:Only in jail?

[Shads]

Nod, try greylisting, that helps a ton too. Most spammers don't use real mail servers that comply with the rfc's... so generally if you missed the mail on the first run you're not going to get it.

There was an excellent piece on slashdot a while back about spamfiltering... infact here's a link to it: http://acme.com/mail_filtering/ killer stuff there on prevention. He gets a level of spam that would put me outta my mind.

Re:Only in jail?

[Pig Hogger]

I also remember hearing on TWiT that some guy has blocked all HTML e-mail outside of his whitelist to avoid spam, and it works. Seems a little too harsh though.

Harsh? You want harsh??? You should see my access list, boy!!! (I block e-mail coming from all those addresses with custom error-messages)...

Re:Only in jail?

[Anonymous Coward]

Snail Spam wastes trees, oil, electricity, & time

Spam wastes just as much, if not more, because of the additional resources needed to process it. Something like 80% of all e-mail traffic these days is spam. Imagine how much hardware WORLD WIDE that equates to, not to mention the electricity needed to keep it all running.

Your "natural resources" argument is complete and utter bullshit. Do a quick search on google for terms like "spam trees" and you'll find links to articles like this that refutes your bogus claims.

Re:Only in jail?

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like a true spammer or spam apologist.

Spoken like a true NANAE zealot. I hate spam, but I find it easier to deal with than all the paper junk mail. (And don't get me started on telemarketers, but at least the no-call lists have been pretty effective.)

At least with spam, I can try to teach my computer to deal with the mess for me.

Having said that, I'm happy to see spammers in jail.

Re:Only in jail?

[robertjw]

Print ads cost the sender a significant amount of money per item mailed, so they're much more likely to listen to people who don't want their garbage. Not only that but they're the ones who foot the bill for the delivery of the junk mail.

Not exactly. Print ad delivery is subsidized by the first class mail and used by the postal service to feed their bloated government entity. I wouldn't care about that if the post office was a private company designed to make money, but as a government agency, it's not right that they create a market for themselves.

Spam costs the spammer pretty much the same amount of money whether they send out one thousand or one billion e-mails.

And it costs me nothing to delete the spam. I spend much more time shredding my snail mail spam so someone doesn't create a fraudulent credit card than I do dealing with spam.

AOL has publicly stated that something on the order of 25% of their monthly subscription fees go directly to cover the cost of their spam fighting.

Hmmm... and you believe this? I bet if there was no spam AOL would just reduce their subscription fee by 25%. Amazing that their dial-up plan is $23/month while competitors like earthlink and netzero offer plans under $15. Is Earthlink immune to spam? Does NetZero not deliver email? AOL's statement is a marketing ploy designed to justify their monthly fees, I doubt it's based in reality.

Re:Only in jail?

[Anonymous Coward]

But only morons use HTML and if you want to have those advertising stuff companies call "newsletters", you can always allow it for them. Or are you that addicted to consuming that crap?
And please, don't come with that "but my good friends all use HTML in their emails". If your friends are mentally stuck in kindergarten and need pretty colors to prolong their attention span to read/write a whole email, then... suffer.

Re:Only in jail?

[th3space]

Yeah, but a good portion of electricity is produced thanks to other spent natural resources...

I wonder if anyone has tallied how much energy is wasted by spam?

Re:Only in jail?

[KDR_11k]

Don't you think all those spammers are commissioned by Satan in first place?

Re:Only in jail?

[larry bagina]

Print ad delivery is subsidized by the first class mail

That is completely backwards.

Re:Only in jail?

[TFoo]

Except that for print advertising, the SENDER pays the bulk of the costs (in the form of postage) wheras with electronic spam, the RECEIVER pays the cost (in terms of mail storage space and processing) --- therefore junk-snail-mail tends to be somewhat self-regulating, wheras junk email is not.

Re:Only in jail?

[Saint Aardvark]

Another vote for greylisting. Works a treat.

Re:Only in jail?

[Malyven]

Spam doesn't cost just Elec., Bandwidth and time.
I am a sysadmin for a world wide company and having to filter out spam can drastically slow down the flow of email.

This is costing my company countless man hours of productivity lost.

Lost Productivity = $$$$$
Lost $$$$ = smaller bonus poool

eSpam costs me way more than Snail mail.

Re:Only in jail?

[drsquare]

Millions in cash?
Luxury cars?
Houses?

I'm getting into this spamming game. Seriously, how do you go about spamming? I probably won't get caught as I live in a corrupt country. Seems like easy money, just set the computer to send spams, and rake in the cash. Has to be better than a day job!

So a few people have e-mails they don't want, there's nothing wrong with that. I get all sorts I don't want, like adverts on TV, but TV advertisers don't go to jail.

Re:Only in jail?

[Buelldozer]

That's a pretty good article that you referenced!

The only change I would do is to swap lines 6 & 7, why should you do an FQDN check against a hostname that cannot be valid?

6 reject_non_fqdn_hostname,
7 reject_invalid_hostname,

Re:Only in jail?

[Just Some Guy]

That's a pretty good article that you referenced!

Thanks! It kind of wrote itself.

why should you do an FQDN check against a hostname that cannot be valid?

The FQDN test doesn't actually use DNS; it just verifies that the address is in the form ([:dnschar:]+)(\.[:dnschar:]+)+ (translation: at least two words separated by a dot).

The invalid hostname check looks for non-valid characters in the string, ruling out things like foo$$bar.com.

Both are lightweight internal functions, and neither really rejects much more than the other, so it doesn't really matter which order they appear in.

Re:Only in jail?

[deathy_epl ccs]

Wow... 5 times more PHYSICAL spam than electronic spam?

Either you get a TON of junk mail or you don't get very much spam.

Re:Only in jail?

[Max Threshold]

Two things you can do - one of them probably illegal, the other not (yet):

- Save your junk mail, and periodically stuff USPS collection boxes to overflowing. If enough people do it, eventually they'll get the point.

- Stuff prepaid business reply envelopes with other businesses' junk mail and send 'em in.

Re:Only in jail?

[geekoid]

Only becasue you coose to filter it.

Which wouldn't be neccessary if your users operate that maigic box that sits in front of them all day long.

Basically, you the first line against your companies computer dumb shits..i.e. a baby sitter.

It would also cost more money if you hired 5 guys to sift through every piece of physical mail you get, just in case.

"I am a sysadmin for a world wide company and having to filter out spam can drastically slow down the flow of email."

oh really? what is dratic? I have workin IT for some very, very large organizatins, and I've never seen filtering slow dow delivery by more then a few minutes. A few minutes doesn't really mean jack.

Re:Only in jail?

[WiFiBro]

Try to get your own domain and see what mess is send to random addresses at that domain. For instance fake addresses of origin.
This gets especially bad if you have a catch_all actived, but also info@, webmaster@, sales@ etc. are heavily bombarded.

Re:Only in jail?

[Malyven]

I don't know how much email you receive in your very large organization, but when you attempt to filter over a billion(conservative estimate) emails a day it can cause major delays.

Re:Only in jail?

[WiFiBro]

With that link to prove your point, you cannot call that argument bullshit, Anon!

Re:Only in jail?

[legirons]

"I also remember hearing on TWiT that some guy has blocked all HTML e-mail outside of his whitelist to avoid spam"

What did he need the whitelist for?

Re:Only in jail?

[geekoid]

Most of the energy used to move spam would have been spent anyways. Those machine aren't turned off between emails.

Re:Only in jail?

[letxa2000]

No, but if ISPs were receiving 80% less mail they could use 80% fewer servers. If an organization has 5 mail servers and 80% of their incoming mail is spam, they could switch off 4 of those systems if spam didn't exist.

There is a very real cost to spam (energy, additional server hardware, administration costs), and that doesn't even consider the man-YEARS that are spent each day by the people of the world deleting spam.

Needless to say, when 200 million people per day worldwide (random number, probably conservative) have to spend even 10 seconds per day recognizing and deleting spam, that's 2 billion seconds of wasted time on a worldwide basis per DAY. 2 billion seconds is 63 wasted man YEARS per day. I'm going to say that 10 seconds per day is awfully low (considering email comes in all day and if you have to stop what you're doing, check the email that just came in and see it's spam, and then resume what you were doing) and call it 60 seconds per day easy. That means the world is wasting at least 12 billion seconds (3.33 million hours) per day on "just pressing delete". Now if you conservatively say that the average receiver is worth even just $10/hour, the world is losing $33 million dollars per DAY on "just pressing delete."

Think that's not "real" money? If so, you've obviously never employed anyone.

Re:Only in jail?

[bmalia]

Electronic is MUCH worse to me. Stuff sent in mail tends to.. oh I don't know... be spelled correctly?

Re:Only in jail?

[FredThompson]

Not exactly. Print ad delivery is subsidized by the first class mail and used by the postal service to feed their bloated government entity. I wouldn't care about that if the post office was a private company designed to make money, but as a government agency, it's not right that they create a market for themselves.

Nope.

Fees for one form of delivery are not used to "subsidize" another unless you pervert the word to mean the buildings, trucks, employees, etc. are shared between classes of delivery.

The USPS is not funded through taxation. It is entirely within the chartering documents and intent of the Post Office that they make a profit. Without profit, there is no way to grow and expand.

Whoever modded your comment to 5 probably didn't realize how inaccurate your foudnational statements are.

Re:Only in jail?

[boomfart]

But almost every snail mail spam is for a product available in my area and of some potential use to me, the e-mail spam is the opposite - my 5 year old does not need penis enlargers or viagra adds in her e-mail and I am sick of recieving offers to my .au address that do not ship outside USA. If the spammer has to pay the costs of sending the mail they at least try to target the mail to an appropriate audience.

Re:Only in jail?

[robertjw]

Fees for one form of delivery are not used to "subsidize" another unless you pervert the word to mean the buildings, trucks, employees, etc. are shared between classes of delivery.

You are correct, subsidize was a in incorrect term. It would be more correct to say that first class mail generates the revenue needed to allow the post office to offer lower rates to companies doing mass mailings. There is little advantage to a bulk mailing, all mail has to be processed, and is delivered to different locations, so the cost per piece is not significantly cheaper if you send more.

The USPS is not funded through taxation.

Correct, well at least mostly. I believe there have been times when the government did have to cashflow the USPS, but it's because the same government took the money away from them to start with.

It is entirely within the chartering documents and intent of the Post Office that they make a profit.

Interesting. I will have to look up the chartering documents and verify this.

Without profit, there is no way to grow and expand.

My problem is that I don't believe, as a government entity (agency, independant corporation, whatever) it should need to grow and expand. It's a self propagating system, it uses the infrastructure setup to offer lower prices for bulk mailings which results in higher mail volume requring more equipment and infrastructure. If only first class letters were delivered they could cut their carrier staff significantly, lowering costs and still maintaining solvency.

Re:Only in jail?

[Rev.LoveJoy]

Ditto. Greylisting has dropped the hammer on a very signifigant % of our inbound spam.

-- RLJ

Re:Only in jail?

[Phyvo]

I use the Mail program on my Mac to bounce back any spam I get. Of course, I get barely any to begin with (I very, very rarely give out my address), but it does keep it down to about 1 message a week, and it makes sure that the spammers don't know I exist.

Though since the mail daemon would be able to act immediately if the mail server went down, I suppose that could avoid any sort of script that tried looking at the difference between when the spam was sent and the returning message sent. Not that I even know such a script exists, or am any expert on the matter.

Re:Only in jail?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Snail Spam wastes trees, oil, electricity, & time and ultimately only serves to keep the postal service in business and keeping landfills a growth market. I somehow manage to recieve 5 times more physical spam than electronic spam in my personal mailboxes."

There is a contraption that you can buy that can make fireplace "logs" out of old newspapers. Yuo should be able to use it to make logs out of your snail spam as well. Just think, no more buying firewood for your fireplace. Good for the local environment (less trees chopped); good for you (no more money spent on firewood). An added bonus is that some of the inks burn in pretty colors.

Re:Only in jail?

[lordofthechia]

if I had to choose which one to erradicate, it would be the physical variety.

Just tell the post office you want to discontinue your mail service. If that doesn't work just get a fireplace and enjoy an endless supply of free fuel delivered to your door!

(Oh, and be wary of the fumes from the pretty catalogs...)

Re:Only in jail?

[lotusdriver]

HTML email from *anybody* is the top entry on my blacklist. Surely everyone knows its the spawn of the devil?

Re:Only in jail?

[Buelldozer]

Ahhh, I assumed the FQDN check actually used DNS...that's what I get for assuming. :-)

Since you seem to be the original author, congratulations, it's a well written and easily followed piece.

Thanks for replying!

Re:Only in jail?

[WilliamSChips]

And it costs me nothing to delete the spam.

http://www.paulgraham.com/raprespamisd.html
The cost of spam is much more than than the time hitting "delete".

Re:Only in jail?

[Shads]

I have 5 personal domains and host several others, I'm well aware.

Real Crime is Organised

[ackthpt]

From ABC News: A Minnesota man considered one of the world's most prolific e-mail spammers was indicted on more than a dozen federal charges related to the operation of his business, Xpress Pharmacy Direct.

70-80% of my spam used to come from this guy. It seems every time one of these weasels gets hauled in there's a dip in spam. In the past two days my spammage has dropped to a trickle. The past three nights total spam: 173, 43, 17

Also from ABC News: The indictment against Christopher William Smith, 25, was unsealed Wednesday after he was arrested at his home in Prior Lake. Dr. Philip Mach, 47, of Franklin Park, N.J., and Bruce Jordan Lieberman, 45, from Farmingdale, N.Y., were also charged in the indictment, federal prosecutors said.

<Nelson Muntz*>

Ha hah!

</Nelson Muntz>

Smith allegedly had a doctor issue 72,000 prescriptions in the space of one year

Which just goes to prove to be a really big drug dealer you need a computer and connections, not just to hang out in your Accura in McDonald's parking lot late at night.

* Nelson Muntz appears in this posting courtesy Twentieth Century Fox and Matt Groening.

Re:Real Crime is Organised

[Anonymous Coward]

Post Quote: 70-80% of my spam used to come from this guy. It seems every time one of these weasels gets hauled in there's a dip in spam. In the past two days my spammage has dropped to a trickle. The past three nights total spam: 173, 43, 17

Article Quote: In May, a federal judge shut down Xpress Pharmacy and appointed a receiver to take control of the business' assets. Federal authorities seized $1.8 million in luxury cars, two homes and $1.3 million in cash.

Doesn't seem likely this had anything to do with your recent drop in spam.

Re:Real Crime is Organised

[ackthpt]

Doesn't seem likely this had anything to do with your recent drop in spam.

Actually it does. The big drops happened earlier this year, but every time there is an arrest it seems there's a dip, as if all the spammers have taken notice and are limiting their visibility, until they feel the threat to them has passed, or they determine to take their profits and quit while ahead.

I have no doubt that it'll pick right up again, within the next ten days.

Re:Real Crime is Organised

[jCaT]

Which just goes to prove to be a really big drug dealer you need a computer and connections, not just to hang out in your Accura in McDonald's parking lot late at night.

Wellllll... there are quite a few McDonalds now with free wifi. So it wouldn't surprise me if he WAS sitting out in the parking lot. :)

Re:Real Crime is Organised

[Guspaz]

There is a dip in spam? Who cares! Almost all of the junk mail I get these days are phishing mails, not spam.

Re:Real Crime is Organised

[b1t r0t]

70-80% of my spam used to come from this guy. It seems every time one of these weasels gets hauled in there's a dip in spam. In the past two days my spammage has dropped to a trickle.

Wow, and I thought it was just me... the past two days I was wondering if my e-mail server was broken! I run my own domain, and have port 25 blocked from all Chinese and Korean netblocks, but I still get a few a day. Almost none got through the past two days.

Re:Real Crime is Organised

[noahm]

70-80% of my spam used to come from this guy. It seems every time one of these weasels gets hauled in there's a dip in spam. In the past two days my spammage has dropped to a trickle. The past three nights total spam: 173, 43, 17

While that's nice, it's not related to this. From TFA: "In May, a federal judge shut down Xpress Pharmacy and appointed a receiver to take control of the business' assets." This guy's been out of business for months. He was indicted today, but shutdown months ago.

noah

Re:Real Crime is Organised

[ackthpt]

This guy's been out of business for months. He was indicted today, but shutdown months ago.

Exactly. What I alluded to was the action of his actual arrest causing a dip in activity of other spammers, rather like everyone runs onto the beach when a shark attacks, never mind they are well aware that sharks are in the water at all times.

This was clarified in a reply to one of the above posts.

Re:Real Crime is Organised

[stry_cat]

I guess my spam isn't coming from this guy.

Instead of going down, it is going up.

Past three days: 276, 399, 512. This is down from the 1000+ a day, I was getting. That was before I implemented new spam fighting techniques.

72,000!!

[TurdTapper]

Holy Crap! FTA: Prosecutors allege Smith had Mach issue about 72,000 prescriptions from July 2004 to about May 2005.

Now, I freely admit that I don't have a clue about how prescriptions are handled, but isn't 72,000 prescriptions just a little much? Would't someone have gotten a touch suspicious that this guy was writing them out at a rate of 1 prescription every 7 seconds? Or is there not enough infrastructure to be able to tell how many a doctor has written?

It obviously had to be done electronically (Or else he would have had to write an awful lot). How does that work? I've only ever had prescriptions that were hand written out by the doctor.

I guess I'm just amazed that it took them that long to realize something was wrong.

Re:72,000!!

[Alex P Keaton in da]

How does that work? I've only ever had prescriptions that were hand written out by the doctor.
Usually,the doctor (or his office) can call or fax the pharmacy the prescription.
Although in this case, it seems like a bit of the old illegality....
This case also proves a bit of regulatory ineptness, I mean, doctors and pharmacies are highly regulated, how could they miss this guy writing this many prescriptions for so long?

Re:72,000!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't that be 1 every 13.33 minutes assuming a 8 hour day, 40 hour work week, 50 weeks a year?

Re:72,000!!

[MindStalker]

Its possible that they were selling the prescription notes (electronic or maybe not). Meaning the individual had to pick them up from their local pharmacy themselfs. This would have allowed the prescription pickup the be spread out enough to never no noticed by human hands.

Re:72,000!!

[gcatullus]

The scripts were all for use at the spammers own pharmacy

Re:72,000!!

[EvilMagnus]

And the corrolary from that is that how on *earth* did the doctor think he'd get away with that? The DEA has systems that track that kind of thing, and they're *very* public in letting doctors know about it. Supposedly the DEA monitors annual prescription rates of proscribed medications (pain meds, mostly) . I guess they saw the massive uptick in prescriptions by this doctor and called the goon squad.

But again, how on *earth* did the doctor think he could get away with that?

Re:72,000!!

[Golias]

Several bits of news here that shocked me:

72,000 people out there actually put pills in their bodies which came from a spammer who spells it "V1Ag ra!!!"

There was an actual doctor writing precriptions for these drugs, not just some sleazy smuggler from bolivia or some nutjob with a lab for making counterfeit placebo replacements.

The bastards are actually got caught at all, and did not turn out to be some distant Russian or Maylaysian hackers far beyond the reach of our law enforcement systems, but rather were a pair of US citizens dumb enough to think they could get away with it.

This is terrific news. Hoist a beer to your friendly neighborhood cyber-cop tonight, folks. It's not often the spooks get to be universally seen as the Good Guys.

Re:72,000!!

[mhollis]

My doctor regularly prints out prescriptions with his digital signature from his computerized prescription program. It's particularly handy in that it will flag a prescription that might cause problems in view of the other prescriptions the patient is taking.

I would also mention that my doctor is younger than I am and so probably is more technologically savvy than some of the older GPs.

I'd like to call up Dr. Philip Mach and see if he would be so kind as to renew a prescription I have just to hear what he says...

Re:72,000!!

[Clod9]

> a rate of 1 prescription every 7 seconds?
Your math is wrong. There are 86,400 seconds in a day, so 72,000 prescriptions every 7 seconds would have taken less than a week. Admittedly, his hand would be cramped at that rate... but 72,000 in 11 months works out to about 27 per hour (working 8 hours per day), a rate I think most of us could comfortably sustain if someone was paying six or seven figures. Heck, I'd do it for five figures; except I can't because I'm not a physician, and if I were, I'd expect to get thrown in jail right alongside my spammer friend if I did it.

In other words, I think this scum-sucking doctor is at least as due for "due process" as the spammer. The spammer is annoying, the doctor is putting peoples' lives at risk. Well, OK, they both are. Throw the book at them.

Re:72,000!!

[Alex P Keaton in da]

That explains it... I have one more question- didn't the pharmacutical companies suspect something was up? I mean, thats a lot of drugs shipped to a non-chain pharmacy....

Re:72,000!!

[dmf415]

Maybe he got his medical degree from a non-acredited university for only $20.00!!

Re:72,000!!

[ackthpt]

Now, I freely admit that I don't have a clue about how prescriptions are handled, but isn't 72,000 prescriptions just a little much? ... It obviously had to be done electronically (Or else he would have had to write an awful lot)

The guy must have been a speed-writing champion.

On July 9th I fell and broke my collar bone (clavicle, to you pedants) 4 days before a planned trip from California to Michigan. I travelled, with my trusty pain killers, but found I was running low. My parents took me to a local Doc-In-A-Box and I tried to get a renewal or refill. Nothing doing. They wouldn't honor a prescription unless it came from a neighboring state. (So Michigan probably wouldn't honor these NJ prescriptions for painkillers, eh?)

Further, the doctor on duty practically glared at me, as I was from California and trying to get my hands on more Vicodin, as we all know people from California are not to be trusted with a painkiller which can leave you sleepy and a feeling like your head caved in by a blunt object as it's addicting. I got something else, not as effective and managed the rest of my trip and return flight with some suffering.

Re:72,000!!

[ndansmith]

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?

Re:72,000!!

[Rude Turnip]

"It obviously had to be done electronically (Or else he would have had to write an awful lot). How does that work?"

It says the doctor is in New Jersey. In New Jersey, all doctors use state-issued prescription pads, with each individual *sheets* having their own serial numbers.

Re:72,000!!

[Golias]

Think about it. You sell ED medicine and generic monoxydil products... or whatever.

Are you going to ask a lot of questions if a new customer comes along and starts providing you with millions of dollars worth of orders? Would you be inclided to view their decision to order all these drugs from your manufacturing plant as "suspicious" or "lucky"?

Re:72,000!!

[Just Some Guy]

Supposedly the DEA monitors annual prescription rates of proscribed medications (pain meds, mostly).

My wife only has to put her DEA number on narcotic 'scripts. I don't think there's any national tracking of non-scheduled medication prescriptions, although I wouldn't assert that as a fact.

Re:72,000!!

[mopslik]

The guy must have been a speed-writing champion.

Perhaps he wrote at Mach speed.

Re:72,000!!

[Golias]

Considering that the average GP these days spends about 7 actual minutes with each patient, and in some cases prescribes more than one drug per visit, 27 scripts per hour is probably only slightly above the curve. I could easilly see this slipping under the radar if it wasn't for people hunting down the spammer he was working through.

Re:72,000!!

[BikeRacer]

How about love? How about love? How about love? Measure in love. Seasons of love.... Wait, shouldn't we be quoting from SpamAlot?

