On November 10, 2016, the DEA issued its final decision and order in the case against Jones Total Health Care Pharmacy, L.L.C. (“Jones Pharmacy”) and SND Health Care L.L.C. (“SND”). The
Administrator ordered that the DEA deny Jones Pharmacy’s registration renewal application and also deny SND’s pending registration application. These orders were consistent with the
DEA recently announced a significant change to its registration renewal process.
For several years, DEA’s registration unit has allowed for a grace period for registrants who file an untimely application for renewal. While DEA’s regulations do not contemplate such a grace period, registrants, especially individual practitioners, were allowed to keep their existing registration number — which was considered valid and active during the grace period — despite the failure to file a timely renewal application and despite multiple notifications from DEA.
Last week, the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, sent a letter to 2.3 million American health professionals asking them to lead a national movement to “turn the tide” on the nation’s prescription opioid epidemic. After visiting communities hardest hit by the opioid epidemic, Dr. Murthy’s appeal to clinicians was personal:
“Everywhere I travel, I see communities devastated by opioid overdoses. I meet families too ashamed to seek treatment for addiction. And I will never forget my own patient whose opioid use disorder began with a course of morphine after a routine procedure.”
Dr. Murthy wrote that health care providers “have the unique power to end the opioid crisis.” He asked providers to commitment to this cause by pledging to:
Marijuana is less dangerous than some substances in other schedules, but it will stay in Schedule I for now, DEA said Thursday. The agency also said that it supports marijuana research, is developing an online application system to apply for Schedule I research registrations, and will allow more manufacturers to grow marijuana for research.
On May 11, 2016, the Drug Enforcement Administration filed its brief in Masters Pharmaceutical, Inc. v. Drug Enforcement Administration (Docket No: 15-1335), in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The vast majority of the Government’s brief addresses whether “substantial evidence” (the applicable standard of review) supports Acting Administrator Rosenberg’s decision to revoke Masters’ DEA registration. Curiously, the Government does not dedicate much effort to one of the seminal issues in the case: whether DEA imposed new obligations on registrants in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.
Rather than attempt to defend the indefensible, the Government invoked a creative reading of the Masters Final Order that is starkly at odds with Administrator Rosenberg’s decision. In its brief, DEA states that Administrator Rosenberg’s decision “did not impose any new duties on distributors.” In defending this position, the Government’s brief goes on to say the following:
Most of the “new duties” that Masters and amici cite in their briefs were obligations that Masters had voluntarily imposed on itself through its own compliance program. [citation omitted] The Administrator cited Masters’ failure to perform many of these duties – such as obtaining utilization reports or asking customers for explanations of unusually large orders – because Masters sought to rely on its compliance program to justify its reporting failures. However, in highlighting Masters’ disregard for its own program’s requirements, the Administrator did not impose those same requirements on all registered distributors.
On February 18, 2015, the DEA issued its final decision and order in the case against prescriber Hatem M. Ataya (“Ataya”). The Administrator ordered Ataya’s registration to be revoked and his pending applications for additional registrations to be denied on the grounds that Ataya has, since the proceedings began, lost the authority to dispense controlled substances under state law. Still, the Administrator’s decision also details the bases on which he agreed with the Administrative Law Judge’s (ALJ’s) findings that Ataya issued controlled substance prescriptions without a legitimate medical purpose (in violation of 21 CFR § 1306.04(a)) and violated federal and state law when he authorized more than five refills of schedule IV controlled substances, failed to include patients’ addresses on numerous prescriptions, and post-dated a prescription.
On November 16, 2015, the House of Representatives agreed to the Senate’s amended version of the Improving Regulatory Transparency for New Medical Therapies Act (H.R. 639). We previously described how the version of H.R. 639 originally passed by the House gave manufacturers clarity and security on the timing of DEA actions related to the entrance of new drugs into the market. The Senate’s amendment maintains these provisions and then sweetens the deal, with one exception.
What’s New: H.R. 639 allows for re-exportation among EEA countries without prior approval by DEA
Now, H.R. 639 incorporates the provisions of H.R. 2340, another bill introduced this session by Congressman Pitts. These provisions amend the Controlled Substances Import and Export Act to remove regulatory barriers to the re-exportation of controlled substances among members of the European Economic Area (the free trade zone uniting the EU member states and Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway) (“EEA”). The Controlled Substances Act (“CSA”) and DEA regulations currently impose conditions under which a drug in Schedule I or II or a narcotic drug in Schedule III or IV may be exported to a “first country” and then re-exported to one or more than one “second country.” If H.R. 639 becomes law, re-exportation within the EEA would change in the following ways:
On November 13, 2015, the DEA issued its final decision and order in the case against Perry County Food & Drug (“PCFD”). The Administrator denied PCFD’s pending application to renew its registration based on stipulations by PCFD that its pharmacist-in-charge, who happened to be the son of PCFD’s owner, created and filled fraudulent prescriptions and committed numerous other acts that each amounted to “an outright drug deal.” The Administrator also found that the owner was informed of his son’s diversion activities on multiple occasions by long-standing employees and other family members. With facts like these, the Administrator’s order denying PCFD’s application is not surprising. But the decision is noteworthy for its clarification of DEA precedent concerning “community impact.”
“Community impact” is a factor that respondents have raised to turn the Agency’s “public interest” determination on its head: instead of focusing on whether the respondent’s registration is inconsistent with the public interest, this factor looks at whether the revocation of the respondent’s registration would be inconsistent with the public interest. But when PCFD made its community impact argument based on Pettigrew Rexall Drugs, the CALJ summarily dismissed the argument as having been “rendered irrelevant by Agency precedent,” citing to several cases involving a physician or dentist.
On November 4, 2015, DEA Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg announced the results of the 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment Summary (NDTA). In addition to reporting in-depth findings regarding the availability and use of nine drugs of abuse, the 2015 NDTA focuses on the increasing threat of transnational criminal organizations (“TCOs”), confirming Michelle Leonhart’s testimony before her departure from the Agency about the integral role of TCOs in the “new face of organized crime.”
The Chronicles welcomes guest blogger, Julia Hudson, an associate in the Q&B Health Law Group.
On September 15, 2015, the DEA issued a sweeping decision that revoked the registration of Masters Pharmaceutical, Inc. and left many with a lot of questions about the scope of