Re:72,000!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's do the maths:

July 2004 - May 2005 inclusive is eleven months.
72,000 in eleven months is an average of around 6,500 every month.
6,500 in a month is around 240 a day (assuming a reasonable 27 working days).
240 in a day is around 30 per hour (assuming a reasonable 8 hour day).
30 per hour is one every two minutes.

So it's not a prescription every seven seconds, but it's still an insane number of prescriptions for a single doctor to make.

Re:72,000!!

[Just Some Guy]

Smith had Mach issue about 72,000 prescriptions

His son, Mach II, wrote 144,000 during the same time period.

They had nothing on Dr. See. His numbers were relatively unfathomable.

Re:72,000!!

[Penguin Programmer]

My GP's office writes prescriptions on the computer, then they print them out and the resident (or doctor) signs it and gives it to you. Now, they still have to go in and put what's on the prescription on the computer, but that could be easily automated if you needed to do 72,000 that were all for Viagra.

Re:72,000!!

[TurdTapper]

Doh! You are right, I mistyped, I meant 7 minutes. Man I hate that!

Re:72,000!!

[milimetric]

um, I agree with your point, but your math is a little off and I'm a prick : )

72000 prescriptions for 10 months is like one prescription every 6 minutes 24 hours a day so one every 2 minutes in a normal 8 hour work day. Whereas that would be physically possible, it should still have been a flag to the authorities, unless they got the math wrong the other way and thought it was one prescription every 2 hours : )

arithmetic people, Run -> calc -> Enter

Re:72,000!!

[ptbarnett]

72,000 people out there actually put pills in their bodies which came from a spammer who spells it "V1Ag ra!!!"

According to TFA: "The indictment claims that from March 2004 to May 2005 the operation generated sales of more than $20 million from medications containing a single addictive painkiller, hydrocodone."

Hydrocodone is probably better known as Lortab or Vicodin. It's addictive. The recipients probably weren't that picky about their source.

Re:72,000!!

['nother poster]

Mail order pharmacies are perfectly legal. As long as the pharmacies are meeting the documentation and reporting requirements for the FDA and DEA the vendors don't care. If you order Sched III drugs from the vendors, the DEA will know when and how much. You had better be able to account for the vast majority of them by the scripts you filled. Having six 10,000 count packages of Vicoden unaccounted for can get really ugly for the pham and the dispensers both. 10-15 years ago Sched III handling requirements were a pain, I can't imagine what they are like now, and I wasn't even a pharmacist, just in the industry on the IT side.

Re:72,000!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically there are 525960 minutes in a year. That's why that song pisses me off.

365.25 days per year, that's why we have leap year.

Re:72,000!!

[Skevin]

From the effin' description:

The doctor, Philip Mach, had a license to practice medicine in New Jersey but he provided prescriptions to people throughout the United States without ever evaluating them, both of which are big no-no's.
Since when can't you practice medicine in New Jersey?!? Oh wait, that's right: you don't want your mark seeking medical attention once you've capped both of his knees and given him a spiral fracture in his left arm. At least, not immediately. You want him to pay off his gambling debt first... and *then* you can drive him across the border to New York to seek treatment. I think I'm beginning to like New Jersey's medical laws...

Solomon "The Collector" Chang

Re:72,000!!

[MindStalker]

hydrocodone is a Schedule II opiate.

Re:72,000!!

[KDR_11k]

Naah, his VFX powers would have run out way too fast.

Re:72,000!!

[danheskett]

You really nailed about Schedule III drugs.

Many doctors and pharmacies are trending towards avoiding them altogether because of the requirements, even at the expense of legitimate pain management for patients who would have a much better quality of life.

The entire field of Pain Management is becoming scarce thanks to the DEA and lawsuits. Trying to get Schedule II drugs requires more paperwork than it's worth to just about all but the most dedicated doctors. You basically have to get prior approval to prescribe and dispense the substances.

Re:72,000!!

[InfiniteWisdom]

How exactly has he gotten away with it given that his assets have been siezed and he's sitting in jail?

Re:72,000!!

[Nutria]

This case also proves a bit of regulatory ineptness, I mean, doctors and pharmacies are highly regulated, how could they miss this guy writing this many prescriptions for so long?

It's a big country, and prescription drugs are a really big, legal business. 72000 prescriptions is a drop in the ocean.

Instead of seeing a half-empty glass, instead be glad that they *did* get caught after only 14 months, part of that time which they were under investigation, and thus had already been noticed by the Feds.

Re:72,000!!

[needacoolnickname]

So it shocked you that:

72,000 people thought they could get something they can't easily get because they don't have an ailment.

There are actually sleazy doctors here in America.

That bad people might actually be in America too - and that they are dumb enough to think they would not get caught.

It is real easy to blame things on others, but really, we are just as sleazy as the rest of the world.

Re:72,000!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Give or take a leap second.

Re:72,000!!

['nother poster]

No basically about it. And only the patient can take possesion of the them, unless that has changed. That means that you can't have your spouse or noncustodial parent pick them up. Almost no pharmacies will dispense them even if you have a script, as well as the fact that many can only be dispensed and used while the attending physician is , well, in attendance. Right there with you.

Re:72,000!!

[b1t r0t]

Prosecutors allege Smith had Mach issue about 72,000 prescriptions from July 2004 to about May 2005.
Would't someone have gotten a touch suspicious that this guy was writing them out at a rate of 1 prescription every 7 seconds?

Ummm, you might want to check your math. That's only 240 a day, which is 10 per hour or one every six minutes or so. Or maybe one every 2 minutes or so if you consider that he probably wasn't doing it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Re:72,000!!

[Golias]

It's not a matter of a desire to "blame things on others", it's that crime syndicates who use they Internet tend to be far more successful if they cross international borders, especially if they do so from countries where differences in laws make things a little more ambiguous. (See: allofmp3.com)

Re:72,000!!

[neoform]

I'm not sure how this is a victory, now instead of someone giving out real pills (granted to people who might not/should not be taking them) now people might start buying these pills from some other country, where they turn out to be something far worse for the user's health..

Re:72,000!!

[spidrw]

You mean like FSU's med school? ;)

Just kidding folks...you can't expect a Gator to pass up one like that!

Re:72,000!!

[Dun Malg]

Considering that the average GP these days spends about 7 actual minutes with each patient, and in some cases prescribes more than one drug per visit, 27 scripts per hour is probably only slightly above the curve. I could easilly see this slipping under the radar if it wasn't for people hunting down the spammer he was working through.

Except, of course, these prescriptions were all for hydrocodone(Vicodin), which the DEA tracks. 27 scripts an hour when most of them are antibiotics or blood pressure meds might go unnoticed, but 27 a day, every day, of the same sched II controlled substance is just asking to be caught.

Re:72,000!!

[jonbryce]

My dentist gave me a prescription recently that was printed out from a computer, but it was signed by hand.

For patients on regular medication, one of the admin staff in the doctor's surgery will print out the prescription on the computer, and a doctor will sign it, after presumably checking to see that the patient should still be taking the same medication.

Re:72,000!!

[metamatic]

There was an actual doctor writing precriptions for these drugs, not just some sleazy smuggler from bolivia or some nutjob with a lab for making counterfeit placebo replacements.

That shouldn't be a surprise. There are going to be sleazy crooks in any profession, medicine is no exception. I mean, Harold Shipman was a doctor; he was murdering old people with prescriptions of medical-grade heroin, and he still bumped off 250 people before they caught him.

Re:72,000!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I also am amazed - especially since this perscription debaucle seems to be coming from New Jersey. Actually, it also makes it less amazing. Let me explain....

I work for a company that supplies doctors with, among other things, prescription pads. We are involved with many state agencies and medical organizations that govern said "script" - and it is script, just like money or checks. At least, that's what it has become.

New Jersey has the most elaborate requirements for Rx fraud protection because New Jersey has the highest incidence of Rx fraud. Each state in the US gets to choose no less than 4 (or 3, I forget) out of nine security features implemented on blank Rx script (watermark, mircrofine, pantograph, thermograph, special ink, special paper stock). In addition, there are new verification requirements between doctors and pharmacies.

This is all new stuff; legislation less than two years old at the most, some that was passed only four months ago. And, let me tell you, it's a bitch. For example, depending on where the production facility is located, to provide blank Rx script you not only have to have a special paper stock you also have to hire a security guard to protect it while it sits in your warehouse.

The state of electronic Rx isn't much better, either. It's a fun game of DRM and HIPAA rules trying to be technology, and lawyers can have a field day while the problem isn't solved. The only effective electronic Rx I've seen is done within a closed system where the doctor "writes" a prescription electronically for the pharmacy downstairs (Kaiser). All attempts at a secure system between independant doctors and pharmacies fails because it is either grossly misunderstood or completely ineffective.

It's a wicked game since the potential criminal is on all sides of the fence: People who forge Rx for personal gain (high) or black market resale; Doctors who forge Rx for personal gain, special interest, or black market resale; Pharmacists who forge Rx for personal gain or black market resail; Insurance brokers who want to control the entire flow of cash and medicine.

So I, too, am amazed that this case of Rx forgery happened because of all these changes to regulation. Then again, I'm not surprised because the concept of seriously securing Rx script, especially in electronic form, has only just begun. I'm also not surprised that this happened in New Jersey, and it's equally not surprising that it was the first to be noticed.

Re:72,000!!

[ceejayoz]

Hydrocodone is probably better known as Lortab or Vicodin. It's addictive.

No, it's not! I've been using it for years and I'm not... oh. ;-)

Seriously, though, the stuff does nothing for me. Dunno why people are so "woohoo!" about it...

Re:72,000!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Curious, I wonder if they're healtthcare covers part of it since it's a perscription (considering the people using this system had heatlcare...)

Re:72,000!!

[Just Some Guy]

True, but I was assuming that "proscribed" was a misspelling of "prescribed", and wanted to clear up any misconception that there's an accurate list somewhere of every drug order by every doctor for every patient.

If the OP really meant "proscribed", as in "forbidden", then they were correct in stating that those are indeed tracked.

Re:72,000!!

[Golias]

True, but so much of spam exists to push hoaxes, I just tend to assume that anything sold via spam is bogus. The fact that they were actually selling what they said they were selling came as a bit of a surprise.

Re:72,000!!

[Anonymous Coward]

72,000 people out there actually put pills in their bodies which came from a spammer who spells it "V1Ag ra!!!"

There's nothing wrong with the pills. It these people got prescriptions then they could 'safely' buy the real pills anywhere, they would not have to trust drugs from a stranger over the internet.

Re:72,000!!

[EvilMagnus]

Dude, they were pimping Vicodin. That pretty much defines the street when it comes to 'legal' abused painkillers. First day in the ED, my wife is hit up by some crusty girl saying "Doc, I need my Vics..." :-)

So yeah, this doc should have been putting his DEA # on those scrips, or they wouldn't (shouldn't?) have been filled.

Re:72,000!!

[operagost]

I'm annoyed that 72,000 dipsticks responded to his spams.

Re:72,000!!

[ColdWetDog]

WTF are you talking about? I AM a physician, and NO, the physician does NOT have to "be in attendance" when you get a schedule II script. You can mail schedule II scripts, we do it all the time - to legitimate mail order pharmacies. They have our fax number and will often fax or call to verify a script (but they do that for non scheduled meds as well - it's thier job). The only thing that's odd about this is how long he wound on before getting caught. I suspect it's because the doc was involved with the pharmacy and they were not planning on tattling to the DEA. I'd feel pretty confident if I wrote 72000 scripts for controlled substances to drugstore.com that somebody would wonder into my office and have a little discussion.

Re:72,000!!

[EvilMagnus]

Yeah, I meant proscribed, and I wrote what I meant. Sometimes I use long words in their correct context just to impress myself. :-)

Re:72,000!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, it was the FBI that got him. I know that for a fact.

He had a nice office packed full of people making phone calls to sell the stuff. All calls were VOIP with all that implies as far as callerID goes. Metal detector on the way in to check the employees. Lockers for the employees to leave everything they were carrying in.

Interesting lad. A bit headstrong though.

Re:72,000!!

[Just Some Guy]

There's nothing wrong with that, but you can hardly blame me for assuming it was a misspelling. This is Slashdot, after all. :-)

Re:72,000!!

[AJWM]

Seriously, though, the stuff does nothing for me.

Some people are like that. Biochemistries differ. I once read a (possibly apocryphal) story about how some people are immune to the addictive effects of heroin. Such people tend to have the sort of personality that would find them in a lab engaged in long term research projects. The guys who invented heroin -- as a less addictive form of morphine -- tried it on themselves first, and it didn't seem particularly addictive...

As I said, probably an apocryphal story. I don't know how easily lab rats get addicted to the stuff, but you'd think they'd try it on those first.

Re:72,000!!

[ceejayoz]

Possible, yeah. I had moles removed and the anesthetic (injected immediately before each mole) worked on the first perfectly but did nothing by the fourth. Not much fun.

Apparently there's a genetic disorder that causes such things.

Re:72,000!!

[reverseengineer]

AZT Break!

Um, err, "Hydrocodone Break," in this case, I guess.

Re:72,000!!

[multiplexo]

In other words, I think this scum-sucking doctor is at least as due for "due process" as the spammer. The spammer is annoying, the doctor is putting peoples' lives at risk. Well, OK, they both are. Throw the book at them.

More War on Some Drugs bullshit. How is this doctor putting people's lives at risk? They're willingly buying these drugs, he's not dumping the stuff into the water supply late at night. This doctor is no more putting these people's lives at risk than any bartender, beer company McDonalds or tobacco company is.

Personally I think you should be able to purchase any drug you like except for anti-virals or anti-biotics. If you want to suck down Oxycontin all day long no problemo, just don't drive or operate any heavy equipment while doing so or you'll end up in a prison cell sucking down Pruno. If you're dumb enough to take a bunch of different drugs without a doctor's prescription then you damn well deserve to die and society will be all the better off without you.

Re:72,000!!

[Pharmboy]

My dentist gave me a prescription recently that was printed out from a computer, but it was signed by hand.

My understanding is that *everyone* wants doctors to go to this system, to prevent accidental mis-filling at the pharmacy (it happens, people die sometimes) and because it has to be put in the computer anyway.

I can't swear to this, but I think insurance companies are pushing this as well, since it reduces accidental deaths and their liability as well. It is kinda dumb to have a doctor hen scratch a perscription, then make someone type it in the computer records, when they could just do it in one step, and he just signs it.

Re:72,000!!

[cpangelich]

I would reserve any celebration until after the spammer is convicted. In the US of A money buys leniency.

Re:72,000!!

[neurokaotix]

Maybe he's from *mars*

Re:72,000!!

[ptbarnett]

Seriously, though, the stuff does nothing for me. Dunno why people are so "woohoo!" about it...

I was in the hospital for minor surgery a while back and found that it makes me very sick (nausea). Since then, I've explicitly instructed doctors/dentists to prescribe something else.

Re:72,000!!

[david.given]

Are you going to ask a lot of questions if a new customer comes along and starts providing you with millions of dollars worth of orders? Would you be inclided to view their decision to order all these drugs from your manufacturing plant as "suspicious" or "lucky"?

Do you have any ethics at all? Because if so, the answer to both these questions is 'yes'.

These days 'I was just following orders' does not cut it. Either military orders or manufacturing ones.

Re:72,000!!

['nother poster]

I don't believe that I said all sched II drugs, but if that is the way it came across I'm sorry. So you are saying that cocaine, cocaine precursors and opium extracts can be drop shipped? We had fields for "signed for", "signed for by patient", and "administered by physician" in pharmacy/insurance processing software back in the late 80's. Lots of logic that if certain drugs were prescribed that those fields had to be affirmative. We just worked with what the Doctors of Pharmacology and their staff told us.

Re:72,000!!

[TroyFoley]

Hi, Dr. Nick!

Re:72,000!!

[needacoolnickname]

That's true. Now if he was selling pot he'd already be hanged with our drug laws.

Re:72,000!!

[noidentity]

"Holy Crap! FTA: Prosecutors allege Smith had Mach issue about 72,000 prescriptions from July 2004 to about May 2005. "

I bet the handwriting on the 72,000th prescription was absolutely horrible, probably just a wavy line!

Re:72,000!!

[Anonymous Coward]

these days blah blah... ethics my ass.

you better learn how capitalism works baby.

Re:72,000!!

[lamp540]

The guy got busted because he was selling drugs to people that were not "authorized" to get them, not because he was spamming. Spam may be annoying, but what exactly is wrong with providing people with a product(drugs) that they want?

This is only "universally" seen as a good thing to people who are so brain washed by the government that they don't think they are responsible enough to determine what goes into their own bodies.

Re:72,000!!

[lamp540]

Opiates are used by people as analgesics as well. Not everyone who doesn't go through the big brother-approved prescription system is a junkie.

Re:72,000!!

[lamp540]

Right on! Why is it that un-american fascists like the guy you responded to get modded up so much?

Re:72,000!!

[garylian]

Some prescription facts that make it easier to get around.

Only about 20% of the states in the U.S. actually require reporting based on the narcotics a doctor writes. The rest will blindly allow whatever happens to happen.

Add to that fact that this guy was unlikely to be running an actually pharmacy, and it makes it a little easier.

Most drugs with Hydrocodone in them are C-III, or schedule 3 drugs, and are not under super-tight restrictions for dispensing. Up to 5 refills allowed in a 6 month period kind of thing. Also, a written prescription isn't required in most states. (NY being the exception I am familiar with, but there may be others.) A doctor can phone one in.

The harder narcotics are C-II, or scheule 2. Those are only fillable once, no refills allowed, a written prescription is required all the time.

Since a doctor's DEA # is set by an invidivual state, you can change it up for different states, and make it look like a different doctor, if you wanted to. A doctor actually is supposed to have one DEA # for each office location, though most don't.

Besides, anyone that has worked in a pharmacy probably knows how to create a working DEA #. The formula isn't very hard to get through.

Lastly. Depending on what the doctor's specialty is, writing narcotics in large quantities may not throw up a red flag. Doctors that specialize in headache, orthopedics, any surgical discipline, and dentists, write a large number of narcotic prescriptions each year. Spread that number out over most of the 50 U.S. states, and the tracking is harder to do.

Between my 11+ years of working in a pharmacy, to my current job working for a pharmacy software company, if I really wanted to, I could pull this off, once I got a supplier to buy into me as legit. And all that takes is getting a pharmacist to play along. Show them enough $$$ (even though they make more than $70K starting, nowadays, I believe) and someone will play along.

Re:72,000!!

[qzulla]

Hydrocodone is probably better known as Lortab or Vicodin. It's addictive. The recipients probably weren't that picky about their source.

It's not that addictive. At least to me. I had a severe injury in the past and they wouldn't refill my prescription after two years of taking it. I just stopped. No withdrawal. Nothing except I didn't sleep as well for a week or so.

qz

Re:72,000!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hiya, everybody !!

Re:72,000!!

[danheskett]

Cocaine et all are Schedule I drugs.

Re:72,000!!

['nother poster]

Not according to the DEA. http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/schedules/listby _sched/sched2.htm

Re:72,000!!

[pnice]

The recipients probably weren't that picky about their source.

No joke. Read the Confessions of an EBay Opium Addict. http://www.newsreview.com/issues/reno/2005-03-17/c over.asp

Re:72,000!!

[gfim]

You must have very long seconds where you live! It comes out to roughly one every 6 minutes in my book (or every 1.4 minutes if he only works an 8 hour day and five days a week).

Graham

NJ

[trevordactyl]

The doctor, Philip Mach, had a license to practice medicine in New Jersey but he provided prescriptions to people throughout the United States without ever evaluating them, both of which are big no-no's.

He was giving out prescriptions without a proper medical exam? That's not a good idea. But...wait...he was practicing medicine in New Jersey? How CRIMINAL! ...Am I missing something here? What else is a big no-no?

Re:NJ

[Achromus]

He only has a license to practice medicine in New Jersey, but he provided prescriptions to people in other states.

Re:NJ

[Morgalyn]

He was writing Rx's for people outside the state where he was licensed to practice.

Re:NJ

[Datamonstar]

"Throughout the United States"
He wasn't liscened to practice in those states.

Re:NJ

[cudaboy_71]

everyone knows it's a crime to be medically licensed in NJ. what are you thinking? (my guess would be prescribing out of your jurisdiction AND without an exam. no mod-funny points for you...you sound too serious)

Re:NJ

[Morgalyn]

And yes, I do realize he was making a joke! I just thought I'd elaborate on it just in case anyone was ACTUALLY wondering what was wrong.

Re:NJ

[mengmeng]

The blurb is rather badly worded, but I'm assuming the two no-nos are these:
1) Giving prescriptions to people not in a state you're licensed in.
2) Giving prescriptions to people without examining them.

Re:NJ

[Chaotic Spyder]

#1he provided prescriptions to people throughout the United States #2without ever evaluating them,

Re:NJ

['nother poster]

But that is not, in and of itself, illegle. Many people get prescriptions from doctors in different states and have them filled in a state that they were not written in. Say someone lives in Indiana, goes to a doctor in Illinois, and has the script filled in Wisconsin since he was heading to Green Bay for the game that weekend. This is all legitimate. Nothing wrong at all.

Re:NJ

[Morgalyn]

You're right that it is not illegal, but it does tread upon ethical issues. It can be considered highly unethical to write Rx's for controlled medications to out-of-state patients, except in certain cases like the one you just mentioned (people travelling, people living on the borderline between two states). Those are sort of 'emergency' or 'locality' situations.

Re:NJ

[Anonymous Coward]

lol what?

Re:NJ

[That's Unpossible!]

1. He gave prescriptions to people across the US even though he's only licensed in NJ.

2. He gave prescriptions to people he did not evaluate.

His final crime was allowing people to pump his gas for him, and at a lower cost then his neighboring states. That's just WRONG!

Re:NJ

['nother poster]

Yes, but there are MILLIONS of citizens in the U.S. that live in these situations you mentioned. Add to that the prevelance of mail order phamacies and it becomes even less clear. Saying it is wrong to dispense drugs from a pharmacy that is out of state for a patient that is out of state is ridiculous. If the writers of the scripts are intent on circumventing the law, then they need to be slapped down, but not residing in your doctors state isn't, and shouldn't be wrong or criminal. Simply taking NY/NJ, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Memphis, and Chicago, there are 10s of millions of potential cases of being unethical by your standards.

That said, anyone who is writing scripts for a lot of Scheduled drugs without seeing their patient, or dispensing when they know that the patient was not examined, or dispensing by mailorder, will get a rude awakening, and then a cellmate named Bubba who thinks they have a "purdy mouth."

Re:NJ

[deathy_epl ccs]

I think that was something called sarcasm.

Re:NJ

[Randall311]

First, he was providing prescriptions for people that were not residents of NJ, which is illegal. Then he was providing people with prescriptions without evaluating them, which isn't recommend. Those are the "big no-no's"

Re:NJ

[Anonymous Coward]

This can only be replied to in one way.

--J-O-K-E->
.......\o/
you->...0
......./ \

Re:NJ

[FragHARD]

Boy am I glad you pointed that out to me ... I just couldn't understand why oh why they went after him. I mean after all he is a Doctor and therefore a super inteligent person caring understanding generous and all of the things that just make a perfect person....What am I saying, I must be on crack or somthin' to talk about scum like that!

Re:NJ

[sessamoid]

1. He gave prescriptions to people across the US even though he's only licensed in NJ.

This is not illegal. Not only is it legal, in fact it's quite common, and not being able to do so would make life difficult for those who live and work in small states or in cities on the border of two states. I have called in prescriptions for relatives in other parts of the country on multiple occasions without even giving a thought to it.

Why don't they know when to stop?

[DroopyStonx]

As much as I approve of crimes like this... I just don't get why they don't know when to stop.

If you've made 3 million... walk away with what ya have. It's not worth pursuing another 3 million to risk losing it ALL.

Greed.

Ah well, no respect to dumb greedy criminals.

Re:Why don't they know when to stop?

[Datamonstar]

If one is to take tfa literally, that 3 mil was in cash, so he was doing considerably better than that, I'd believe.

Re:Why don't they know when to stop?

[GodfatherofSoul]

This is how a lot of "successful" criminals get caught. The same greed that leads them to break the law is also self-destructive in that the can't stop once the money starts pouring in. Saw this same phenomenon in that Las Vegas cheating special. Successful cheaters as well as gamblers just don't know when to quit.

Re:Why don't they know when to stop?

[Sime208]

You can use that logic all the way back to his first $100k. Why risk $100k to make $200k.. Why risk £.5m to make £1m? Why risk.....?

Despite you calling him dumb, I'm sure he was more than aware of the risk he was taking.. Like a gambler who stays sat at a roulette table, he decided to keep playing for higher rewards. He probably doesn't deserve respect, but there's part of me can't help smirking.

If he's been clever, he'll have a tidy sum tucked away for his release. If he hasn't, you're right, he's a dumb criminal :-)

Re:Why don't they know when to stop?

[nolife]

The problem with your theory is you have no idea when you are going to get caught. It is easier to look back after the fact and suggest you should have walked away one day prior to getting busted. Of course, even stopping the illegal activity 6 months prior to actually getting captured may not be enough. Investigations take a while. When the criminal feels the "heat", it is already way to late for them. The investigation from the past crimes alone could lead to the capture and any further crimes just add to the potential evidence and the punishment. A serial rapist could rape 10 people over a year period before getting caught. It is not always the 10th person that actually leads to the arrest, it could have been the evidence from the first or the second crime. Stopping after the second person would not have helped the rapist escape being caught.
In fact, the serial rapist may fine tune his skills and leave even less evidence with each crime, of course he could get complacent and over confident as well.

Re:Why don't they know when to stop?

[Nuttles1]

Not an exact quote, but Rockerfeller was asked how much money was enough and his response was something to the tune of a little more than I have.

few people have what it takes to walk away from income in the millions even if they already have millions.

Re:Why don't they know when to stop?

[Tired_Blood]

I just don't get why they don't know when to stop.

Sometimes it's pressure from accomplices and not strictly greed, like when someone gives you "an offer you can't refuse". The best defense to that is to never associate yourself with such characters in any way.

Typically, greed is the initial motivation. Then when the scam is proven to be working, that motivation is replaced by fear.

Re:Why don't they know when to stop?

[BackInIraq]

As much as I approve of crimes like this... I just don't get why they don't know when to stop.

If you've made 3 million... walk away with what ya have. It's not worth pursuing another 3 million to risk losing it ALL.

Oh, I'm sure there are plenty of criminals out there who DO know when to stop, or at least dial it down. You just never hear about them, because they are also the ones who don't tend to get caught.

I vaguely remember reading about a bank robber who went quite some time (decade or two?) without getting busted because he didn't get too greedy...he'd score so much in a year and call it good. It helped that he didn't tend to get violent, and hadn't killed anybody. The details are fuzzy in my mind, but the point is that there are criminals who know when to back off or even just walk away. This joker obviously wasn't one of them. I could live quite nicely off just one million dollars for the rest of my life, assuming I picked up even a low-paying job or even just invested wisely.

Of course, it's also quite possible the IRS would eventually notice me and wonder where the money came from, especially if I didn't have gainful employment.

Re:Why don't they know when to stop?

[p3d0]

You're talking with the benefit of hindsight. Where does the "if you've made $3 million, walk away" argument end? $1 million? $10,000?

Re:Why don't they know when to stop?

[PaxTech]

Not an exact quote, but Rockerfeller was asked how much money was enough and his response was something to the tune of a little more than I have.

Homer: You know, Mr. Burns, you're the richest guy I know. Way richer than Lenny.

Mr. Burns: Oh yes. But I'd trade it all for a little more.

Re:Why don't they know when to stop?

[DroopyStonx]

Yes, I approve.

Wow... look at the headlines.

[Cytlid]

Chinese Websites Used As Launchpads For Cracking
Piracy Not To Blame In Decline of Moviegoers
Another Major Spammer Busted

Who gave those in charge a clue? It seems we're starting to see a paradigm shift... people who really abuse network resources are getting caught!

Re:Wow... look at the headlines.

[garcia]

Who gave those in charge a clue? It seems we're starting to see a paradigm shift... people who really abuse network resources are getting caught!

From the Editorial FAQ:
Deciding the interest level of a story is a very subjective thing, and we have to take into account not only the intrinsic interest of the story itself, but what else is happening that day.

So, no, it's the "editors" picking and choosing articles that will shape the look of Slashdot on any given day/week/month. Just like some days we have Google Fuckathon days and months full of Slashvertisements of iPod Your Slashdot, today we have headlines that seem to make it appear that "someone" has a clue.

He wasn't busted for spamming, BTW, he was busted because he's dealing narcotics illegally and he recently flew to the DR on a forged passport.

Re:Wow... look at the headlines.

[Ubergrendle]

I'm waiting for Ashton Kutcher to pop out from behind my cubicle and tell me i've been punk'd.

Re:Wow... look at the headlines.

[arbitraryaardvark]

He wasn't busted for spamming, BTW, he was busted because he's dealing narcotics illegally and he recently flew to the DR on a forged passport. Exactly. Mod parent up.

Both big no-no's?

[RobertB-DC]

The doctor, Philip Mach, 1: had a license to practice medicine in New Jersey but he 2: provided prescriptions to people throughout the United States without ever evaluating them, both of which are big no-no's.

So, it's against the law to practice medicine in New Jersey? Wow, the things you learn on Slashdot.

Re:Both big no-no's?

[Eggplant62]

No, it's not against the law to practice medicine in New Jersey. However, it is against the law to issue prescriptions for patients with whom you've never had personal contact and on whom you've never performed an exam.

Huge difference.

Re:Both big no-no's?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod: -1 Missing the joke.

Re:Both big no-no's?

[mikvo]

Let's try an alternate reading:

The doctor, Philip Mach, had a license to practice medicine in New Jersey but he 1: provided prescriptions to people throughout the United States 2: without ever evaluating them, both of which are big no-no's.

Better?

Re:Both big no-no's?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably also against the law to issue a script to a patient in, say, CA, when you are only supposed to practice in NJ.

Re:Both big no-no's?

[Chaotic Spyder]

i actually had to scroll up to look for the numbers... with /. editing lately... still a poor job.. but look at me type with all these... and half sentences

Re:Both big no-no's?

[Anonymous Coward]

The first offense is that he provided care to people in a state where he was not licensed (i.e. every state except NJ). The second is that he provided care to people whom he had never physically met (i.e. no exam).

Re:Both big no-no's?

[Zero__Kelvin]

"The doctor, Philip Mach, 1: had a license to practice medicine in New Jersey but he 2: provided prescriptions to people throughout the United States without ever evaluating them, both of which are big no-no's.

"So, it's against the law to practice medicine in New Jersey? Wow, the things you learn on Slashdot."

The article states no such thing! It merely says that having a license to practice medicine in New Jersey is a no-no. It's a lot like living in New Jersey, which I also understand is a big "no-no". 8^}

Re:Both big no-no's?

[gosand]

Let's try an alternate reading: The doctor, Philip Mach, had a license to practice medicine in New Jersey but he 1: provided prescriptions to people throughout the United States 2: without ever evaluating them, both of which are big no-no's. Better?

If it was written correctly, there would be only 1 way to read it. (and the way you reworded it isn't written correctly either.)

Re:Both big no-no's?

[hankaholic]

That's not two things. It's not criminal for a doctor not to evaluate someone. The average doctor will not have time to evaluate even a significant portion of the population before retiring.

It's one action: providing prescriptions. The phrase you've labelled as #2 simply explains the circumstances which made the action unlawful. You [hopefully] wouldn't say there are two actions involved in "I ate a sandwich at Arby's", despite similar structure.

Apparently there was some use to going over sentence structure in high school after all....

Re:Both big no-no's?

[carpltunl]

No, it's not against the law to practice, it's a big no-no to have a license to practice - apparently.

Re:Both big no-no's?

[BackInIraq]

It's one action: providing prescriptions. The phrase you've labelled as #2 simply explains the circumstances which made the action unlawful. You [hopefully] wouldn't say there are two actions involved in "I ate a sandwich at Arby's", despite similar structure.

Here's a way of rewriting it where the "both" part would be appropriate, which is I believe what the original author was getting at:

"The doctor, Philip Mach, had a license to practice medicine in New Jersey but he provided prescriptions to people outside of New Jersey, and also provided precriptions without ever evaluating the patients, both of which are big no-no's."

"Both" was originally (I think) meant to refer to:
1. Writing prescriptions outside of his state of licensing
2. Writing prescriptions without examining the patients


While the writing of the prescription(s) is one act, it is actually two rules being broken, thus both. Much the same way if I am driving over the speed limit while drunk I am breaking two laws, even though the driving is one action. I am driving over the speed limit, and driving while drunk. And I could be charged with two seperate crimes. Or maybe not...I'm no lawyer.

Re:Both big no-no's?

[hankaholic]

This would only be true if it's actually unlawful to prescribe medication across state lines. I don't believe that's true, but it may be. The article mentions a charge of "distributing controlled substances and introducing misbranded drugs into interstate commerce". It's unclear as to whether "distributing" involves prescription, especially as it fails to list charges filed against each defendant individually. It seems reasonable to interpret this as referring to the actual distribution. The prescription probably falls under the listed charge of "conspiracy to dispense controlled substances".

I'm not clear as to whether it is unlawful to write prescriptions outside of one's home state. I can't find anything conclusive either way.

At any rate, the sentence as written simply didn't parse properly, and the post to which I replied pretended to provide clarification but failed. Your suggested interpretation is valid, but isn't quite supported by the article in question.

what I would like to do...

[Daytona955i]

Is smack every one of the 72000 people who bought perscriptions from this guy. I don't think we'll ever really get rid of spammers until it's not profitable for them anymore. The best way to do that is to not buy anything from them.

Re:what I would like to do...

[rovingeyes]

smack every one of the 72000 people who bought perscriptions from this guy

I think it is cruel to the guy who has to do all the smacking! The idea is to punish the dumb people not the hard working person

Re:what I would like to do...

[sm00f]

Why don't you smack the drug companies then, maybe some people think its worth the risk of buying drugs from a spammer at 50% - 90% less than going to a doctor in this country without insurance. I would also have to say 99.9% of the medical spam is just resold from legit overseas pharmacies and the spammer just takes his 10-20% cut of the sale.

Re:what I would like to do...

[umrgregg]

It probably wasn't 72,00 people. It was probably 5-6K or less addicted patients. Or even worse, a few hundred drug dealers scamming for "legal" scrips to controlled narcotics.

Re:what I would like to do...

[Daytona955i]

Well, yes, I would like to smack the drug companies too. However, in my eyes, the people who buy the spam products are as much to blame for the spam problem we have now as the spammers themselves. I want to smack the drug companies for other reasons.

You know it's bad when you have to take a drug to combat the side effects from another drug which helps you from another drug which fixes the original problem. Doctors need to start writing prescriptions that read "Run your ass around the block a few times." We need to start practicing preventative medicine... but that really doesn't have anything to do with spammers...

Re:what I would like to do...

[Brandybuck]

No, no, no! You don't understand! We will ALL get turns smacking them. So get back to the end of the line and wait your turn.

Re:what I would like to do...

[freshman_a]

Doctors need to start writing prescriptions that read "Run your ass around the block a few times."

This doctor basically did, and look where it got him...

Re:what I would like to do...

[Eggplant62]

Or start practicing medicine like this:

http://worldhealth.net/
http://functionalmedicine.org/

Functional medicine is defined as medicine that is applied to the patient as a whole being with multiple inter-related systems, not just a batch of symptoms to toss therapies at. Doctors practicing this take into account gut health, endocrinology, and all of the body systems as a whole, and try to figure out the actual root of problems rather than toss band-aids and aspirin around.

Re:what I would like to do...

[drsquare]

Why, what've they done wrong? Someone advertised something to them, they bought it. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

I hate radio adverts. Does this mean I should go round and smack anyone who buys something advertised on the radio?

Some people might LIKE adverts in their e-mail, who are you to tell them they're wrong?

Re:what I would like to do...

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree with you about not buying from a spammer, this might be a sign of a greater problem, not just 72,000 ididots. Maybe, just maybe there is a real demand for drugs that are considered illegal that maybe drugs shouldn't be illegal?

Allow anyone access to prescription drugs without a prescription legally and "bam!": you get rid of a lot of spam easily. Not to mention that you would greatly increase everyone's civil rights in the process and eliminate the need for countless wastefull federal agencies, reduce violent crimes...

No, what I am I thinking? That would be too easy, and irresponsible to let adults make tough decisions freely. It's not like we tout freedom or liberty in this country as one of our founding values!

Re:what I would like to do...

[ZorbaTHut]

I bought a prescription online once.

I was in college and off my mom's medical insurance. I had acne that was gradually getting under control, but I'd run out of acne medicine. Going to a doctor would be crazily expensive, but just buying another 100-pack of my medicine online was a (relatively) mere $70 online.

So I went online and bought medicine.

Maybe I was financing a spammer, but you know, a large amount of the medical profession at this point is just a giant con game.

Scam or con? I'll go with the cheaper one.

Re:what I would like to do...

[syukton]

Stop looking at the symptom and look at the problem: WHY did 72,000 people buy narcotic pain medication (illegally) from a spammer? Could it be because they're addicted? 72,000 people with a Vicodin addiction is not hard to imagine.

I think we'd be much better off if the FDA became a recommendations and guidelines agency and the entire concept of regulating what one can or can not put in their body was done away with. Then one could buy their vicodin over the counter, and they wouldn't need to get involved with a seedy spammer fella and his black-market crew.

You need to consider that selling vicodin through spam is only profitable because people are paying higher prices because of scarce or controlled supply. If the supply became less scarce (ie, you could buy anything without a prescription), the demand would be quenched and prices would fall, hopefully to the point where a spammer can no longer make money selling us anything because we can already get it with greater availability and guaranteed purity at the corner store.

Not to mention how much money the government can make by literally taxing pleasure. Everybody wins.

Re:what I would like to do...

[uits]

Considering they bought narcotic pain relievers, they might not care or feel it...

Re:what I would like to do...

[typical]

Acne medicine requires a prescription?

Re:what I would like to do...

[ZorbaTHut]

I vaguely remember that it was antibiotics. It did require a prescription (the standard acne medicine, irritatingly, just made it worse.)

Re:what I would like to do...

[Daytona955i]

The difference is, those radio adverts pay for the music you listen to. If it weren't for those adverts, you would have no radio. They are also usually legitimate companies.

SPAM is usually a fradulent person. This is a known fact. You are only supposed to get perscriptions from your doctor... not from some guy on the internet. It's obviously a fraud and so I'd like to smack them.

Re:what I would like to do...

[grolschie]

It probably wasn't 72,00 people. It was probably 5-6K or less addicted patients. Or even worse, a few hundred drug dealers scamming for "legal" scrips to controlled narcotics.

Probably benzo addicts.

Spammers

[kevin_conaway]

Are most spammers spamming for their own business like this guy did

I was under the impression that most of the spammers were "for hire" by marketing firms, companies, mafias, etc.

Re:Spammers

[sm00f]

I know a pretty big adult spammer, the trick is you have to know the owners / top guys at the companies you spam products for, then they will just "comply" with reported spam and "delete" accounts and whatnot when trouble shows up, but since you know the guys at the top, they just pay you anyways and give you new accounts to keep on spamming with since both parties are making tons of cash (he makes around $20k/month last time I knew off it, and has a shiney dodge viper in his driveway.)

Re:Spammers

[Anonymous Coward]

could you do everyone a favor and torch his car.

he is a piece of shit and doesnt belong in society.

Re:Spammers

[SheeEttin]

"for hire" by marketing firms, companies, mafias

I can imagine it now; the Godfather via email.

Re:Spammers

[Ookami]

Not all spammers spam for their own business, it only takes one individual to set it up, calling it 'marketing' making stupid little banners and spamming them all over the world then sitting back and taking their fee via PayPal or some other means of money transfer and never reporting it on their taxes. Makes me sick, I once knew someone who spammed for a living, making supposely a ton of money off annoying individuals and the bandwidth, storage of service providers. Same individual also set up an mp3 site and used University bandwidth while making people go through the whole click-thrus to gain access and make a small amount of money.

Another no-no

[Anonymous Coward]

is using an apostrophe to make a plural. Maybe we can harness the awesome power of the spammers to send out remedial spelling emails?

PUTTING As IN DEFINITELY? Es IN RIDICULOUS? WE CAN HELP!

Re:Another no-no

[Phleg]

I D0 nt' th1nk w3 w 4nt t0 g3t sp44mmm333333rs 1nv0olv3d 1n t3a4c h1ng sp34ll1ng

Re:Another no-no

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Actually, when you're using short words like that, the proper method is to use the apostrophe as a plural. No-nos looks weird (but is understandable). Nos is even worse. And the plural of the lowercase letter i cannot be written is.

No-no's, no's, and i's are the proper ways. (Of course, yeses and longer words do not use this rule.)

Oh great

[Trailer Trash]

I guess my viagra and ciliax orders are going to be delayed.

Re:Oh great

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you just _wish_ you had checked "Post Anonymously" ?

Re:Oh great

[Anonymous Coward]

With a name like "Trailer Trash", I don't think he cares very much.

Plus, isn't it spelled 'V14gR4'?

Re:Oh great

[alan_dershowitz]

Let's hope his new cellmate's orders weren't. Wouldn't it be a shame if he found out a majority of his Viagra orders were delivered to federal prisons.

I feel a disturbance in the SPAM

[BlackCobra43]

It's as if a thousand annoying voices screamed "C1ALIS" in unison, and were then silenced.

It's not butchered, it's creatively adjusted!

Good...

[The Tyro]

Burn, you son-of-a-b*tch.

Prescription drug abuse/diversion is a major problem... I get hit with drug seekers in my ER every single day. Some of these people have legitimate chronic pain conditions and need to be under the care of a pain specialist, while others are simply using narcotics to treat their psychological pain (or just gathering "party supplies" for the weekend). Some of these people self-medicate and push their vicodin/lortab dose until they get acetaminophen toxic... bad way to end up on the liver transplant list.

And before somebody says it, no, I don't think drug legalization is the answer.

Re:Good...

[b0s0z0ku]

Some of these people self-medicate and push their vicodin/lortab dose until they get acetaminophen toxic...

So why the *hell* do the pharma companies use acetaminophen to "denature" their hydrocodone tablets? Wouldn't it be better not to add the acet. and just treat drug addicts who are a danger to themselves/others?

Either that, or add something that has fairly immediate and unpleasant effects when overdosed upon, rather than acet. which has no immediate unpleasant effects, is seen by the public as "safe" (after all, it's in nonprescription Tylenol, and the nanny-state won't allow any truly *scary* drugs to be sold OTC, right?), but which often causes fatal liver/kidney damage a few days after overdosage.

Tylenol is nasty shit - I prefer taking aspirin for my headaches. Apart from the small risk of stomach problems, it's actually a lot less toxic than Tylenol.

-b.

Re:Good...

[Morgalyn]

I've always wondered about this. Do ERs have some sort of checklist / questions they ask to try and decide who is actually in pain, and who is just looking for the medicine? I was in the ER recently (thought it was appendicitis, was a ruptured cyst in my reproductive system.. so much fun, being a girl) and I had forgotten how many people use the ER for stuff like.. a hangnail, because they have little/no insurance. There was one person there who seemed to be in much more pain when any hospital officials were watching than when they were not. All she said she wanted was a refill of her medications. It made me wonder a little!

Re:Good...

[Anonymous Coward]

And before somebody says it, no, I don't think drug legalization is the answer.

Of *course* it's the answer. Instead of fucking addicts clogging up the ERs to try to get you to give them drugs they can't pay for (that in turn increases other people's costs or uncle sam's costs), they can be kicked to the street and feed their addictions the way alcoholics and smokers do.

Re:Good...

[The Tyro]

Do ERs have some sort of checklist / questions

We used to... until JCAHO decided that it was a violation of confidentiality. Most ERs kept a "frequent flier" list of their drug seekers: a recipe box with index cards was the usual method, complete with name (including aliases), preferred drug, and typical cover stories used. Those boxes were absolutely invaluable for keeping patients from doctor-shopping by surfing from ER to ER, stocking up.

Thanks JCAHO... thanks a lot for leaning forward to help us in our fight against prescription drug diversion.

Re:Good...

[DroopyStonx]

Um... right. Your ER? You're a doc I take it, huh?

Drugs shouldn't be illegal to begin with - that is the very problem here. Who cares what someone wants to put into their own body?

Saying "no no" or giving them punishments for it isn't a logical deterrent, because if you don't give it to them, they'll get it elsewhere.

The ridiculous laws make it harder for people with legitimate pain to get proper treatment. I experienced it firsthand when I had my tonsils taken out a few months back and was in HORRIBLE pain.

I had a 12 oz bottle of lortab that I used in about 2 days because the pain was so bad. The pharmacists "couldn't believe" I went through that much in a short period of time and refused to refill it even though I had direct order from the doc to go ahead and do so.

Pain is different for everybody, and not one person can use their fucking brain and realize that the "recommended" dosage doesn't exactly cut it in certain situations.

Well, I know it's not the pharmacist's fault, they just follow the laws: it's the laws and the lawmakers that are the problem.

I didn't wanna deal with the hassle and I didn't wanna wait the "legal" period to get a refill, so I sought out someone I knew that had easy access to plenty of vicodin.

It actually worked out in my favor because I decided to circumvent the system.

I don't blame the drug addicts, but rather the ridiculous limitations and control that the government has on everything when it's not logical to do so.

Of course, it's what we're used to, so the common think is that it's acceptable, and to question otherwise is insane.

It's nice to see people get modded up who have closed minded views and resort to childish anger in saying dumb shit like "Burn you son of a bitch."

Re:Good...

[brokenwndw]

The acetaminophen, I believe, acts in synergy with the hydrocodone, so they don't have to put as much dope in the pill to make it work.

Re:Good...

[sm00f]

So what you should do is tell these people how incredibly simple it is to do a water extraction of almost any opiate based pain killer. opiates are very water soluable, acetaminophen isn't, all you need is a coffee filter to save your liver. Might as well tell somebody how to not hurt themselves if they are addicted to it anyways.

Re:Good...

[gstoddart]

Either that, or add something that has fairly immediate and unpleasant effects when overdosed upon, rather than acet. which has no immediate unpleasant effects, is seen by the public as "safe"

Well, in part, it would be bad business to intentionally put things into your pharmaceuticals which are actually harmful.

And, it's kind of odd to make drugs less-safe to combat the abuses of those drugs. It could end up harming people who (medically) need to be given higher doses.

Cheers

Re:Good...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just plain bullshit.

Yes, I am a pharmacist.

Re:Good...

[Brandybuck]

And before somebody says it, no, I don't think drug legalization is the answer.

Legalization will not cure the junkies. Duh.

On the other hand, prohibition isn't doing that great of a job at it either, but it brings with it a whole bunch of nasty side effects, like organized crime. We've had fifty years of narcotic prohibition in the US, and the problem has gotten worse each year.

The only time I ever had a gun stuck in my face was when some junkies mugged me to get cocaine money. They can go get high and pass out in their living rooms as much as they want and it don't bother me. But when they stick guns in my face, I tend to get upset.

Re:Good...

[The Tyro]

Tylenol is one of the nastier common overdoses... Asprin is equally bad.

Fortunately, tylenol has an antidote, provided you get it on board in an appropriate time frame. The problem is adolescents who take a bunch of tylenol as an attention-getter (they assume it's non-toxic), then have second thoughts, and don't tell anyone for a few days. Those kids tend not to do well.

BTW, there are hydrocodone preparations that don't contain tylenol, they're just not used as commonly.

Re:Good...

[b0s0z0ku]

And, it's kind of odd to make drugs less-safe to combat the abuses of those drugs. It could end up harming people who (medically) need to be given higher doses.

So would aceteminophen. For higher doses, they have pure hydrocodone, but that's DEA Schedule III instead of Sched II for the hydrocodone /w toxic stuff added, so it isn't given unless it's really necessary.

-b.

Re:Good...

[Pentagram]

I was amused by the dichotomy between your decision to have your sig describe gouging someones eyes with a dismembered limb yet censoring the word "bitch" in your post, presumably in case someone was offended. It's a good thing you work in a hospital, not a vet's.

Re:Good...

[nahdude812]

Saying "no no" or giving them punishments for it isn't a logical deterrent, because if you don't give it to them, they'll get it elsewhere.

People are going to break the law, so why bother making or enforcing them? Anarchy for all!

Re:Good...

[realityfighter]

I think he was talking about using an additive that would give you (for example) a stomach ache. The kind of thing that plants use aspirin for in the wild - to make ingestion painful without actually harming the bugs that like to nibble on them. We use the same thing on recovering alcoholics - give them a drug that makes them feel ill whenever they ingest alcohol. It's the psychological effect that's valuable.

Re:Good...

[VoidWraith]

Aspirin's toxicity may be all well and good, but you never want to take it for cuts, scrapes, and the like, since it reduces blood clotting.

Re:Good...

[gstoddart]

I think he was talking about using an additive that would give you (for example) a stomach ache. The kind of thing that plants use aspirin for in the wild - to make ingestion painful without actually harming the bugs that like to nibble on them.

Oh no, I understood that.

But aren't there contexts with many drugs in which for actual medical purposes you could be given a higher dosage of something? (Car accident, extreme illness, etc)

In which case, if your pill is designed to also make you sick (to fight abuses) it could detract from valid medical applications. I would be leary of making the drug less medically-useful in order to combat (recreational or otherwise) abuses of the drug.

[ In the case of this medicine, not being a doctor, I don't really have a clue if the above is applicable or not to this case ]

Re:Good...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Some of these people self-medicate and push their vicodin/lortab dose until they get acetaminophen toxic... bad way to end up on the liver transplant list."

As a liver transplant surgeon, I know a thing or two about this. It is even worse than you seem to imply, because liver transplantation is rarely applicable for acetaminophen toxicity due to the rapid time course. If someone presents to the ER promptly after ingestion and is treated appropriately with N-acetylcysteine (Mucomist), their liver damage is effectively prevented and we never see them at the transplant center. We typically get calls about people who are about three days post ingestion who were not treated and now have acute liver failure. By day five they will either be:

1. dead or too sick to transplant
or
2. clearly recovering and out of danger.

Thus, we generally only have a day or so where transplantation may be applicable to save group #1, and in practice it is rarely possible to evaluate the patient, get a donor liver, and carry out the operation in this time frame.

David Bruce, M.D.

(and I agree that the SOB who wrote all these prescriptions belongs in one of the lower circles of the Inferno)

Re:Good...

[The Tyro]

You're correct, but you have it backwards... Schedule II is MORE tightly controlled than schedule III. You were otherwise correct.

Re:Good...

[DroopyStonx]

To a point... we aren't talking about rape or murder, but substances that someone willingly wants to put into their own body.

If someone wants perscription drugs, let em pay for it and get them. Why not? If they abuse it, it's their own problem.

People will retort with things like, "well it hurts their friends and family, and if they cause an accident or OD, yadda yadda".

We already have laws for being under the influence of substances, so that part, which is a big concern on the minds of most people, is taken care of.

Insurance companies won't carry them if they're an addict, and if they're somehow admitted to a hospital they will be stuck with a nice debt if they're unable to pay it off. It seems to me would be punishment enough for being so naive and not in control with yourself.

Do you see how controlled vicodin and lortab are? It's ridiculous. We're so concerned and drowning with "drugs are bad, control them," that the laws become a hindrance to those with actual needs (as explained in my previous post).

It might sound like I'm goin off the deep end, but when you experience how stingy pharmacies are due to these laws, you'll know.. especially if you're in terrible pain and have no way of treating it.

Re:Good...

[Anonymous Coward]

Adding Tylenol to the hydrocodone tablets allows them to get the same effect with less hydrocodone. They do the same thing with Codeine so that you don't need as much of the narcotic to get the same amount of pain relief. When used as directed the hydrocodone with Tylenol is safer than pure hydrocodone at the higher dosage and just as effective in most cases. Anything that reduces the amount of a narcotic needed to get effective pain relief is a good thing.

Re:Good...

[The Tyro]

Yes, I am a doc, and your behavior was foolish and illegal. You want to accuse me of childish anger and "dumb sh*t?" Allow me...

When your pain medicine doesn't take care of the pain, the answer is to call your doctor and make some alternative arrangements. The answer is most definitely NOT to make your own executive decision to increase the dose... that's how people overdose and get hurt. You had 12 ounces of Lortab elixer? That's 360ccs, or roughly 24 standard doses, generally prescribed every 4-6 hours. You went to medical school where again? Never mind... forget medical school... just do the basic math.

Even more foolish is your decision to go get some street drugs from a "friend." You went ahead and took a mystery pill given to you by some "friend?" You're certainly a trusting soul... Was he a pharmacist? Did you look up the imprint code on the pill?

You also realize, do you not, that Lortab is the same thing as Vicodin? Look it up if you dont believe me. Of course, you could have been taking a large amount of the vicodin (even more foolish), but otherwise, you've been the victim of the placebo effect.

Dumb sh*t indeed.

Re:Good...

[geekoid]

You make the incorrect assumption that if drugs were legal, no more people would be taking them. SImple not true.

Also, you assume someone else putting things in there body has no chance of effecting you. Also a misconception.

I knwo too many people who deal with the efects of some drugs on people.
Seen to many children born at an immediate disadvantge, seen too many 13 year olds addicted.

I blame the drug addict, no government put a gun to there head and told them to take drugs.

Has are approach became insane? absolutly. Legalizing all drugs is also insane.

" The pharmacists "couldn't believe" I went through that much in a short period of time and refused to refill it even though I had direct order from the doc to go ahead and do so."

Is seems to be "Couldn't believe" isn't a legal backing to not giving you what your doctor said was ok for you to take.
Sounds like a pharmacy problem.

Just curious, why couln't you try another pharmacy or pharmacist?

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[ak3ldama]

This is very interesting. The basic premise of your argument is that all people should be free to do what they want to do. And that lawmakers should stop trying to legislate their thoughts on normal useage to people, that lawmakers should allow stupid people to do stupid things. "Rediculous limitations" are quite subjective. The government used to allow coccaine, till it gained the perception that black people used it and were crazed by the drugs affects. But we found out even white people couldn't handle it. (early america was pretty damn racist, if anything it was a class issue, and even the middle class couldn't handle coccaine) Public outcry, typically by the crazy right and left that want to control others is too much weight to bear.

Plus, people do not live their lives in a vacuum, the affects of the drug addict have an effect on the taxes I pay...that is unless we become completely heartless and let these people rot with starvation, but even then they must be disposed of somehow. There are other examples, but allowing free-flow drug use is probably not a good idea.

Disclaimer: I am not a stupid hippy or a fascist, just trying to think this through logically.

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[b0s0z0ku]

Adding Tylenol to the hydrocodone tablets allows them to get the same effect with less hydrocodone.

Same thing could be achieved by giving the Tylenol and Hydrocod. seperately. The Schedule II/III thing shows pretty conclusively that the Tylonol is a denaturant not an integral part of the drug.

-b.

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[wowbagger]

You might let those of us in professions other than medicine know what/who JCAHO is and what role they play.

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[NMZNMZNMZ]

Tylenol is nasty shit - I prefer taking aspirin for my headaches. Apart from the small risk of stomach problems, it's actually a lot less toxic than Tylenol.

Personally, I don't take any meds unless I absolutely need to. If I have a headache or stomachache, I just live with it. If I have a cold or stuffed up nose, I just wait it out. I don't feel like shoving all these drugs through my system.

I also hate it when people fill themselves with drugs for the littlest things. I had a girlfriend a while ago who would take 6 tylenol whenever she had the slightest headache.

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[The Tyro]

Good afternoon, Wowbagger, long time no see.

JCAHO is the Joint Committee on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. They're the guys who determine if your hospital gets "certified" to actually take care of patients. You can check out their website Here.

They do some valuable things... but they also can ding your hospital on some truly maddening minutiae. Also, as I noted in my initial post, not all of their "input" is necessarily helpful.

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[Morgalyn]

I take it JCAHO had something to do with the HIPAA legislation? Or are they similar but unrelated items? I've always worried when I'm encountered with a situation where I'm prescribed, or need to ask for, pain medication. It would be nice if some less addictive medicines could be developed, although I imagine ANYTHING that dulls pain is going to be, by nature, addictive.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, there are some drugs that should be handled as prescription-only because of public interest (antibiotics, for example) but these items would have far less of current problems.

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[Just Some Guy]

I had a girlfriend a while ago who would take 6 tylenol whenever she had the slightest headache.

That's one way to end a headache. She may wish to make sure her will is up-to-date, though.

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[DroopyStonx]

Foolish and illegal? Hardly. You don't know me, and you obviously don't know that I do in fact know that the pills I received from a friend were vicodin (since that supply came from a pharmacy).

This is my point exactly: it's my body. WTF do you care? I'm in pain, therefore I will take whatever measures *I* feel like taking to make sure the pain goes away. I really don't give a shit what the law states.

The pills WERE vicodin, and yes, I know that lortab is the same as vicodin... DING DING DING, which is why I got vicodin when the pharmacy wouldn't acknowledge the refill of lortab, dumbass.

What exactly are you trying to get at with that statement? ...and placebo effect? What are you TALKING about? The vicodin weren't placebos. They relieved my pain. All was well.. why? Because I took action when the pharmacy wouldn't.

I don't need to go to medical school to know when I'm in pain and to know when the recommended dosage isn't cutting it. I didn't triple the amount, I just took the dosage once every 2-4 hours instead of 4-6, which really isn't a big deal considering the effects wore off almost 2-3 hours on the dot. Yeah, like I'm gonna sit there for another 3 hours waiting for the next dose..

You can't retort on the "dumb shit" if you are incapable of reading and following basic comprehension, considering I JUST said my doctor allowed for the second refill. Now, please tell me how I can get my doctor to give me a refill if I didn't talk to him..

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[Anonymous Coward]

And when did you decide that it's alright for the government to police what you put in your body?

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[vertinox]

"And before somebody says it, no, I don't think drug legalization is the answer."

No, but Natural Selection is.

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[BackInIraq]

Insurance companies won't carry them if they're an addict, and if they're somehow admitted to a hospital they will be stuck with a nice debt if they're unable to pay it off. It seems to me would be punishment enough for being so naive and not in control with yourself.

I think you missed that part in bold...or rather it should be reworded "they'll be stuck with a nice debt that they'll be unable to pay off. And when that happens, guess who gets to pay it off? Me, you, my mom, my friends, and everybody else. Debts don't just go away...at some point the person owed WILL get their money, whether from higher costs of treatment (which then are passed on through higher insurance premiums, etc.) to higher interest rates to taxes levied to pay for gov't sponsored healthcare. Or whatever.

The point is, there is no such thing as free treatment, or unpaid debt...somebody eventually has to foot the bill. And anybody (such as the hospital) that has the ability to pass the cost down will do so, guaranteed. So it falls on the patients/insurance companies/insured citizens/taxpayers. Or, to put it in terms that matter to me, ME.

This is the reason that even reasonable people like myself, who don't much care what the hell anybody does to destroy themselves, can see why drugs are illegal. It's hard to argue with simple economics.

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[Just Some Guy]

I imagine ANYTHING that dulls pain is going to be, by nature, addictive.

Ibuprofen is marketed as an analgesic (largely because it reduces the swelling that causes some pain), but it's not addictive. Analgesics that are CNS depressants are often (always?) addictive, but that's not the only pain relieving mechanism.

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[FecesFlingingRhesus]

While others are simply using narcotics to treat their psychological pain

And how is using narcotics to ease ones psychological pain any different than using highly addictive products like Paxil. It seems to me that people hate the though of people using something that actually brings them pleasure. They want to provide a drug that eliminates the problem, without the pleasurable side effects that the greater medical community accepts as being the root cause of addiction. Before the advent of these so called psychological wonder drugs, there was a single tool in a psychiatrist belt to combat depression and that tool was opium, the clinical diagnosis was called melancholy. The self appointed guardian of our morals aka the medical community saw it fit to replace these treatments with less effective and far more dangerous substances like tricyclic, SSRI's and god forbid MAOI's all to reduce what is deemed as addiction but what is addiction, I spent 2 months of living hell withdrawing from Paxil, is that addiction or is it the pleasure derived from these drugs. I classify addiction as physical withdraws from a drug in which case Paxil ranks highest in additive properties. The medical community likes to call people that use these off label products to ease their psychological pain self medicators, which I agree is an accurate term due to the fact that the licensed medicators have utterly failed them in pushing products that actually increase the chance of suicide on to them.

I don't think drug legalization is the answer

No you don't because you work in the medical community and have bought into the problem. You along with every other medical staff personnel look at and treat anyone who looks for an alternative solution as rubbish and cannot hurry enough to get them out the door or in a rehab. I have heard all the arguments time and time again, that opiates will kill you, but yet I see old Afghan, Indian, and Chinese men living well past the octogenarian years and in good health and yet they smoke opium daily. This all without the help of you're so called modern western medicine. I am not saying that western medicine has no merit, it clearly does, but western medicine has let religion and false morals cloud its judgment when it comes to psychiatric medicine. Further, it has been shown that most self medicators plateau at a certain dose and rarely die from overdose. I also love the argument that you are just masking the psychological pain, yes the argument is absolutely correct but also applies to all other psychological drugs like Paxil, opiates change the chemicals in your brain, they all mask the symptoms.

Unfortunately because the medical community has mastered the human body people naturally assume that they have master the human mind which they have not. A medical doctor in my opinion has not place dispensing mental health advice unless they are trained in mental health unfortunately medical doctors and personnel will tell you that they are a doctor and they know but the sad truth is that they don't. They have no clue of the effects of drugs on the opioid, serotonin and GABA systems of the brain. That is why the hand out Paxil like candy and lock up the opiates. While I was withdrawing from Paxil my friend was getting off heroin he was sick for 12 days. I was deathly ill for 2 months and the effects lingered for 4 months. So you can stand on your pillar and say that you do not believe that legalization works and I will stand down here, along with the other voices of experience and laugh at your pontification about you medical knowledge with no clue of the human mind or the havoc your reek on peoples life's for being morally better then them and allowing them to deal with there psychological pain in its full rage and unbridled horror. There truly are some fates worse than death. Think about that next time someone comes into your moral temple of medicine withdrawing and screaming about events that transpired 10 years ago that caused that poor soul mind to shatter. Expl

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[Peter La Casse]

You make the incorrect assumption that if drugs were legal, no more people would be taking them. SImple not true.

Also, you assume someone else putting things in there body has no chance of effecting you. Also a misconception.

I didn't see either of those two misconceptions in the previous post. Perhaps you are assuming that the previous poster has the same goals and desires w.r.t. drug use in general that you do?

I blame the drug addict, no government put a gun to there head and told them to take drugs.

Has are approach became insane? absolutly. Legalizing all drugs is also insane.

It's absolutely true that the addict is usually at fault. But that doesn't make mass legalization 'insane'. A sane person could certainly believe that the benefits from mass legalization would outweigh the harm caused by the mass chaos that would result. A sane person could also believe that even though the benefits wouldn't (in their opinion) outweigh the harm, the morally correct thing to do is to let people screw themselves up.

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[DroopyStonx]

What exactly is a "stupid thing"? That someone wants to put substances in their body?

What about alcohol and cigarettes? Yeah, they're stupid, but that's the individual's choice if they choose to use. ...and trust me, your tax dollars going toward drug addicts are few and far between. You're okay with your taxes going to $200 billion wars and a plethora of other BS (people exploiting welfare amongst others), but suddenly you're concerned about your taxes on junkies? Hah.

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[The Tyro]

The studies on combination opiods/analgesics have been around for over 20 years, and suggest that combination agents (combining more than one mechanism of action) are more effective than single agents alone, even when those single agents are used in higher doses.

Pubmed, courtesy of the NIH, is your friend.

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[vertinox]

This is the reason that even reasonable people like myself, who don't much care what the hell anybody does to destroy themselves, can see why drugs are illegal.

But making them illegal won't get rid of drugs. That is the main problem.

In truth I thought the best way to get rid of drugs is to basically have the government give them out for free. Sounds strange, but if you do that then the drug lord/dealers won't make money and will give up the trade.

Sounds nice on paper, but the downside is if the government is the one giving out drugs then most likley everyone would be slaves to the government sometime in the near future if they want their fix so it's best we don't go that route.

Drug issues aren't that simple as banning them.

But there are better solutions:

Legalize possession. Outlaw sales to minors. Have really high taxes to those who sell drugs with stiff fines. Make it illegal to sell in stores or by companies. Make the import illegal. Keep Crack and Heroine illegal. Make a dealer responsible if he sells drugs to a person that kills them with a life sentence without parole.

Killing 3rd world farmers legitimate crops along with the drugs and throwing junkies in jail doesn't really solve much of anything. It's the scarcity that makes the crime. Not the other way around.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I had a girlfriend a while ago who would take 6 tylenol whenever she had the slightest headache.

If you aren't exaggerating, she should seriously be concerned about liver failure.

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[Darby]

Plus, people do not live their lives in a vacuum, the affects of the drug addict have an effect on the taxes I pay...that is unless we become completely heartless and let these people rot with starvation, but even then they must be disposed of somehow. There are other examples, but allowing free-flow drug use is probably not a good idea.

No offense intended, but this argument is really full of holes, ignores the most important issues and completely misses where the tax costs are coming from.

In the first place, a large portion of your taxes go to pay to enforce these drug laws which have no possibility of ever having any positive effect whatsoever. When you make drugs (or anything else that a very large percentage of people want) illegal, there are very consistent and well understood effects. First, organized crime takes off like crazy. This leads to a tremendous increase in violence. Second, we end up with more people in prison per capita *and in raw numbers* than anywhere else in the world. These people have to be supported in prison, and then once they get out with a lot of their potential destroyed and a greatly increased training in crime, they are out on the street again with far less of a chance of making it legitimately than they did previously.

Then also, with the push for privatization of prisons in the last decade or so coupled with the increasingly fascist nature of the US government (don't bitch about my using that term, look up the word figure out what it actually means and you will see that it is absolutely an appropriate description) you have a very wealthy industry that was created almost entirely by drug laws that can only increase it's profits by lobbying for more laws to allow them to put more Americans in jail.

All of these are additional costs that we are forced to pay that are directly attributable not to drugs, but to drug laws.

If we actually took a tiny bit of the money we waste on building a police state and put it into treatment and *honest* educational programs and took away the drug laws which create 90+% of the problems then there wouldn't be an issue and we would be much better off in every way than we are now. Think about it. Drug crime would be gone. There's no reason to believe that the laws have effected usage at all, hance no reason to believe that they would change because the laws went away.

Seriously, when you think about this issue, take anything that your initial thoughts indicates is a problem with drugs and ask yourself if the problem would be anywhere near as serious if there weren't those drug laws in effect. Ask if that problem would even exist without the drug laws.

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[Headw1nd]

Go back and read your grandparent, then re-read your parent poster.

What the parent is saying is that they *are* putting a dangerous substance in their drugs: acetometaphin, which is toxic in large quantities. However, it doesn't seem toxic, in that it has no immediate ill effects if used in a dangerous concentration. It just quietly kills your liver. What the parent is saying is put a chemical in there that would prevent you from taking a truely dangerous quantites by giving you noticable side effects at sublethal doeses.

To recap, as it stands now it is easy to take a lethal doses of these painkillers without noticable discomfort. The parent wants to add substances that would make a lethal dose difficult or impossible to take due to planned side effects. The end result is that the drugs are safer, because they cannot be easily misused/overdosed on. Now do you see?

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[HBI]

Whether the medical system is financed through a single-payer government-run plan or shared risk private insurance pools, it doesn't matter. I don't want to pay for your care when you decide to make yourself into a vegetable, and I don't want to support you while you are wasted on drugs. You cost us all money by raising the contribution rates and abusing the system. The system assumes good will on the part of the participants, that they are interested in living for the maximum amount of time as contributing members of society. In effect, you lower everyone's standard of living.

There's your answer. It's ultimately about money. If humankind could find it within itself to deny you emergency care and long term life support/monentary support due to your decision to be a drain on society, then things would be different, but we all know that this isn't going to happen. At least anywhere civilized. That's why there are draconian drug laws. You basically forfeit your membership in society by being a druggie, and that's not even effective to curb the practice entirely.

If you could get laws passed that would be a sort of 'scarlet A' for drug addicts that would permit them, after signing a release, access on a paying basis to restricted narcotics in exchange for no medical care or government support, and a more liberal gunfire policy for police to combat the rampant crime (to feed their drug habits) that would result, then i'd be all for it.

Re:Good...

[BackInIraq]

Actually I think one of the best ways to deal with drugs might be to allow people to sell them legally, tax them specifically (much like cigarettes and alcohol) and then earmark that tax money specifically for treatment of drug-related problems when patients can't pay, and to counteract other negative effects.

Of course, when the taxes get high enough (because the negative effects get expensive enough), you'll see a black market crop up for untaxed drugs...but then at least you're likely to see dealers getting nailed instead of users...at least hopefully.

But yes, I'm with you that straight prohibition isn't the answer...I was just giving a very good reason why simple legalization would be a bad idea as well.

Personally, I'm not sure there is any real answer for the drug issue. I do know that what we are doing now isn't working, but I can't think of anything that I truly believe -will- work. It's all damage control...you're not going to solve anything.

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[dubl-u]

Saying "no no" or giving them punishments for it isn't a logical deterrent, because if you don't give it to them, they'll get it elsewhere.

I agree with some of your points, but that's hardly true. Compare the relative availability and use of two popular, mood-altering white powders: cocaine and sugar. You'll note that the illegal one is a lot harder to get. Prohibition certainly does reduce use, thus reducing some kinds of harm. Unfortunately, it also increases other kinds of harm.

Personally, I think prohibition and full legalization are both untenable. I'm in favor of treating drugs like vehicles or explosives: through licensing users. The relatively safe drugs (sugar, caffeine) are available freely. The somewhat dangerous ones (alcohol, nicotine, marijuana) require relatively easy licensing. And for the dangerous stuff (heroin, crack), you have stringent licensing requirements including lots of regular, mandatory safety training and field tests of your ability to use dangerous substances responsibly.

That way rational people can get access to the drugs they can handle. And people who have lost the ability to make rational judgments about drugs get cut off and given the help they need to get back to being sane.

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[sessamoid]

We used to... until JCAHO decided that it was a violation of confidentiality.

It was my understanding that JCAHO's regulation allowed such lists as long as they were not available to the general hospital staff and was restricted to the treating physicians in the ER. One hospital I worked at fairly recently still kept such a list on a corkboard in the physician break room. We didn't even have to compile the list ourselves since the state Dept of Health sent out a letter to all physicians who had treated patients who filled a suspicious number of controlled substances prescriptions. I wish the state where I live now did that.

Re:Good...

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, but they could still use some other painkiller instead of acetaminophen. Most of the popular peripheral analgesics (asprin, ibuprofen, etc.) show a similar synergy effect when used in combination with narcotics.

Re:Good...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tru, tru, and tru. I sympthasize greatly with those who experience such, and those who oppose real painkillers like fentanyl, oxycontin, etc due to their addictive properties obviously have never been in chronic pain themselves.

Re:Good...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. Have you ever taken this stuff? The amount of the other non-opiate can not kill your pain what so ever when you have bad pain (go have back surgery, neck surgery, and join the chronic pain club).

Tylenol, aspirin, etc all of these destroy the GI track, liver, kidney's, etc... all because we don't like people having the feelings of euphoria.

Pain needs to be treated as a serious disease that needs to be managed very carefully to avoid the serious slippery slope of tolerance, heavy addiction, and destroying yourself with these other unaffective drugs. I know someone who has eaten holes in their stomach and killed their blood chemistry from years of OTC crap because they didn't want to take an opiate -- how crazy is that?!

So many doctors don't know how to treat pain. The ones that do are so fearful of the DEA, they mistreat patients and many times those patients develop drug-seaking behavior to get themselves out of pain.

Amazingly enough, Rush Limbaugh can take 30 oxycontin a day (schedule 2 drug, so much more powerful than vicodin) with very little documented medical condition and have his staff get drugs for him, and he gets off scott-free. Amazing -- truely amazing.

Re:Good...

[Anonymous Coward]

And I don't want to pay for you when you get liver failure from too many years of drinking booze, or cancer from too much smoking, or heart failure from eating too much, or I don't want to pay for your cancer because you go tanning or don't wear your sun screen

why do you choose that its okay for substance X but not substance Y?

Re:Good...

[The Tyro]

Foolish and illegal? Hardly

You might want to rethink that assertion.

What you did was illegal. Taking scheduled narcotics not prescribed to you (ie. your friend's vicodin) is illegal. Your buddy could even be busted for dispensing or trafficking.

My point about Lortab and Vicodin was this: if you got no relief from the Lortab, but DID get relief with the Vicodin, and the doses were not appreciably different, then the difference was likely in your head. Those two drugs have the same ingredients, the same generic, and are pharmacologically equivalent; your body doesn't know the difference.

No, you don't need to go to medical school to know that you're in pain. You DO need to go to medical school to learn clinical pharmacology, and how to use prescribing privileges safely and effectively. So you didn't triple the dose, you only doubled it? Same thing, different degree... rationalize as you will.

And then there's this:

WTF do you care?

Why the f*ck do I care? Because it pains me to see people needlessly get themselves in trouble. Believe it or not, I actually have compassion, and want all my patients to get well. Much of the mess that people get themselves into is easily preventable with some common sense and following instructions. Adjusting your own medications is not something I generally recommend to the layman.

I'm actually concerned about your self-medicating, and instant "hook-up" buddies with their ready vicodin supply. Take note; I'll always be ready in my ER to clean up the mess if you do something really dumb, and I'll never dance, gloat, and say "I told you so." That said, you can expect a serious, no-bullsh*t, no-punches-pulled discussion about your actions when you finally wake up enough to get off the ventilator. Most take it well, while others curse and spit on me... but some conversations are, by their very nature, difficult to sugar-coat.

My goal is not to be an arrogant jerk, my goal is to help you learn. Don't shoot the messenger... I'm actually trying to help you.

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[HBI]

It's a good question as to whether these policies are in the long run good.

Having let ourselves in for the pandora's box of socialized medicine: whether US style where everyone is paid for one way or another, or in the explicit grant of an entitlement as in Europe or Canada...it was sort of inevitable that we would reach the point where everyone was forced to be healthy "for the greater good".

Are we more free this way, or less free? The answer is fairly obvious. By the time the general public realizes this, it'll be too late to change, though.

Sometimes people ask for what they don't really want.

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[lamp540]

Of course YOU don't think drug legalization is the answer. A doctor's(I'm assuming you're one, or you're some nurse with delusions of grandeur) livelihood's are based on them being the only people in society which can legally sell certain types of drugs(in conjunction with pharmacists and drug companys.) All most doctors do these days is look at what the most superficial symptoms a patient has in about 10 minutes then write a prescription. Something that could just as easily be done by a lay person for much less cost. Like for example: I KNOW I have GERD, I KNOW if I go into a doctor I can get a prescription for a very effective acid blocker, so why do I have to go back every 2 months and pay him $100 so I can get a prescription refill? I can't afford that and it's just plain inefficient. Since I, like 1/3 of all americans, don't have health insurance I'm going to keep taking over-the-counter medicines at high doses since I can't afford the surgery to(temporarily) repair my hiatal hernia. I'm an intelligent, mature, responsible adult. Why do you doctors have to treat me like I'm some little kid who's going to eat his whole bag of M&Ms if they aren't doled out to me one at a time?

And before you say it, no, just because you're a doctor doesn't mean you actually care about helping people. If doctors as a whole cared about helping people then they would as a whole be trying to transform the medical system so that all people can get health care. You're nothing but a bunch of greedy SOBs who would enjoy seeing someone go to prison with the high potential for physical and sexual abuse, have their life destroyed, just because that person *dared* to try to get access to your magic(prescription drugs.) "Do no harm" my ass.

If drugs were legalized then people wouldn't be coming into "your" ER to get drugs which they "aren't" supposed to have. But the most important reason, the only REAL reason, that all drugs should be legal and unregulated is that this is America and we have something(existing right now only as an ideal) called individual rights as codified in the Declaration of Independence, the bill of rights and the US constitution. Why is it that doctors are so smart that they can get through medical school yet they can't even absorb one of the simplest lessons from 3rd grade civics?

Re:Good...

[lamp540]

That's a nice theory but it doesn't correspond to the reality of the American Drug War. Also, since acetaminophen and aspirin are so toxic it would make sense to give out mild opiates at first and then add in a NSAID if needed, not vice versa. That is unless the government wasn't irrational scared that someone, somewhere might be having a good time.

Reality is your friend.

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[Thing 1]

And before somebody says it, no, I don't think drug legalization is the answer.

Why?

Especially given all the evidence (failed prohibition in the 20s; current prohibition failing (I can get pot for $35/quarter, coke for $50 for a small bag but I don't buy it so I don't know exact amounts; mushrooms for $15 for 1.5 oz, and hits of acid for $5--and Greendale is a bodaciously small town, Lane!); huuuuuuuuuge amounts of tax dollars being thrown down the toilet in enforcement and prison-worship instead of humanely treating the abusers, and providing an environment for the mere users to enjoy the high; and conversely, absolutely no tax revenue from the billions (US government estimates $60-108 billion) of dollars of sales per year of these products and associated products and services (most pipes are sold by head shops, which pay taxes; however, fucking Tommy Chong went to jail (but good news: was released a year ago) just for selling pieces of plastic with pictures of himself on them!) trying to make an honest buck.

Sorry, didn't mean to go off on a rant, but how can you possibly defend that position? "I know better than you what you should put in your body?" Bullshit! We're all sovereign entities over our cells. "Your smoking pot might raise my health care bills" is not evidence to be used in defending prohibition; it's evidence to be used in eliminating the existing health-care system which has too many interdependencies! (Insurance would not be offered if it wasn't profitable; therefore, it would be most efficient if the user paid 100%, but that's not possible because prices are inflated because the insurers will pay them.)

What makes you think drug illegalization was the right answer for the time, back when the decisions were made, either? Most accounts show that the predominant reason for making a substance illegal is because "them nigger's been fuckin my daughters!" Or Chinks, Spics, whatever racial slur the racists who made those laws used to get the abominations passed. Are you, therefore, a racist?

Re:Good...

[Anonymous Coward]

destroy the GI track

Just an observation, dude: presuming you are the same AC as above, this kinda ruins your credibility claims of being a pharmacist. It's tract, not track. And you didn't make a typo in writing it.

Re:Good...

[Thing 1]

You cost us all money by raising the contribution rates and abusing the system. The system assumes good will on the part of the participants, that they are interested in living for the maximum amount of time as contributing members of society. In effect, you lower everyone's standard of living.

Jazz wouldn't exist without pot.

I've written some great (and, admittedly, some not-so-great) code while drunk and/or stoned. Don't accuse me of being non-productive simply because my poison of choice differs from yours. (And don't tell me you don't have one, because you do; for some people, it's prayer, but that's still something that takes time away from their being maximally productive, if that's how you define it and it seems like you do, above: "It's ultimately about money".)

Some people sniff paint to ruin their brains. You wanna outlaw paint now?

Re:Good...

[HBI]

Marijuana is another matter entirely.

We were talking about narcotics and specific controlled substances like cocaine, not something like weed. Marijuana and it's derivate hashish are delicious gifts to mankind.

There is some belief in some quarters that if you take a hit of weed you suddenly want to take other drugs. I don't understand this. This is the only reason I can come up with to explain why the government isn't allowing people to roll up joints as they please.

Re:Good...

[Thing 1]

Believe it or not, I actually have compassion, and want all my patients to get well.

Your patients have a much higher chance of success at "getting well" when they are outside of prison.

Supporting the unethical treatment of our citizens by the prison industry doesn't sound like "trying to help." You're more than just a messenger; you're actively part of the problem because (from what you've typed here) you don't allow for the class of "users" -- if someone's putting a drug in their body, you see them as an "abuser". Please accept the fact that some people are productive citizens who experience altered states of mind at times, just as children do when they spin around.

(Or should we make spinning illegal too?)

Re:Good...

[Thing 1]

You just described the "gateway effect" (the quote being, "pot is a gateway drug"). Someone's signature turns it on its head very nicely: "religion is a gateway psychosis."

Alternately, you could say that mother's milk (or oxygen!) is a gateway drug, because 99% of all pot-heads have consumed mother's milk at some time in their past.

As to narcotics like cocaine, nicotine is both more addictive and has a higher death rate (33%) than cocaine. So if we want to be honest about it, we'd outlaw nicotine as well.

As to why pot's still illegal, in a separate response I mentioned that racism played a huge part in getting the drug laws passed, and that is also why we probably won't see them repealed in our lifetimes.

Re:Good...

[DroopyStonx]

No no no no no... you got it all wrong, and I think I understand your past posts now.

The lortab DID relieve the pain, it just wore off quicker than the 4-6 hour period.. so when I needed more and ultimately ran out, the pharmacy (despite DIRECT orders from my doc) refused the refill mentioning that lortab/vicodin are controlled and I could only get so much in a 3 day period.

I TOLD my doctor that it wasn't doing the job and that I have to take it 2-3 hours because of how fast it wears off. He said that's not a problem and proceeded to issue me a refill (in fact, he gave me 4 refills because of the severity of the surgery).

People DO have different tolerances to medication, and I'm one of those people. I was on morphine when I had the second operation (due to complications in healing) and even THAT hardly had any effect on the pain.

During the "downtimes" when the pharmacy would refuse to refill the medication for up to 24 hours (again, despite my doc calling in the refill) - I simply went elsewhere for the dosage needed to get rid of the pain. It just wasn't through a pharmacy.

Technically if you want to interpet the law word for word, yes, what I did was illegal... but I operate off common sense. My comfort and well being comes first before anything else, and if that means being in severe pain and going to someone that can relieve it outside of a pharmacy, so be it.

There is no "self-medicating" or abuse of any kind going on. I'm just a perfect example of how our laws, designed to "protect" us, can backfire on us because they are overly protective for no good reason.

I'm in no way shape or form saying, "let's welcome abuse." That's the common response when talking about drugs - people assume drug uses are abusers with certain "problems". I'm saying if people want to USE, let them.

You could be just as easily in the wrong from drinking alcohol (but that substance is okay because govt says it's legal, right?)

This leads me to the process of thinking that maybe it's just not right for others to be telling people what they can and cannot put into their own bodies. ...which brings us back to the topic of the article: this man gets arrested for writing scripts. A drug dealer of sorts.

I personally believe it's ridiculous to punish people for delivery of substances for others to use in their own body off their own free will.

Yet the first thing you say was, "...burn..." along with commentary about people seeking drugs and how this is supposedly problematic for you.

Just because something is available doesn't mean everyone will splurge and become fiends - that thought is flawed to the core as well as the arguments of "I don't want my tax dollars supporting blah blah blah", yet.. in reality, their tax dollars are supporting much worse causes than helping addicts.

Re:Good...

[HBI]

After watching several people send their lives up their nose, I have to call bullshit on the mortality numbers regarding cocaine. Smoking a cigarette will never make you drop dead on the first drag, but it is quite possible to die the first time you try cocaine through a number of causes. It may not be as physically addicting as nicotine but it is certainly psychologically addictive. Doing it long term is pretty much asking for cardiovascular problems, at the very least, if not even the Jerry Garcia teflon nose inserts.

In regards smoking, Smoking is a net positive for the Czech government, at least :b

Reminds me the old canard about the US SSA doing a study showing that the early death of smokers results in reduced health care and transfer payment costs and therefore is a good deal for them.

Re:Good...

[The Tyro]

I wish you'd clarified that earlier on (or maybe you did and I misunderstood). I don't have any problem with you taking pain medication after your surgery. Tonsillectomy is a heinous surgery to undergo as an adult, and the pain is extreme. You had every reason to want pain medication, and I'm actually glad to hear that you coordinated it with your doctor.

The issue about the spammer is different... here's how.

I have NO problem prescribing powerful pain medications to people that really need it. In fact, among my colleagues, I'm one of the more liberal about this issue. Even so, I absolutely draw the line at people abusing medications, or using them inappropriately.

Part of my oath is to give no deadly medicine. It's actually far easier for me to just dash off a prescription and get the patient out of my ER. They take up less of my time, fewer of my beds, they write fewer complaint letters to my administrator, and they don't scream/berate/physicially assault me and my nursing staff. However, sometimes the path of least resistance does actual harm to the patient, and that includes perpetuating someone's addiction.

What kind of claim could I make towards looking out for the best interests of patients (and that's ALL patients) if I behaved that way?

I realize people are going to get high whether I want them to or not... but I absolutely will not assist them in their efforts.

Re:Good...

[The Tyro]

You presume a great deal, my friend.

I'm glad you know you have GERD. Curiously, sometimes even your doctors can't say that the burning in your epigastrum and chest is definitely GERD, instead of angina, or esophageal spasm, or barretts esophagus, or a pulmonary embolus... Risk stratification for some of those other conditions is quite important. Your doctor can assist you in that effort, or not... your body, your choice. It sounds to me like you've made a conscious, economically-based decision to chart your own treatment course, and that's perfectly fine.

It's pretty clear that you disapprove of my profession's work... but if you have a problem with our drug laws, take it up with the DEA, or congress. I prescribe at their pleasure, and I can lose that privilege VERY easily. In fact, the DEA has recently dragged several physicians in my area right out of their offices in the middle of the day for inappropriate prescribing (among other charges). Some of them are facing life (yes, that's life in prison). You don't like the law, too bad... get it changed, or move somewhere where you'll have unfettered access to your drugs of choice.

Yes, if drugs were legalized, I wouldn't have people pestering me for drugs all the time (actually I'd just have fewer... I'd still have the homeless guys and drifters who want me to feed, clothe, and buy their prescriptions for them, since "you can afford it") In place of drug seekers, I'd have even more mulitply-drug-resistant infections, partially-treated meningitis, side effects, allergic reactions, medication interactions, overdoses (intentional and unintentional), and withdrawl.

I'm against the legalization of drugs because of the harm they can do in untrained hands, not because I'm a toadying little servant of "The Man" (TM).

Re:Good...

[Uzuri]

Wow... you're back every 2 months for a new script? Is that the law in your area?

I have the same trouble, and I have a year's script, and can just call in to get it renewed.

Re:Good...

[runderwo]

I'm against the legalization of drugs because of the harm they can do in untrained hands

So I guess we can safely presume that you are against the second amendment, against people driving or working on their own cars, against amateur fireworks, ... just imagine what harm all those things can do in untrained hands.

Look, if some people are stupid enough not to seek a doctor's advice re: diagnosis and re: dosage, is that really a good reason for continuing to gouge those who have already established a treatment regimen on a chronic condition? It's nonsense. If people are going to make bad choices regarding their health, you wouldn't stand in their way, because it is ultimately their decision. How does threatening them with jail for obtaining drugs without permission change the fact that their health is ultimately their concern? If they want to internet-diagnose and treat themselves, they should have the choice to do that, and they should be fully responsible for the consequences of their decision not to consult an expert. And if they have consulted an expert numerous times, the answer hasn't changed, and no new symptoms have arrived, why does the government force me to continue paying this person if I want to continue on my current course?

Multiply-drug-resistant infections is probably your best argument, but it's still a weak one. Nobody said ANTIBIOTICS had to be deregulated, and there would be very little argument for them to be, since they are typically a short term measure that is employed in tandem with a doctor's diagnosis. The contrast between a bacterial infection and long-term opiate maintenence for pain should be obvious. And in fact, the CDC should be in charge of such regulation and not the FDA, since it is not a matter of purity, but protecting the public health from such resistant pathogens that would result from arbitrary antibiotic use. Not that we aren't already headed down that road, what with almost every consumer cleaning product including an antibiotic agent nowadays...

Re:Good...

[Anonymous Coward]

And those who support "real painkillers" have obviously never been addicted to them or seen the horror of a loved one who has been addicted to them and had to go through withdrawal. Not to mention the wastoids that go out and score prescriptions for minor pain so they can sit on a couch stoned all day.

Re:Good...

[runderwo]

Thank you for suggesting this course of action. I have been supporting such a scheme for quite some time now, and rarely do I encounter anyone else with the same idea. Then people who want to sell this stuff have to card (which, in the case of alcohol and nicotine, they already do), and government oversight mandates that they do so or they lose their business license. Somehow the threat of having one's legitimate business destroyed by the law seems to do a better job at ensuring carding than the police doing their usual thing trying to keep black market sellers at bay.

Of course, in order for the states to enact their own schemes in this area, the Controlled Substances Act must first be repealed. Fat chance.

Re:Good...

[runderwo]

It would also probably be a good idea to ban advertising on television, radio, billboards, etc. That goes for LEGAL dangerous addictive drugs like alcohol too.

Re:Good...

[runderwo]

This is the reason that even reasonable people like myself, who don't much care what the hell anybody does to destroy themselves, can see why drugs are illegal. It's hard to argue with simple economics.

Of course it's hard to argue with such economics, if you can make drugs and all of their costs disappear by waving a magic wand. Unfortunately, that's impossible. So in the end you have to pay police officers, courts and prisons to enforce the law, and deal with the inevitabilities of a black market (violence, corruption, etc). Now the 'simple economics' have become not so simple, at least if you really are viewing the debate objectively and not assuming that drugs are a moral problem that law enforcement is justified in combating like murder, rape, etc.

Re:Good...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's great, but the whole discussion here is not whether or not you should assist people in your efforts to get high, but whether or not your assistance should be required in the first place.

Re:Good...

[FecesFlingingRhesus]

And those who support "real painkillers" have obviously never been addicted to them or seen the horror of a loved one who has been addicted to them and had to go through withdrawal.

Many people withdraw everyday from substances other than pain killers that the medical community prescribes as if they are the safest things on earth. Take a look on the message boards for SSRI withdraws and more specifically Paxil withdraws and you will see that the cure is far more damaging that the cause. This is the drug that was to reduce addiction and provide relief to those chronically depressed. If you want to see true horror, watch someone withdraw from this stuff. It makes pain killer addiction look like a 24 hour flu. I have been addicted to this very substance and would much rather go through the withdraws of demoral that I did when I was a teenager and had to have extensive bone surgery over several months. Let me tell you that was a walk in the park compared to Paxil. I contemplated suicide almost daily after the first month and I have never been a suicidal person. So yes I have been addicted to both and I would have to say that opiates where far more effective in warding off the depression of being immobile to bone surgery than the Paxil ever was for low level generalized depression.

Not to mention the wastoids that go out and score prescriptions for minor pain so they can sit on a couch stoned all day.

Those waistoids are going to get it whether it is legal or not and if they cannot get it they are more than happy to snort or shoot heroin which is easier than booze to acquire. Hell people will bring it to you. Cant you see that the only people you are hurting by you flippant logic are the people who truly need it but do not fit the rigid requirements to get it as defined by some non-medical governmental agency that scares any doctor away from prescribing anything that is not cut and dry on label use. You are no longer getting a doctors educated opinion on a subject but rather a doctor's educated opinion that has been dictated by a governmental agency under threat of revoking the doctor's license. Criminalization does not work plain and simple the partiers get what they want and everyone else suffers. No matter how you slice it those are the facts. You may live in a middle-class shell where you do not see it but trust me stuff far stronger than the pharmacy carries is but a phone call away.By supporting criminalization you are not keeping out of the peoples hands you intend to deny access.

The doctor can now look forward to...

[Cr0w T. Trollbot]

...ten years in a Federal "pound pestle into your mortar" prison.

- Crow T. Trollbot

Re:The doctor can now look forward to...

[threeturn]

You think that's funny? Here's a link for you.

Re:The doctor can now look forward to...

[cryptochrome]

No who would be the bitch in a prison devoted exclusively to computer crimes? What would life in the Big (Nerd) House be like?

Re:The doctor can now look forward to...

[scovetta]

"Last time I quoted myself, I got crap from everyone for it. I don't see why you should be able to do it now."
    -Scovetta

Re:The doctor can now look forward to...

[drsquare]

I don't know about that, but I think the Bubba would be RMS.

Re:The doctor can now look forward to...

[Fear the Clam]

You're right, that's terrible. You'd think a blogger would figure out that his HTML was screwed up.

Re:The doctor can now look forward to...

[navyjeff]

...ten years in a Federal "pound pestle into your mortar" prison.

I thought it was making big rocks into little rocks, little rocks into pebbles, and pebbles into sand.

Why would they make flour in prison? Then again, maybe I missed a metaphor.

Re:The doctor can now look forward to...

[BackInIraq]

I can see him cringing every time his new cellmate gets an email advertising "Increased Girth! Stay hard longer!" (mispelled in creative filter-avoiding ways, of course)

Expect A Huge Productivity Boost!

[stuffduff]

Now that all those old computer geeks can't get their viagra and other drugs, they'll stop downloading all that pr0n and when they remember that computers aren't just for 'getting off' anymore, we can expect to see a whole range of new and serious uses for the computer, and faster downloading times for everything else! ;^)

Re:Expect A Huge Productivity Boost!

[Chaotic Spyder]

computers aren't just for 'getting off' anymore,

...

faster downloading times for everything else!

BOOHYEAH! More PORN!

Re:Expect A Huge Productivity Boost!

[SeattleGameboy]

Ummm... last time I checked you Viagra was not a requirement to view porn, no matter how old you are.

You DO need it to satisfy a real woman, but that is not a problem that most geeks face.

Re:Expect A Huge Productivity Boost!

[gbutler69]

Maybe YOU need it to satisfy a REAL WOMAN, but, I get by just fine without it. Never had a dissatisfied customer.......or at least she couldn't have been dissatisfied after all she screamed and panted appropriately just like the girl in "When Harry Met Sally". So, I'm a real man aren't I????

What we have here is...

[Stanistani]

Too much vertical integration.

If he'd just stuck to the marketing side..

He'd still be living large...

Drugs w/o a prescription?

[b0s0z0ku]

What's so horrible about that?

The fact that I was able to get an antibiotic w/o a script and take it for another few weeks until I saw a doctor that actually had a clue about Lyme disease may have saved my life or at least my sanity.

Yeah, I know. Antibiotics aren't addictive. But, honestly, wouldn't it be better if people could get *pure* drugs to get high on rather than resorting to using toxic-ass shite like homemade crystal meth? I imagine that a lot more people are poisoned and left permanently damaged by the impurities in crystal meth (nice stuff like benzene and hydriotic acid) than are hurt by the overuse of prescription amphetemines.

Yeah, the spamming part sucked, but most of the charges against these guys aren't related to the spamming. And, if anything, the gov't has created a fertile ground for this guy's "crimes" with it's moronic, single-tracked, overregulatory approach to any substance that can make a person feel "high." (Except things like Xanax that make massive dough for the pharma industry.)

-b.

Re:Drugs w/o a prescription?

[gcatullus]

Antibiotics aren't addictive, but they are abused. There is credible evidence that the overuse in antibiotics has led to an increase in aggresive ear infections in children. I agree that an intelligent person can and should be able to treat themselves. But come on, can anyone call a person who responds to spam intelligent?

Re:Drugs w/o a prescription?

[b0s0z0ku]

Antibiotics aren't addictive, but they are abused.

I didn't use antibiotics *at all* for like 7 years before this nasty little health episode. But, trust me, when the choice is between having neuro symptoms, joint pains, etc for either the rest of your life or half a decade of so (depending on which Dr. you ask) and taking antibiotics, I'll take the antibiotics hands-down.

Antibiotics aren't addictive, but they are abused.

Can't argue with that one.

Cheers, -b.

Re:Drugs w/o a prescription?

[Anonymous Coward]

But, honestly, wouldn't it be better if people could get *pure* drugs to get high on rather than resorting to using toxic-ass shite like homemade crystal meth?

<sarcasm>Oh ya, that will solve the problem.</sarcasm>

Are you honestly trying to drum up some sympathy for a common meth addict? Please. The people who do shit like that obviously don't care about themselves, so why should society waste its resources caring about them?

As for letting people get their hands on the "pure" drugs more easily... at what cost? Without a prescription plan on one's health insurance, that shit can get pretty expensive. And I'm guessing the meth addicts won't be billing an HMO for their highs. So, again, since they obviously don't give a damn about their health and well-being, it's just going to come down to price.

That's why coke was a status symbol among rich drug addicts and crack was an epidemic throughout the streets. Your average burnout doesn't care about quality, he just wants to get high with whatever cash he has in his pocket.

Re:Drugs w/o a prescription?

[Rommel]

Yes, but how can you know what's best for you? What's really needed here is someone who "knows best" to tell you what to do. Then you know what's in your best interest because someone else told you what it is!

If you ask the doctors they'll probably confirm -- people can't be trusted to take care of themselves and doctors are required to tell them what is the right thing.

Re:Drugs w/o a prescription?

[ronocdh]

But, honestly, wouldn't it be better if people could get *pure* drugs to get high on rather than resorting to using toxic-ass shite like homemade crystal meth?

No, absolutely not. Not at all, whatsoever, no matter what. Please, shut up.

And what's so bad about the meth guys burning themselves out, anyway? It's nice and Darwinian.

Re:Drugs w/o a prescription?

[b0s0z0ku]

And what's so bad about the meth guys burning themselves out, anyway? It's nice and Darwinian.

Nothing, except when a meth lab blows up and takes a few neighboring houses with it. Or when a meth lab leaks toxic chemicals and cancer cases in the neighborhood skyrocket.

Much better to produce this stuff in a well controlled environment.

-b.

Re:Drugs w/o a prescription?

[ronocdh]

Much better to produce this stuff in a well controlled environment.

Why sanction the production of this stuff at all? It is a danger to society and should be treated as such. Your proposal to safely produce a substance, which, quite honestly, is more than capable of wrecking a human life, is absurd. Would you also then recommend that software pirates practice their craft in governmentally instituted warehouses, rather than physically steal CDs and DVDs from neighbors to pirate? Yes, the "solution" removes the incidental suffering, but in the process it condones the crime itself. I will not pay that price.

Re:Drugs w/o a prescription?

[b0s0z0ku]

Yes, but how can you know what's best for you?

Sarcasm, I ass-u-me. If not, then:

* I was bitten by a tick a few weeks before the symptoms appeared;

* Had constant headaches and felt like I had the flu all the time

* Unexplained muscle pains

* Joint pains/swelling

* Twitching

* Prostate cramps/my penis went numb for a few days. Felt like I was about to piss my pants all the time. Fun!

* Many more symptoms

* My doctor insisted that I was 100% healthy

* The symptoms subsided during a 10-day course of antibiotics for a sinus infection. Came back slowly over a month.

* My doctor still insisted I was totally ok. He said that the antibiotics couldn't have possibly fixed my joint pains. Even if it weren't Lyme, hadn't he heard of "reactive arthritis." Fortunately I was able to arrange for my own antibiotics until I was able to see a doctor who wasn't a fucking moron. That other doctor ran some more blood tests and agreed with me.

Sadly, she's not covered by my ins., but she's worth going to since she isn't clueless.

-b.

Re:Drugs w/o a prescription?

[Anonymous Coward]

And if the government would just legalize the robbing of liquor stores, people wouldn't have to bring dangerous guns with them and fewer cashiers would get hurt/killed. Damn government, how dare it endanger cashiers like this?

Re:Drugs w/o a prescription?

[b0s0z0ku]

Would you also then recommend that software pirates practice their craft in governmentally instituted warehouses, rather than physically steal CDs and DVDs from neighbors to pirate?

Software piracy is different, because it deprives the authors of profits. Occasional use of drugs (provided that it is in fact occasional) deprives no one of anything. The "war on drugs" should stop. The money that's saved from enforcement should go towards treatment of those who are unlucky enough/biologically predisposed to becoming dangerously addicted to drugs.

-b.

Re:Drugs w/o a prescription?

[Anonymous Coward]

Manufacturing cars without seatbelts is nice and darwinian, too.

Re:Drugs w/o a prescription?

[Maestro4k]

* My doctor still insisted I was totally ok. He said that the antibiotics couldn't have possibly fixed my joint pains. Even if it weren't Lyme, hadn't he heard of "reactive arthritis." Fortunately I was able to arrange for my own antibiotics until I was able to see a doctor who wasn't a fucking moron. That other doctor ran some more blood tests and agreed with me.

Sadly, she's not covered by my ins., but she's worth going to since she isn't clueless.

I'm not one to encourage lawsuits generally but given the severity of the lapse it might be worthwhile looking into suing for malpractice. If nothing else it could (hopefully) either 1. Cause the doctor to start being more careful or 2. Get him out of the business so he doesn't end up killing someone.

At the least I'd report him to your insurance company. They might not care, but then again they might and might do something about it.

Re:Drugs w/o a prescription?

[geekoid]

IF the good doctor you went to can confirm you had Lyume disease. I would report the of Doctor to the AMA and to your insurance company.
You might want to consider wether or not you want tot talk to a lawyer. To get your money from the 'Bad' doctor, and as an added insentive for your insurer to drop him and get someone competant.
The lawyer might want to see of he can follow up with your complaint to the AMA.

Re:Drugs w/o a prescription?

[PlusFiveTroll]

It's already illegal to produce/grow drugs like meth, cocaine, weed, etc... But as you see the war on drugs has not stopped it. Go to msnbc and search on meth. The number of small labs around the country is skyrocketing. The chemicals and processes they use to make the stuff is dangerous. And laws have not and WILL NOT stop it from being produced. Proabition(sp?) causes more crime and creates dangerous black markets. If people think they can get it have way legit with a perscription they will.

If you can find a way to make people not want to take unnecessary drugs I'll sign you up for the nobel peace prize. Your paying the price now for socialized medicine, If you had to pay for your own treatment, and Captian Crackhead couldnt so they die, there would be a much lower demand for dangerous andpowerful drugs.

The drug compaines want people addicted to pills, its good for profits, it boosts stock prices.

Re:Drugs w/o a prescription?

[b0s0z0ku]

I'm not one to encourage lawsuits generally but given the severity of the lapse it might be worthwhile looking into suing for malpractice. If nothing else it could (hopefully) either 1. Cause the doctor to start being more careful or 2. Get him out of the business so he doesn't end up killing someone.

The dr. is a friend of the family, so suing him would involve further complications. To his credit, I *did* test negative when he gave me the CDC-recommended ELISA test. My other blood work was also normal.

There is, however, much debate about the efficacy of the ELISA test for Lyme. Some people don't produce detectable levels of antibodies for some reason, and the test looks for antibodies not the organism itself.

I ended up getting back an "equivocal" Western Blot test from the other doc, along with some other blood work that was suggestive of a chronic infection. I also had the classical symptoms of Lyme, a history of the rash, a history of tick bites. Moreover, I'm responding to antibiotics *quite* well.

So, the case is far from clear-cut. I could in theory have some *other* bacterial infection that happens to respond to the same antibiotics used to treat Lyme. However, Occam's Razor and all that...

Anyway, I'm not going to sue. Yes, I felt like warmed-over shit for three additional months due to that Dr. not listening. However, I'm more interested in developing my business and getting on with life than spending time in a courtroom. I have my body back (well, at least part of the time for now) - I'm not gonna waste time with a drawn-out lawsuit. I will, however, discourage family and friends from going to that doc - it's the least I can do.

-b.

Re:Drugs w/o a prescription?

[lamp540]

Someone disagrees with your bizarre, puritan view of the world? Should we perhaps mandate that all alcohol drunk should be distilled in homemade stills so that everyone that wants to drink ethanol also has to drink methanol as well?

It's not about whether meth users burn themselves out is whether as a society we want to put resources into MAKING them burn out. Remember, it costs resources to enforce drug laws. It requires no resources to not have a law. It's YOU who should be defending your position, not him.

Re:Drugs w/o a prescription?

[lamp540]

Only someone who knows nothing about our legal tradition, as well as a childish world view would think that something not having a law against it means that it's a good thing to do, that it's condoned by anyone.

Re:Drugs w/o a prescription?

[tepples]

Would you also then recommend that software pirates practice their craft in governmentally instituted warehouses

Yes. It would be called "compulsory licensing".

NOT BUSTED FOR SPAM!

[Sooner Boomer]

Read TFA! They were NOT busted for spam! They were drug dealers, caught illegally selling narcotics. Spam was how they advertised, but they are getting NO punishment for it.

Re:NOT BUSTED FOR SPAM!

[Sabaki]

And they convicted Al Capone on tax evasion.

Sometimes it's good just to get them off the street and stop them from committing the crimes.

Re:NOT BUSTED FOR SPAM!

[smooth wombat]

You're new here, aren't you? Just so you are aware it is common knowledge that the editors of this site don't actually read the articles which are submitted. Witness the weekly posting of articles which were previously posted.

Further, these same editors don't actually check to see if the headline of a story fits with the story itself.

Please keep this in mind and you too can experience the bliss of ignorance.

Re:NOT BUSTED FOR SPAM!

[b0s0z0ku]

They sort of were. The charge of "wire fraud" seems to reference the spam aspect of the case.

-b.

Re:NOT BUSTED FOR SPAM!

[mccalli]

They were NOT busted for spam! They were drug dealers, caught illegally selling narcotics. Spam was how they advertised, but they are getting NO punishment for it.

I see this as a good thing on balance. I would have liked the spam to be taken into consideration as a detail somewhere, but what this shows is that the correct approach is to go after the traditional side of the crime - in this case, fraud and drug dealing. There are already laws in place to deal with this, and the judicial system understands them well. Sounds like a much better chance of a proportionate punishment to me.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:NOT BUSTED FOR SPAM!

[gorbachev]

They might've not, but the fact that this ass maggot spammed you, me, your dog, my cat, the prosecutor in the case, his daughter, hurricane Katrina and a billion other people made the authorities to notice him quite quickly.

Re:NOT BUSTED FOR SPAM!

[drew]

Indeed, They noticed him very quickly... He barely had time to issue a measly 72,000 prescriptions and they were already busting down his door.

Re:NOT BUSTED FOR SPAM!

[gorbachev]

Let's put it this way. How long would it have taken, if he hadn't spammed everyone and their dogs? He would still been in business.

Re:NOT BUSTED FOR SPAM!

[halcyon1234]

You're absolutely right. Because, as we've learned from Russia, when a spammer get's busted, the busting is being done to their ass with a cap.

That's just great

[filtur]

Now where am I going to get my viagra and... um.. enhancement prescriptions...

Re:Alternate punishment

[SYFer]

And don't miss the exciting epilogue where it is revealed that our Russian spammer was bludgeoned to death by a 15 year old girl.

Spammers aren't the problem

[ThatGeek]

Spammers aren't the problem. They are just a symptom. Email is a broken standard. We need to create a system that cannot be taken advantage of.

We could even just add a bit onto the current email systems. Have clients either sign outgoing messages with a GnuPG key, or encrypt messages with the recipient's public key. All mail that isn't signed by a friend or encrypted to the recipient is trashed.

Spammers wouldn't have an accepted sig, and they sure wouldn't have the time to encrypt each message to each address.

Re:Spammers aren't the problem

[geekoid]

SO you can't think of one legitiment reason why someone you don't know would want to email you?

Re:Spammers aren't the problem

[gclef]

A few news flashes for you:

1) users hate PGP/GPG. They don't understand it, can't get it to work, and it's not worth anything to them. (google for "why johnny can't encrypt" for two good discussions of the subject.)

2) Spammers aren't even using their own machines to send email at this point, why should they care about an extra second or two to sign or encrypt a message? It's someone else's CPU cycles, not theirs.

3) Mailing lists, support addresses, public accounts, sales folks, etc, would all fail in your system, since they all need to be able to take in (and often send) messages to people they've never talked to before and won't have a key for.

Encryption/signing of email is not the answer. There's a reason why email encryption has languished for 10 years...it sucks.

...physical?

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine the irony...now he can potentially have a "physical session" with some of his previous Cialis patients..

Note that spam isn't sending him to jail

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

It's the illegal prescriptions.

He sold $20,000,000 of hydrocodone in less than a year. I think the bigger question is how the hell he could sell that much of a tightly controlled narcotic before getting busted.

Re:Note that spam isn't sending him to jail

[rejecting]

You really think the drug companies, and the people involved with his medical practice mind? You don't think that everyone was getting some sort of cut? Its har for $20,000,000 to fly around and only ONE person get rich.

Re:Note that spam isn't sending him to jail

[bigbadunix]

The answer to that is that generic vicodin (or any of the other myriad of meds that a large percentage of america is addicted to) are -not- tightly controlled.

The current administration would rather have the masses be medicated and docile than coherent and rebellious

But that's just my opinion, and everyone that's out to get me calls me paranoid

Re:Note that spam isn't sending him to jail

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

The current administration would rather have the masses be medicated and docile than coherent and rebellious

Hell, I'd rather be medicated and docile. Where do I line up?

Re:Note that spam isn't sending him to jail

[Brandybuck]

The current administration would rather have the masses be medicated and docile than coherent and rebellious

No matter what the problem, someone on Slashdot will blame Bush for it.

Re:Note that spam isn't sending him to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're docile enough to line up, you don't need any.

Re:Note that spam isn't sending him to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the bigger question is how the hell he could sell that much of a tightly controlled narcotic before getting busted.

If this "guy" was buying drugs from a legal distributor, then such a large quantity of Hydrocodone would have raised red flags with the State Board of Pharmacy.

I suspect he was buying them illegally from outside the US, where distributors aren't subject to such tightly controlled reporting... Or Jersy has a piss poor board of pharmacy.

Re:Note that spam isn't sending him to jail

[fajoli]

No matter what the problem, someone on Slashdot will blame Bush for it.

No matter the comment, someone else on Slashdot will find fault with someone in the Slashdot community.

Re:Note that spam isn't sending him to jail

[realityfighter]

As I understand from some earlier comments in this thread that the prescriptions they were giving out wouldn't be honored in other states. My guess is, in most cases he was selling the prescription for the hydrocodone, which would then turn out to be void when you went to cash it in. Bill o' goods. (I also expect that, if you did manage to wheedle your way into getting the prescription filled somehow, you would still have to pay for the actual drugs.)

Re:Note that spam isn't sending him to jail

[Brandybuck]

So you're saying that drug spam really is Bush's fault? Or are you saying that no Slashdot post should be faulted?

Re:Note that spam isn't sending him to jail

[fajoli]

Neither.

I am saying that in a community this large, one should expect a variety of views. Your comment does nothing to add to the conversation or explain why the comment is wrong -- it only confirms there are a variety of opinions on Slashdot.

If you find that frustrating, you might want to consider moving to a more narrow-minded website.

Re:Note that spam isn't sending him to jail

[Brandybuck]

If you find that frustrating, you might want to consider moving to a more narrow-minded website.

So if I disagree with the absurd notion that Bush is responsible for drug spam, it means I'm narrow-minded? Did you READ the original post? Are you claiming it's defensible? If it marks me as intolerant for not accepting moonbat guano as legitimate political opinion, then tattoo that mark in my forehead!

Re:Note that spam isn't sending him to jail

[bluGill]

The companies are about making money. Selling these drugs without perscription is illegal, and doing something illegal leads to fines are investigations which cost money (sometimes the company even gets shut down).

It isn't that the company doesn't want the money from time (they may or may not be that honest), it is that they don't dare get caught.

Hotmail?

[ph4te]

Judging from the amount of spam people here say they've gotten from this guy I can only assume that they use hotmail as opposed to a mail service that doesn't suck balls.

I've been using gmail for about a year and have yet to recieve a single piece of spam mail.

And yet...

[gubbas]

And yet, the drug maker that supplied all these over priced pills to a single doctor in such a short time gets what? Fined? Prosecuted? No, they get richer! I love the US medical industry.

Re:And yet...

[Just Some Guy]

And yet, the drug maker that supplied all these over priced pills to a single doctor in such a short time gets what?

Unless he had the prescriptions filled at Pfizer's loading dock, WTF would you expect them to do about it? For all you know, they might have been the anonymous tipsters that got the whole prosecution started, but I know it's a lot more fun to rant and wildly speculate.

Your irrational hatred for the pharmaceutical companies does nothing to help your credibility.

Re:And yet...

[z4ce]

You must not be aware of how the prescription system works (at least in the US). When a doctor writes a prescription, you take it to a pharmacy which fulfills the prescription. The drug company has no idea that a single doctor is filing many of the prescriptions.

Re:And yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Until some Texas Jury finds that these drugs are harmful to 3% of the population and grants a 254 Million dollar lawsuit...
  Then the drug maker goes out of business.

Re:And yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

So they just didn't check the details. Last I saw, that wasn't criminal. Before relational databases, that wasn't even feasable.

Let them off the hook, OK?

Re:And yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet, the drug maker that supplied all these over priced pills to a single doctor in such a short time gets what? Fined? Prosecuted? No, they get richer! I love the US medical industry.

Translation: "Waah! Other people have more money than me and I don't like it! Waah!"

Good job, mods. Really.

As for the pharmaceutical companies, how they hell are they supposed to know? It's not like he placed a bulk order and gave it all out at his office. 72,000 prescriptions spread out over the course of a year filled at pharmacies across the entire United States... background noise on their radar screen.

If anything, it only shows that there needs to be tighter integration of medical information when prescriptions get filled. Hopefully not so much as to inconvenience the customer at the counter, cause that shit can get tiresome. It wouldn't be an issue of privacy either, just have a database storing the name of the doctor who wrote it (well, some unique identifier thereof) and the drug being prescribed. Then 72,000 hits on one doctor would put him well within visual range of anybody watching that system.

Re:And yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the drug makers that supplied the overpriced pills. Unless the drug makers you're referring to are an offshore unregulated pill manufacturer. Pharma companies distribute their products to wholesalers. It is often crooked practices by the wholesalers that get drugs diverted into a situation like this. Often the crooked wholesalers are in Canada, which is a big reason why drug reimportation is such a hot topic.

Re:And yet...

[ScentCone]

No, they get richer! I love the US medical industry.

About, which, apparently, you know nothing.

Re:And yet...

[aaarrrgggh]

When a doctor writes a prescription, you take it to a pharmacy which fulfills the prescription. The drug company has no idea that a single doctor is filing many of the prescriptions.

So wrong! The drug companies actually track their success rates with specific doctors to help their marketing. They need to know what kinds of junkets are most effective!

When a perscription is filled, the information goes into a DEA database and a drug company database. I don't know the specifics on the system, but the DEA has a very good idea who is writing prescriptions for what. When a doctor looses a prescription pad and it gets abused, he will be investigated.

Re:And yet...

[McCaliber]

I remember hearing this argument somewhere before. Something about P2P software companies making money on advertising when the primary use of their product is the illegal distribution of copyrighted goods.

And then there is the argument that video game companies should be penalized for puting mature content in their games because individual stores sold their properly-marked-as-mature video games to minors, which the local city/county/state didn't like.

If you want to sue the pharmaceutical company for endangering your life by providing medical supplies in bulk, you are of course allowed to (this is America after all). But last time I checked, we don't penalize companies (too often) for legally selling products that are then used in an illegal manner.

I'm sure the practicing doctor had all the necessary paper work to request this and other drugs as prescription medication. The fact that he was eventually noticed for the bulk amount is proof that the system can detect some form of abuse. But this certainly isn't a reason to crack down on the medical industry, any more than it is a reason to start putting P2P software and game companies in check.

Re:And yet...

[deblau]

For an idea of what has happened to drug suppliers in the past, read Direct Sales Co. v. United States, 319 U.S. 703 (1943). It's not that long (five pages maybe). Executive summary: they nailed the supplier for conspiracy.

The Harrison Narcotics Act was replaced with the Controlled Substances Act in 1970.

Re:And yet...

[sd.patricia]

The drug makers don't supply the drug to the prescribing doctor (well maybe just some samples). Not to the tune of 200 samples/day. The pharmacies are where the drug is available. And if the doctor was writing prescriptions to be filled all over the country, he/she is less liable to be caught.

Hidden money

[zymano]

You know that they have half their cash in overseas accounts.

I should be a spammer..

[dustinbarbour]

It seems that the market is losing some of its biggest players. With the immense amount of money to be made spamming, now seems to be the best time to get into the business!

Amazing

[marcantonio]

It amazes that someone would write these perscriptions in their own name. Come on, you now that stuff is tracked, although rather losely as it turns out, your going to caught. I've said it before and I'll say it again, dumbass...

Another Great Victory

[MrCopilot]

From TFA:
In May, a federal judge shut down Xpress Pharmacy and appointed a receiver to take control of the business' assets. Federal authorities seized $1.8 million in luxury cars, two homes and $1.3 million in cash.

Figures, they had to wait till it was profitable.

Now what are all those HydroCodine Junkies gonna do? Head straight to Crack and Crystal Meth. Ahhh, Justice.

The indictment contains various counts of conspiracy to dispense controlled substances, wire fraud, money laundering, distributing controlled substances and introducing misbranded drugs into interstate commerce.

I'm all for prison-raping the spammers, but if they don't charge him with any spam offenses, then we're all jumping on the War on Drugs Bandwagon. Count me out.

Make it a crime to repeatedly use my computer equipment for unsolicited Advertisements. Fine them at an advertiser rates. 5 cents a email. Charge him with this crime & let the bunkmates line up.

The doctor faces what charges?

The U.S. Attorney's Office said Mach was represented by Bruce Levy of New Jersey. A call to his office was not immediately returned Wednesday.

Oh.

Re:Another Great Victory

[Anonymous Coward]

Now what are all those HydroCodine Junkies gonna do? Head straight to Crack and Crystal Meth. Ahhh, Justice.

Exactly what would you recommend as an alternative? Not prosecuting criminals because their associates might fill the void with something worse? Welcome to mob rule.

Seriously, cry me a river. Anyone who turns to crack and/or meth because their internet doctor isn't online anymore is going to have a hard time getting my pity. Maybe they can do us all a favor and move up to cyanide.

jumping on the War on Drugs Bandwagon. Count me out.

Love to. Don't argue in favor of the opposing side and we won't have a problem. Otherwise, you're counted in. And you're the enemy.

Re:Another Great Victory

[MrCopilot]

Exactly what would you recommend as an alternative?Not prosecuting criminals because their associates might fill the void with something worse?

How about busting the DOCTOR illegally writing the script and charging the Spammer with some spam crime. Oh, that's right there is no F'N Spam Laws to charge him with. Wire Fraud is not the same.

Seriously, cry me a river. Anyone who turns to crack and/or meth because their internet doctor isn't online anymore is going to have a hard time getting my pity. Maybe they can do us all a favor and move up to cyanide.

Dude, take it down a notch. It's an f'n pain reliever. I was being sarcastic. How about we just agree you are a heartless dick. These people are buying medication through the mail cuz it's CHEAPER, not because they can't get a script. Do you ever read the spam this asshole sends. He offers Medication at low prices without having to pay a doctor visit. You dig. Preying on the injured or small dicked.

Love to. Don't argue in favor of the opposing side and we won't have a problem. Otherwise, you're counted in. And you're the enemy.

I fail to see how I argued in favor of the opposing side. I argue that this is akin to busting Al Capone for not paying taxes instead of Murder.

Oh no, I have an anonymous coward as an enemy. He could be anybody. Must... go... underground......

way of the dodo

[Anonymous Coward]

why does life always look so drab on a old
computer and a slow internet connection?
response time?
or maybe, because the tv is so much louder?
please, when is my one button mobile going
to talk to my multi gigaflop server to do all the
communication i will ever want? pluuuse ...
go a new $ today so i gotta ask, where are all
the databank articles anywayz?

So spam works?

[umrgregg]

So, let me get this straight: you actually get something when you respond to spam email? Like, a prescription?

Re:So spam works?

[Aranth Brainfire]

Not any more.

New procedures

[Sibb]

All of Dr. Philip Mach's patients can now contact Dr. Nick Riveria of Springfield for further assistance, thank you.

I'm always amazed

[Zunni]

It never ceases to amaze me that people (users) continue to do business this way.

People wonder why the spamming never ends, it's because 72,000 perscriptions were bought through an email ad.

Spamming really does work, it's cheap, and highly effective as evidenced by the above numbers.

Re:I'm always amazed

[WillAffleckUW]

People wonder why the spamming never ends, it's because 72,000 perscriptions were bought through an email ad.

Which is why, even tho it's a bother, I make sure to turn each and every spam in with full headers to the FTC at their spam@ftc.gov email reporting site.

Not to mention the Nigerian and Lottery spam to the Secret Service.

Actions speak louder than words.

[caveat - I own shares of Pfizer, Amgen, and other stuff like that]

Re:I'm always amazed

[superspaz]

Clearly you missed the point that a lot of these prescriptions went to people with an addiction to prescription pain killers. These drugs are tightly controlled by responsible groups, like your local hospital. It really shouldn't be suprising that someone built what is essentially a small drug ring in this way. Think of who is the sterotypical prescription drug addicit: an uptight white middle class professional who wants to hide their dirty little secret. This guys spam really gave them just what they were looking for: the drugs plus some form of validation that they are not addicts because they have a prescription. Nevermind it comes from an unethical cashmonger.

Re:I'm always amazed

[Zunni]

That doesn't change the baseline fact that these groups of people are being brought together (buyer and seller) through email based advertising which is why SPAM will not decrease and should continue to be a major source of frustration for computer users for years to come.

Spam on the increase recently?

[Malc]

I had between 16,000 and 17,000 spam messages last year (~45/day). So far this year I've had about 6,200 (~26/day). In the last week I seem to have been getting 80-110/day, which is a massive increase over the rest of the year.

Anybody else seen a massive increase?

Re:Spam on the increase recently?

[MrP-(at work)]

I'm seeing this also. I was getting about 80 spams a day per account, now im getting 140-160 a day per account

Re:Spam on the increase recently?

[Anonymous Coward]

ya... because of the new windows exploit. Drone numbers were dying down, hence spam went with it. new exploit==new botnets==more spam.

Re:Spam on the increase recently?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya, I have been getting a lot more recently. Like:

                n?
Hi, do y ou want to spen d les s on your medicatio

Just VISlT EPhar maccy-By-Mail S hop and S AVE up t o 70 %

VA LlUUM ClALL lS VlAGR RA and m any other medicat ions

Try us and you will not be disappointed!

Fuckers...

Re:Spam on the increase recently?

[spikedvodka]

I don't track raw numbers, but rather, I track percentages. Since about febuary, I've been seeing a general downwards trend, but it's been very "Spikey" with changes every day

(I love my spam filter)

still getting lots o' spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, nd Ie s?
do you want to spe ss on your meddication

Just VISlT E op and SA 70
Pharmaccy-By-Mail Sh VE up to %

VA ALLlS VlAGR many other medicati
LlUUM Cl RA and ons

Try us a ll not be disappointed!
nd you wi

DrFeelgood.com

[Doc Ruby]

Can anyone else figure out why doctors, who are trained mostly to follow the money, are the gatekeepers on otherwise illegal drug trafficking?

Re:DrFeelgood.com

[typical]

Can anyone else figure out why doctors, who are trained mostly to follow the money, are the gatekeepers on otherwise illegal drug trafficking?

It's okay -- that's what the legal system is for. If the doctors fall through, we have the lawyers to act as gatekeepers.

Re:DrFeelgood.com

[Doc Ruby]

Ah, yes, that's why there are no pill addicts in the US. Thank you, lawyers!

Kickbacks Galore!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know that every time a doctor issues a prescription that the drug company sends them a small kickback!? I suffer from Cold Sores and he wrote me a prespcription for the leading new med. I asked him why he chose that one and after about 15 minutes of chatter he said that they send the best kickback to him so far.

Re:Kickbacks Galore!

[picklepuss]

That's not true. That would be illegal. There are often rebates associated with prescriptions, but those almost always go to the managed care organizations, there are also admin fees and other reimbursements that the pharmaceuticals offer to wholesalers, group purchasing organizations, etc, but there are no kickbacks. Your physician was either pulling your leg or distorting the truth.

Don't worry

[doublem]

The Clue Train is moving through town. Once it passes, things will be back to normal.

Hope this is the one . . .

[base3]

. . . that had been using Geocities front door sites. Those were fun -- hammer the Geocities site every hour to deplete the bandwidth so potential suckers get 503d, then hammer the site the Geocities front points to. That one-two punch should keep the site from being reachable and generate some nice bandwidth bills for Spammy.

recycling

[Anonymous Coward]

In response to the tree issue, some companies do use recycled paper for their ads, and will recycle the paper of mail returned to them.

Re:recycling

[WiFiBro]

very energy efficient to send back all the leaflets to their origin 8-|
well ok recycled paper is slightly better but it is hardly ever 100% recycled.

72K Prescriptions! KaD*mn!

[blueZhift]

Wow! I think the 72000 prescriptions disturbs and riles me up more than the spam. We're talking about one greedy twisted doctor here. I only wonder how many more like this are out there yet to be caught. I wonder if this guy was any good with his patients or really just in medicine for the money, which I guess obviously just wasn't enough!

Christopher Smith

[Frastolator]

http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2005/08/20/ap2 186832.html

I found this Interesting article that has some informative info on the person himself.

If I must, I must

[ehluke]

I guess this is shown not to work... 1. Send out lots of spam. 2. Get NJ doctor to write phony perscriptions. 3. ... 4. Profit! (I had to do it)

2 people busted != Paradigm Shift

[biraneto2]

Looks like you didn't RTAs. Summing all the articles we get.... let me count.... 2 people busted! Don't look that much of a paradigm shift.

Does anyone have his prison address?

[WormholeFiend]

I would like to offer him some herbal rectal relief medications at a very reasonable price, no prescription needed!

Re:Does anyone have his prison address?

[WormholeFiend]

do you think that guys with small penises find it funny when they get emails about increasing their penis size?

Why are you demonizing this guy?

[Phiro]

Other than the naughty bit about paying his pet doctor $7 for each non-exam script, this was a stand-up guy. He did exactly what he claimed he would. How many so-called spammers out there can say that? This guy had _thousands_ of satisified, repeat customers. Nobody was getting ripped off, in fact I'd wager the majority of the scripts that were filled were cheaper to the customer than if they went to Walgreens/Target/whatever and had it filled. This guy SAVED the health industry millions and he's demonized for fraud. Fraud? In what way? How did he defraud customers? Didn't he supply them with exactly what they were ordering at a fraction of the usual cost? Spamming? How is he different than Ford or GM putting their commercials on every 6 minutes during your prime time show? --- It wouldn't take much to turn this guy into a modern day Robin Hood. You all act like he's satan incarnate, in reality it's nothing but a very successful businessman with an overly invasive advertising scheme (but no spyware or adware!) who gave his customers exactly what they wanted at a price both parties were happy with. How many other businesses can match that?

Re:Why are you demonizing this guy?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Other than the naughty bit about paying his pet doctor $7 for each non-exam script, this was a stand-up guy."

"Nobody was getting ripped off, in fact I'd wager the majority of the scripts that were filled were cheaper to the customer than if they went to Walgreens/Target/whatever and had it filled.".

You _believe_ nobody was getting ripped off. Don't state a "fact" when you don't know for sure. Or, did you happen to work with this guy? "Hey - These guys sell Microsoft Office! I mean, it's pirated, but you get your product! What the big deal?".

"How is he different than Ford or GM putting their commercials on every 6 minutes during your prime time show?"

I can turn off my TV. I can change the channel. I use my e-mail for business purposes, in which I have to wade through (*cough* *your*) spam. This is the reason the "Do not call" list for telemarketting came about. It's invasive. It interrupts my important email communications. TV does not. Shall we go on.

"It wouldn't take much to turn this guy into a modern day Robin Hood. You all act like he's satan incarnate, in reality it's nothing but a very successful businessman with an overly invasive advertising scheme (but no spyware or adware!) who gave his customers exactly what they wanted at a price both parties were happy with."

Hahaha. Incorrect, he a "businessman" who is sitting in jail. Oh! That damn goverment of ours, always going after the innocent little guy! Poor, poor guy. He's a hero! Whatever.

Re:Why are you demonizing this guy?

[parkrrrr]

From TFA (Emphasis mine):

The indictment contains various counts of conspiracy to dispense controlled substances, wire fraud, money laundering, distributing controlled substances and introducing misbranded drugs into interstate commerce.

That bolded bit there sure makes it look like someone didn't think people were getting what they thought they were.

Re:Why are you demonizing this guy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd wager the majority of the scripts that were filled were cheaper to the customer than if they went to Walgreens/Target/whatever and had it filled.

You'd lose your wager. Narcotics are dirt cheap; most customers with legal prescriptions for narcotics pay full retail because that's less than their health insurance's co-pay or deductable!

The $7 that the spammer paid to the quack doctor for the bogus prescription would have to be recovered from the consumer. $7 pays for a lot of hydrocodone.

In order for a $7 customer acquisition charge to be economically viable, he would have to sell a huge lot of hydrocodone to the customer.

Re:Why are you demonizing this guy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Spamming? How is he different than Ford or GM putting their commercials on every 6 minutes during your prime time show?

My prime time show? I don't watch TV.

So don't give me your commercials.

Re:Why are you demonizing this guy?

[really-no]

No- he really WAS hurting people. He double charged their credit cards, sent wrong medications, even sugar pills at times, threatened employees with a loaded gun. Is that enough?

25 : )

[milimetric]

25 year old, hm... 3 million dollars worth of stuff is pretty nice at 25. The only problem is... when you go to hit on a girl... what do you say you do? SPAM? Hey baby... I'm a spammer. Wanna SPAM? You know baby, I could make a couple of calls and all that spam in your inbox would be gone?

HEY, there's an idea, do you think these people know how to protect THEMSELVES from SPAM???? WOA!! I'm a freakin genius. I'm sure this guy's girlfriend isn't getting Viagra adds, how do they do it? Maybe we can just use their methods against themselves.

I rock so hard.

Re:25 : )

[tsotha]

When you have 3 million dollars worth of stuff you can just tell her "I'm a businessman" and that'll be good enough for 99% of the women in the dating scene.

MOD PARENT UP

[scovetta]

Please mod parent up. She's a girl. We want to be really, really nice to her so she'll stick around.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an online fourm. Gender does not matter much here. Just because a majority of /. users are male, does not mean people should get special treatment just because they have breasts and a vagina. Mod people on their comments, not thier gender.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Morgalyn]

Yeah I agree with you here. I don't want to get special treatment for having breasts. It's hard enough to get taken seriously in the tech world without also dealing with preferential treatment at Slashdot!

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Dogtanian]

Yeah I agree with you here. I don't want to get special treatment for having breasts. It's hard enough to get taken seriously in the tech world without also dealing with preferential treatment at Slashdot!

If you're getting special treatment, it's not because you have breasts; half of Slashdot is in that boat. Unfortunately, man-boobs just don't have the same appeal...

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

She talked about her reproductive system, too. +1 interesting

Police State

[militiaMan]

What is wrong with people consuming the drugs that they want?

Why not use a filter if you don't like spam?

Our country is a police state jailing more people per capita that any country in the world except for China.

I expect both countries to go through a revolution in the 10-30 years. I think China will change without much bloodshed because some people are still alive from the last revolution. Although, the U.S. revolution will be the bloodiest war in world history just like the first civil war.

Nazis always think they can get away with redistribution by force, but it never works. All those people getting FMLA, Child Tax Credits, SS, House mortgage deductions, and all the other Nazi programs will pay for thier theft from the real working class.

Re:Police State

[g0hare]

The redistribution programs are exactly what made America the most powerful country on Earth. If you don't like the way Amnerica is run, leave. It would increase the average IQ.

Re:Police State

[LexNaturalis]

Congratulations. I unofficially nominate your post for the "stupidest posts on /." award.

I suppose you'd tell gunshot victims to buy a bulletproof vest if they don't like getting shot.

You mention a revolution in "the 10-30 years" but fail to specify what period of time this "10-30 years" is covering. Is it the "next" 10-30 years, or the 10-30 year period at the beginning of the next millenium?

If you seriously think that arresting doctors who prescribe drugs illegally is the sign of a police state, than perhaps you ought to find one of these doctors and get him to prescribe you some Haldol.

Re:Police State

[revscat]

Over the past few months I've come to believe that the largest groups of stupid people on Slashdot are far and away the hardcore zealot libertarians. They wouldn't be so annoying except that there are so freakin' many of them.

Re:Police State

[militiaMan]

Wrong. Major redistribution did not occur until after 1913 and has increased since. Note bls.org shows no income growth for the last thirty years if you adjust for inflation except for 1984. So we became great when redistribution was low. Secondly, the whole world has fallen into socialism, fascism, and communism.

If you pay for my moving cost including getting me citizenship I would be glad to leave to say Luxemburg.

Re:Police State

[militiaMan]

Yes you should get a vest if you don't like getting shot.

From 2012-2038.

Sorry, I do believe keeping people from the drugs they want/need is criminal and is a Police State action.

A disturbance in the Force

[Karellen !-P]

I feel a great disturbance in the Force, something like to voices of 72,000 penises screaming in horror and then suddently going flabby.

This is Morn that just Spam

[PacketScan]

They went after this company because they were able to buy perscription drugs with out a prescription. Which is againts the law.. Being that he was a spammer as well just puts some icing on the cake.

Re:Spammer Unit! Monty Python

[InsideTheAsylum]

Someone keeps stealing my 'omg hax' :(

Bringing Them to the Attention of the DEA

[s7uar7]

My website gets around 30 hits a minute (from seperate IPs) with fake referrer spam for sites selling prescription drugs. Anything with a drug name in the referrer, Phentermine, Xanax etc, gets an http 302 redirect to dea.gov; the original referrer isn't replaced. Who knows, maybe no one there ever looks at the logs, but if they do there's a few sites they might be interested in.

Re:Bringing Them to the Attention of the DEA

[ArsenneLupin]

Anything with a drug name in the referrer, Phentermine, Xanax etc, gets an http 302 redirect to dea.gov; the original referrer isn't replaced.

This would work if the visitor was an actual browser following a link coming from a drug site. However, chances are it's only a script, and that it doesn't honor redirects.

A new application of an old way to fight crime

[techno-vampire]

Back during Prohibition, a number of gangsters were sent to prison for tax evasion. The Feds couldn't get any evidence about the really bad things like extortion, robbery and murder, so they used what they could get. This is just more of the same thing, and a great idea. Professional spammers are likely to be breaking a number of laws, so investigate them and charge them with whatever you can find. Selling drugs, tax evasion, fraud, whatever.

Not subsidized.

[www.sorehands.com]

A couple of facts here. 1. Each class of mail service is supposed to pay for itself. 2. The USPS is not a government agency. It is really a quasi government agency.

You don't know what you're talking about

[JonTurner]

>>And yet, the drug maker that supplied all these over priced pills to a single doctor in such a short time gets what? Fined? Prosecuted? No, they get richer! I love the US medical industry.

1) The pills aren't supplied to the Doctor, they're sold by individual pharmacies. The doctor writes a 'script. The patient takes that script and fills it at the location of their choice. There's no central repository for perscription information (due, in part, to privacy laws), therefore it's easy to see how, in a geographically distributed body of patients, it was difficult to detect this abuse simply from examining prescription records.

>>over priced pills
2) Over-priced? Drugs cost billions of $$s to develop and bring to market. In your perfect world, how would you compensate the pharama company for the costs of years of research, clinical trials, and FDA submission and allow them to turn enough profit to reward their shareholders/investors, and fund the research needed to discover the next generation of medicines?

Re:You don't know what you're talking about

[Anonymous Coward]

2) Over-priced? Drugs cost billions of $$s to develop and bring to market. In your perfect world, how would you compensate the pharama company for the costs of years of research, clinical trials, and FDA submission and allow them to turn enough profit to reward their shareholders/investors, and fund the research needed to discover the next generation of medicines?

You could start by cutting the advertising budget down to nothing. R&D does cost, I have no problem with that, what I do have a problem with is that the bulk of expenses (and there for consumer cost) goes to advertising. Durg companies have no reason to advertise. It should work like this:

ABC company makes foo drug,
Person X gets bar alfliction,
Doctor Z uses their medical judgment and prescibes foo to fix bar

As opposed to now where:
ABC advertises foo,
X self diagnoses bar,
Doctor Z refuses to give them a prescription becuase they don't have bar,
so they get foo from an online asshat
ABC makes some money back but not enough to cover advertising, so they jack up the price for everyone

Not busted for "spamming"

[erroneus]

He was busted for something else right? Something related to illegal drug activity, wire fraud, money laundering...? Stuff like that?

So far, all this does is make "illegal" activities proliferated by spam something that will get you busted....

Hrm... okay so this WILL make a dent in the war on spam. But I would still like to see more people jailed for the activity of spamming rather than for more common reasons.

Re:Not busted for "spamming"

[Karellen !-P]

So what! Al Capone died is jail not for murder, smuggling, corruption or racketteering but because he was busted for tax evasion. I don't care how or why, as long as the end result is the same.

Re:Not busted for "spamming"

[nytmare]

I would still like to see more people jailed for the activity of spamming rather than for more common reasons.

Meanwhile other people have said that spam legislation isn't necessary because we can just prosecute spammers on all the existing laws that they break.

Guess you can't please everybody. Me, I'm happy to see spammers prosecuted on every law they break.

Re:Not busted for "spamming"

[anticypher]

Most spammers are making money from criminal activities. Turn off your spam filter for a day, and look at the shit that comes in. Illegally obtained presciption medication, pyramid schemes, loan sharking, tax evasion, hardcore pr0n. These are criminals widely broadcasting their activity to the whole world, and occasionally some police and prosecutors get off their fat asses and do something about it.

Occasionally I see a spam from an almost legitimate source, usually a marketing group behind a website where I left a spamtrap address. Its clear they didn't re-sell the address, just got desperate for new sales leads and discovered they had 10's of thousands of email addresses.

But I could handle a few almost legit spams per week, its the 740 per day of pure criminal activity that chokes my systems and causes me to lose hours per month maintaining anti-spam filters. I don't care that there are no effective spamming laws, if the powers that be take down the criminals in a loud and public way, it will have a deterrent on others who think they can advertise their crime spree on our internet.

I would also like to see prosecutors in the U.S. go after some of the people who obtained their narcotics through this spammer, and make headlines of "hard prison time for responding to spam".

the AC

Re:Not busted for "spamming"

[erroneus]

Well you know? If the criminal element, as it were, was removed from spam as we see it today, I suspect that spam will be reduced to only a minor annoyance rather than a major one. That is certainly something to consider about spam that I hadn't given much thought about before.

Held without bond?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny... if this guy had been captured planning to bomb a sporting event in the name of Allah, half the Slashdot population would be demanding his release; but since he was spamming, holding him without bond is just fine.

Weird.

Densa award nominations

[InfiniteWisdom]

1. trevordactyl
2. 1st moderator who modded that comment up
3. 2nd moderator who modded that comment up
4. 3rd moderator who modded that comment up
5. 4th moderator who modded that comment up

It works!

[grumpyman]

Yeah both dudes did it the illegal way, but once again, it proves that spamming works!

Thought process

[CrazedWalrus]

Wow! I made my first cool mil! Maybe I should quit while I'm ahead!

Another million later...

Wow! TWO million!! I must really be pushing my luck. Maybe just one more...

THREE MILLION! Geeze if I quite two million ago, I'd be kicking myself! What a jerk I was...

Turns out that Cockiness and Downfall usually go hand in hand.

Do everyone a favor...

[www.sorehands.com]

Do everyone a favor and out him. If we know who he is and how to identify his spammer and the companies he spams for, then a bunch of us can sue him into bankruptcy.

so it was some burger gobbling american?

[Anonymous Coward]

But I thought the evil Chinese where the source of all of the world's spam problem and that we should blacklist all of China...

Oh noh it was just some fat greedy American pig trying to get rich quick...

Re:so it was some burger gobbling american?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you euro trash.

How did they do this???

[Isldeur]

I can't imagine how they got away with this for so long. 72,000 prescriptions, most for Dilaudid/hydrocordone? Whenever a doctor writes an Rx for a controlled substance he/she needs to specify his DEA number. Don't you think this would have been flagged pretty quickly? 200 prescriptions a day for controlled substances from one doc?

Re:How did they do this???

[fishbowl]

"Don't you think this would have been flagged pretty quickly?"

Sure. Maybe they even started collecting evidence at the first one. By the time the process allowed the police agency to act, it had gone on to an even higher level. Or maybe they waited for it to get to a certain threshold?

Re:How did they do this???

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of brings to stark reality how fucked up things really are in America doesnt it? Anything for a profit baby...anything! With this volume of viagra being sold someone at Pfizer had to know what was going on.

Indeed. Did you notice...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Too much vertical integration.

If he'd just stuck to the marketing side..

Indeed. Did you notice they didn't bust him for SPAMMING? They busted him for running an illegal enterprise that he happened to be advertising via spam. If he'd been doing something purely legal (however shady) this bust wouldn't have come down.

Granted people who spam tend to be the sort of psychopath who will break other rules, and thus are likely to have something else you can bust them on. But you can't count on any given spammer doing that.

Meanwhile this appears to be a bust that was driven by a department investigating the PARTICULAR form of illegal activity on which his business was based. So this bust gives me no warm-fuzzies that there will be a coordinated attack on other spammers who are pushing other illegal activities that would be handled by other departments - even departments within the same agency. Yes it's nice that this one got shut down. But don't hold your breath waiting for spam to taper off to a dull roar of newbies as the offenders are frogmarched off to prison.

Why?

[geekoid]

they get what they want at a chaeaper price.
If I was going to buy a car, and Bobs car dealership(whatever) spammed me saying I could get a new car at half price, I would go there.

Of course, My main accounts don't get spam, so I would be out of luck.

Drugs in the mail

[WoodstockJeff]

Mail order pharmacies are perfectly legal.

Depends upon the state, really. In Illinois, our illustrious governor is trying to use mail-order drug fullfillment from Canada to reduce the state expenditure on Medicaid. Just one little problem... Illinois law requires that any prescription drug be handed to the patient by a registered pharmacist which kind of excludes the average postal or parcel delivery person...

So, yes, the pharmacies shipping stuff to Illinois are legally allowed to do that, but anyone who delivers the package without the right paperwork hanging on their wall is violating drug laws...

Re:Drugs in the mail

['nother poster]

No. Mail order pharmacies who dispense drugs to citizens in Illinois must report the transactions to the Illinois state prescription drug monitoring program. The person delivering the drug does not have to be a licensed pharma or pharma tech. That requirement is only if the drugs are picked up from a retail pharmacy.

You're both wrong.

[fireboy1919]

The doctor, 1) Philip Mach, had a license to practice medicine 2) in New Jersey but he provided prescriptions to people throughout the United States without ever evaluating them, both of which are big no-no's.

Clearly the things I have highlighted are the issues. With a last name like "Mach," he has to have a cool first name. Philip doesn't cut it. Living in New Jersey is equally bad. Lets make some corrections:

The doctor, 1) Steelgrip Mach, had a license to practice medicine 2) in the top of his floating fortress but he provided prescriptions to people throughout the United States without ever evaluating them, both of which are big no-no's.

Much better, but it could still use a bit of work. One more time:

The ninja, Mach Steelgrip had a license to kill from the top of his floating fortress of solitude but he provided wanton destruction to people throughout the United States without ever evaluating them. This is unforgivable. The death of my parents shall be avenged.

That's a lot cooler. Lets go with that as the headline.

Hi Everybody!!!

[chainsaw1]

"Wow, did you go to Upstairs Hollywood Medical College too?"

It had to be said

popups everywhere!

[Sebastopol]

sadly, while browsing these links with the latest mozilla firefox with popups disabled, nearly a dozen popups appeared.

*sigh*

72,000 More...

[catdevnull]

They should fine each person who answers illegal ads, too. If a spammer sends out 1,000,000 junk mails for almost no cost and one ass clown answers, it makes it worth his trouble. It's like prostitution or drug dealing: both buyer and seller should be busted.

Re:72,000 More...

[Anonymous Coward]

What if it's perfectly legal? http://www.justice.govt.nz/plr/faq.html

Re:72,000 More...

[catdevnull]

They should still be fined for being stupid enough to answer spam!

Re:72,000 More...

[Anonymous Coward]

Please explain to me exactly why a prostitute should get busted? Who is she harming and how?

Re:72,000 More...

[catdevnull]

Here is the problem with your thinking: Prostitution is illegal almost everywhere here in the US. Period. Just because you don't think she's harming anyone or anything doesn't make it legal or any less a crime.

Re:72,000 More...

[really-no]

Ahhhhhhh, this is where Chris got to people who THOUGHT it wasn't spam. He STOLE ligitimate address from people currently paying for scripts on-line and offered them a $10.00 off coupon to use HIS on-line pharmacy. ( I SAW the boxes of millions of these coupons) He hooked them, and reeled them in. Face it, this could be anyone that needs to save any where they can. We've all been told how over priced drugs are, so save $10.00. Lot's of innocent people did just that.

Spam in the news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Minn. Spammer Indicted on Pharmacy Charges
Minn. Man Considered the Most Prolific E-Mail Spammer Indicted on Illegal Pharmacy Charges
By CHRIS WILLIAMS Associated Press Writer
The Associated PressThe Associated Press ...

The indictment against Christopher William Smith, 25, was unsealed Wednesday after he was arrested at his home in Prior Lake. Dr. Philip Mach, 47, of Franklin Park, N.J., and Bruce Jordan Lieberman, 45, from Farmingdale, N.Y., were also charged in the indictment, federal prosecutors said.

He's faking his own arrest... Spammer's a trickisy one, we warned you!

Dude

[geekoid]

If people are getting good deals from spam, what makes you think they want it stopped?

I've sad this before, oust side of people in the IT business, very few people mind spam.

Why he's in jail

[Animats]

A bit of history. Back in May, his company was shut down by court order. His assets and house were seized. An injunction was issued to stop him from further spamming. A court-appointed receiver took over the operation, paid off the employees, and shut the operation down. Meanwhile, a criminal indictment was in progress, but not yet completed.

So Smith went to the Dominican Republic and tried to restart spamming from there. On June 28th, a judge issued an arrest warrant for him. When he returned to the US, he was arrested, but released on bail, with home monitoring.

The prosecution then asked for a six-month criminal contempt sentence for trying to violate the injunction and fleeing prosecution. Smith had a court date for that in July, and lost. So now he's in jail for six months.

This is somebody who just didn't get it when the court ordered him to stop.

This is just the first phase. The felony case is just getting underway.

Once again

[Anonymous Coward]

Prison rape is not funny.

Unless it happens to a spammer! Ha ha ha, then it's time for some red-hot global karma payback right up the poop chute.

Why don't they know when to stop?

[Randall311]

haha you approve of crimes like this? I think you ment to say, "As much as I disprove of crimes like this..."

Make good use of siezed properties

[halcyon1234]

Federal authorities have already seized over $3 million in cash, luxury cars, and houses."

Okay, great. Now that just means things'll be quiet for a couple months, and then it will be business as normal. If we really want to stop future spam, here's what we can don:

1. Sieze the customer list.
2. Send each of those customers a bottle of cyanide pills, but label the bottle "Teh Medz u 0rdred!!!!!!!"
3. Pass the customer list on to Poison Control, so they can block the phone numbers.

Now you've eliminated the customer base of spam messages. With no customers, spamming won't be profitable ($3 Million?!?!). If it's not profitable, it'll stop.

Tah-dah.

...walk into a bar

[AdamReyher]

A spammer, doctor, and two federal authorities walk into a bar ... But seriously, I put the doctor more at fault with this one. What the heck was he thinking? Another great victory. Let's keep them rolling, now. - Adam

He's a dealer

[phorm]

If a shady guy in a dark coat sitting on the sidewalk did the same, would it be less evil? We don't have to demonify this guy because he's a drug deal... selling prescription drugs illegally is not much different from selling crack or heroin.

painkillers that don't work

[keraneuology]

Novocaine/lidocaine injections at the dentist do nothing for the nerve in the tooth but make the gum/tongue numb and for a few hours after such injections anything cold feels hot. Well, I can't say -nothing- because one dentist actually gave me a total of 7 shots (the last five of which he told me were directly into the nerve itself) during the only drill and fill session where I didn't feel the drill. When it came time for the four wisdom teeth to come out I almost smacked him with the X-Ray machine when they asked if I had a preference between lidocaine shots or the general anesthetic.

After the wisdom teeth came out they gave me a week's worth of percodan: I couldn't tell the difference on or off so after about three days I stopped taking them, got the shakes real bad but other than that didn't feel that the percodans weren't really sugar pills. Vicoden after a root canal and the occasional flu/cold season robitussen with codeine (which up until just a few years ago could be bought without an Rx) didn't make me feel any differently.

Compare this with some people I've known who are knocked flat for hours with a single benadryl.

Maybe I should have been trying the v!c0d3n since vicoden obviously doesn't work...

Schedule status of Vicodin

[jamiefaye]

hydrocodone is Schedule II.
Vicodin, etc., adds acetaminophen (APAP), which dilutes the hydrocodone, and this formulation is on Schedule III.

It is much harder to sell Schedule II stuff on the Net - the law requires handwritten prescriptions in triplicate.

Of course, the druggies have figured out how to get rid of the APAP with kitchen chemistry.

Re:Schedule status of Vicodin

[Anonymous Coward]

while tylenol is freq. added to hydrocodone to ward off abuse, it doesn't "dilute" it, there are other formulations which are sched. III that come with ibuprofen, aspirin, etc. obviously an upside to taking it with ibuprofen is you can injest much more as the toxicity of such is far less than apap & if you are truly in hard-hitting pain ibuprofen is a better choice anyway.

Perhaps, but...

[abb3w]

Read TFA! They were NOT busted for spam! They were drug dealers, caught illegally selling narcotics. Spam was how they advertised, but they are getting NO punishment for it.

If they get sent to a Federal PMITA prison for something, do we care exactly why they get to spend the next decade whimpering? Who knows, maybe one of them will get a former customer as a cell mate. "Aren't you lucky I stocked up on that discount Viagra?"

3 million?

[Daniel294]

3 million bucks? I never realized that Spam was such a lucrative business. So I have crushed viagra for only 10 bucks. Click here to purchase!

And how would you fix the War on Drugs?

[typical]

Drugs? It's a hard problem. We figured out how to make a pretty reasonably functioning society as long as people keep some values within a certain range. People go to work and produce goods for society, and they get a share of all the goods everyone else produced. They don't break the system, because most things that do that are illegal and we've made doing illegal things come with a risk of unpleasant punishment.

Now, if you get someone addicted to something, and they want it badly enough, then their values deviate from that comfortable normal level, and they're harder to put in their box and keep a productive member of society. They might even hurt society. So we do what we can to keep people from getting addicted to things.

Turns out that there are a lot of potential drug users, and that it's easier to target a smaller number of drug providers, and their sources. So, because a construction worker in New Jersey might be less productive if she was using drugs, we arrange to firebomb crops of poor folks in Central American countries. It's a heck of a twisted path to follow, but at each step, we don't have any really great alternatives.

Oh, and because those drug pushers and users in jail represent a big chunk of votes, we keep convicted felons from voting. Helps ensure the stability of the system.

What would you propose be done differently, though? Just let everyone do whatever drugs they wanted? You have to deal with people going through an expensive-to-society upbringing and then not being productive as an adult -- universalize that, and you're looking at potential trouble. What about, for addictive drugs, someone who is out of money and can't afford to buy any more -- maybe he normally wouldn't steal something to purchase more drugs, but he's got a very strong motivation to obtain more money quickly. Target only drug sellers, not drug users, or visa versa? Probably not going to improve effectiveness at all.

There just aren't any great, fix-everything-at-once solutions. I mean, yes, the War on Drugs sucks. Everyone can identify that fact pretty quickly. The problem is that recognizing that does not mean that you should advocate that we get rid of it -- there's a problem that has to be solved, and the question becomes how to solve it.

Re:And how would you fix the War on Drugs?

[spongman]

The big question of course is: does the WoD help society more that it hurts it?

Illegal to practice medicine in NJ?

[sparkz]

"The doctor, Philip Mach, had a license to practice medicine in New Jersey but he provided prescriptions to people throughout the United States without ever evaluating them, both of which are big no-no's"

I can see that providing scripts without "evaluating" them is a no-no, but apparently both of these things are "no-no's" - having a license to practice medicine in New Jersey is illegal??

Find a plaintiff, sue the shit out of both

[Anonymous Coward]

They will be tied up in Criminal actions for at least a year. Meanwhile, a $10.00/spam damage class action could go to default (no money to defend Criminal and Civil actions - no way to seek bankrupcy from Jail) - take them for 3/4 billion bucks and collect on the $0.45/day jail wages - till they die.

Then, get really mean and find out who employed them and pay for posters all over their home towns showing them in their arrest photos.

Then, mail copies with $0.02 postage due to their family.

After the conviction, and the civil damage action - have the sheriff collect all of the most personal property and do to it what the victims did to OJ's Heisman - DESTROY THEM.

Start a project to bankrupt the Medical School that graduated the doc.

Send every blow-in subscription card to these two bastards.

Send them postcards addresed to the Kiddie Porn brigade in the slammer.

See if the cops who gave such close attention to Amadu Diallo are available to plunge the problem.

Send them exploding honey packages followed by box of army ants.

Fill cigarettes with poison ivy and send them cartons.

Find every loophole in the law to keep them in jail till they are 80+ and make them walk out of prison - naked, in the dead of winter - with no penalty for blasting them at the knees - but let them freeze slowly---

when they are mostly frozen, send them to a hospital for care - amputation of those nasty frozen arms and legs (the third leg, too) then send them off to the American League for use as second base.

That's still getting off easy!

Illegal to practice medicine-in-VA in NJ

[tepples]

having a license to practice medicine in New Jersey is illegal??

I'd guess that having a license to practice medicine in New Jersey and using it to treat patients outside of New Jersey is illegal. Parse it this way:

"he provided prescriptions to people 1. throughout the United States 2. without ever evaluating them, both of which are big no-no's"

We should institute torture for spammers

[Anonymous Coward]

And combine it with mutilation.

Stopping junk mail

[Hobart]

So... eradicate it.

Direct Marketing Association Mail Preference Service

Used by most direct mailers, since they're paying to send you stuff, to remove the people who don't want stuff.

http://www.dmaconsumers.org/consumerassistance.htm l

Guess where he's going!

[lordofthechia]

From TFA: "more than a dozen federal charges "

Woot he doesn't get busted for merely spamming and goes to white collar resort prision. He's going to federal pond me in the ass prision!

I wonder what they do to spammers in prision...

Re:Guess where he's going!

[erica_ann]

"I wonder what they do to spammers in prision... " Moreover, does the general majority of people IN prison know what modern spam is .. (and that it isn't the Hormel Kind?)

You may find this amusing

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't say where I got this, but you may find this fragment amusing.

--------------------

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RENEW NOW TO GET EXTRA MONTHS
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If they like adverts, let them opt IN!!!

[danielsfca2]

Some people might LIKE adverts in their e-mail, who are you to tell them they're wrong?

Oh, damn, they must have internet access in that jail. He's posting on Slashdot already. Hide your inboxes!

First off, that's moronic. If people want spam, they'll OPT IN.

Those of us who don't want to watch adverts, can quit listening to the bloody radio. Those of us who don't want to be subjected to TV ads can quit watching TV. This is because the ads on the traditional media are what supports it, so they don't/can't make you watch the ads if you don't partake of their service.

The problem with spam is that spam doesn't support or pay for the e-mail system. Just the opposite. It increases the costs of operation of every firm that handles e-mail, thus we shouldn't be expected to forego e-mail to be left alone by these sick, deplorable bastards, any more than we should combat drunk drivers by having everyone else quit using sidewalks and roads--we can't just quit using e-mail, so we can't get away from spam!!

Buying from a spammer is exactly like flagging down a drunk driver as he drives at 80MPH down the sidewalk, and paying him money, saying "Thanks for the service you provide. Here's the income you need to keep doing it."

Re:If they like adverts, let them opt IN!!!

[drsquare]

This is because the ads on the traditional media are what supports it, so they don't/can't make you watch the ads if you don't partake of their service.

Adverts don't support my TV, what are you talking about? How do billboards support anything for me? Maybe I should have to opt in for them. Spam's no worse than any other form of advertising.

Re:If they like adverts, let them opt IN!!!

[danielsfca2]

Adverts do support TV. Broadcast networks which show them have decided it's not worth their time to operate their companies for free. Cable Networks that show them have decided it's not worth their time to provide programming for the rates the cable companies pay them. If they were prevented from showing adverts, they would elect either to turn off over-the-air signals and charge your cable company much more, or to close their doors and find a profitable business. Just because you pay someone for something doesn't mean what you pay is enough to produce it. It is the case with bananas and cans of SPAM. It's not the case with newspapers, magazines, and TV. They only get part of the revenue they need from the "purchase price." There's nothing inherently wrong with this.

If one does not want to see TV adverts, one simply doesn't watch these two types of networks and views any shows they want to see by buying the DVD. (Or by BitTorrent, but I'm talking 100% legal here.)

Now: Why Spam is Far Worse than Billboards
Billboards are extraneous objects added to your world by property owners, or someone who paid them, that want your attention and try to get you to buy something. Spam is a subversion, without your permission, of a communications medium, that you cannot opt-out of, and which masquerades as real communication from real people. True, you can't opt-out of seeing billboards when you go out, but when you're on your property, in your own home, no one has the right to force you to look at anything. If a billboard showed up in my living room, I'd stick it up the advertiser's arse before having them arrested for trespassing.

If billboards were like Spam, they would be strapped to burly men who pound on your door all day and night, usually while dressed in a bad disguise pretending to be your friend, until you open the door; then they'd rush in uninvited and reveal their billboard. They would keep your phone tied up all day so your important messages might not get through, and they'd continually try to break down any fences you might put up, break into your house, spy on you in order to find more channels to harass you and your friends. You might think I'm exaggerating, but Spam is no better than this!

It would be one thing if Spam were like billboards. You would get a few per day, if they were obscene you could get the city to take action against them, they would all be quite obviously adverts, and subject to the same "false advertising" laws that other adverts are. They would send you a check each month for the extra bandwidth they use on your server, since they're putting their adverts on your property. If you told them you would no longer let them advertise on your property, they'd be obligated to quit, and if not you could sue them for theft of service, because you'd know who they are. I would even buy things from these spammers, just like I occasionally see a billboard that catches my attention.

Billboards do not pretend to be everyday objects you need. When you go to pick up your daily newspaper in the driveway, it wasn't accompanied by 600 fake newspapers designed to look just like it, but containing only adverts. When you're at the store, and you go to the Free Sample table and go to take a bite of the food, it's doesn't turn out to be a hunk of plastic with an advert on it, coated in artificial food to trick you. If Spammers ran the world, all those things would be true. And the added fun would be, there'd be no way to find those responsible, whether to beg them to quit, sue them, have them arrested or kill them.

Spam isn't like billboards. It's like a million crack-addicted zombies with industrial paint-sprayers on a tagging rampage on everyone else's property.

May he BURN IN HELL!!!!

[riiiichanchan]

eom

Different people react differently

[billstewart]

Different people react differently to different drugs, and while it's well-known that it's true for opiates, it's also true for novocaine.
I once had novocaine not work at the dentist, and he said sometimes the stuff doesn't work if you haven't eaten, and sent me out to go have lunch and come back in the afternoon; after awkwardly negotiating lunch with a numb mouth (:-) I came back and the stuff worked fine.

Some of my friends find codeine makes them hallucinate or feel really bad. The one time I took Percocet I felt awful, though it was just after a root canal which makes it a bit hard to compare. Codeine doesn't bother me, and generally helps pain. Think I'll go take one.

Lots of Repeat Customers

[billstewart]

Those 72000 prescriptions were probably for far fewer than 72000 customers.

If you're trying to buy Rush Limbaugh quantities of painkillers, and the first bottle or two from Spamboy arrive (and the price is reasonable compared to other available sources), you're probably going to buy a lot from the same source - much easier than shopping around, and the fact that Spamboy is clearly running a sleazy operation means that he's not going to check the quantities you're buying as carefully as your neighborhood pharmacist would.

Also, if his price is reasonable *enough*, some of his customers are probably buying wholesale quantities from him and retailing to their own customers.

Please graffiti his car or something

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy's obviously opted in to receiving spray paint on his car. Lovely spam, wonderful spam, spam-colored paint.

Tylenol's a lot worse than aspirin

[billstewart]

Tylenol's going to do a lot more damage if you're taking it at Vicodin-abuser levels rather than overdose levels, trashing your liver and kidneys. Aspirin can rot out your stomach and give you ulcers and such, but it's an acute problem that gets your attention more directly. (On the other hand, I suppose if you're taking opiate painkillers, you might not notice the stomach pain as quickly.)

Logistics?

[0Seeker0]

Does anyone know the setup they were using? I would imagine that since Vicodin is a schedule III medication the doctor just "called it in" to the pharmacy. But, in this case, the doctor and the pharmacy were probably in the same office, so I would imagine that the individuals answering calls simply took the order, listing him as the prescribing doctor, and he just approved it with a "click". The same goes for web orders. I find it highly doubtful that he either a) wrote out 72,000 actual prescriptions, and that b) he actually spoke to any, if at all, of the patients over the phone. It seems that this literally was a pill-pushing business, and the fact that they could fill it under a doctor's name to make it somewhat legal is incidental.