opioids - News - The Coastal Star2024-03-29T07:41:33Zhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/opioidsAlong the Coast: Judge cuts in half disgraced addiction doctor's 20-year sentencehttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/along-the-coast-judge-cuts-in-half-disgraced-opioid-doctor-s-20-y2023-12-08T21:52:33.000Z2023-12-08T21:52:33.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}12311375497,RESIZE_400x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}12311375497,RESIZE_400x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="12311375497?profile=RESIZE_400x" width="330" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><em>Jamie Daniels with his mother, Lisa Daniels-Goldman. She and Jamie’s father, Ken Daniels, created the Jamie Daniels Foundation to help young adults struggling with substance abuse. Jamie, 23, died in a Boynton Beach sober home. <strong>Photo provided by Jamie Daniels Foundation</strong></em></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>By Pat Beall and Steve Plunkett</strong></p>
<p>Jamie Daniels made it just 228 days in Palm Beach County’s fraud-ravaged addiction treatment system before <a href="https://jamiedanielsfoundation.org/jamies-story/">overdosing</a> in a local sober home seven years ago this month.</p>
<p>A college graduate and aspiring lawyer, Daniels landed in the heart of a $746 million scheme built on exploiting drug users and bilking insurance companies.</p>
<p>Delray Beach osteopath Michael Ligotti was a key player and profiteer who pocketed millions from it, prosecutors <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23779219-ligotti-probable-cause-affidavit-7302020">said</a>. When he was sentenced to two decades behind bars in January, a Department of Justice press release heralded his arrest and conviction as <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/florida-doctor-sentenced-substance-abuse-treatment-fraud-scheme">the largest addiction fraud</a> case ever brought by the DOJ.</p>
<p>Ligotti, though, was not locked up. Instead, he remained free as he worked with prosecutors on investigating and prosecuting other fraudsters. And his testimony that led to convictions in two key cases resulted in a federal judge chopping Ligotti's sentence in half, to 10 years, with the possibility of getting out of prison in 8 1/2 years.</p>
<p>"It is only right," U.S. District Judge Rodolfo A. Ruiz II said of reducing the prison time on Dec. 8. "Even the 10-year sentence is a significant sentence in this space."</p>
<p>Ruiz, Department of Justice lawyer Jim Hayes and defense attorney Jose Quinon agreed that Ligotti is a changed man since January.</p>
<p>"In retrospect I'm appalled at how I behaved. I put money before patients," Ligotti told the judge.</p>
<p>Jamie’s mother, Lisa Daniels-Goldman, attended the hearing in the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. federal courthouse in Miami via Zoom and pleaded with Ruiz "to please not make Jamie a victim again."</p>
<p>Debbie Howland, whose daughter Ava died in a West Palm Beach sober home in 2018, also spoke via Zoom.</p>
<p>"I got a life sentence of pain, grief and endless tears," she said.</p>
<p><strong>One test, millions of dollars</strong></p>
<p>It would be hard to overstate the scope and toll of the addiction treatment fraud sweeping through Palm Beach County by 2013.</p>
<p>The county was an international for-profit treatment destination. Posters plugging addiction help in Palm Beach County greeted arriving passengers at Orlando International Airport. High-wealth drug users could access concierge care in beachfront homes with gourmet meals.</p>
<p>Estimates pegged the industry at $1 billion, making it one of Palm Beach County’s largest industries.</p>
<p>And it was rife with abuse.</p>
<p>A urine test that will detect drugs is cheap. It can be bought for as little as $25 at local drugstores.</p>
<p>By contrast, a single, sophisticated “confirmatory” urine test could reap thousands of dollars from a patient’s insurance company.</p>
<p>People in sober homes and treatment centers were needlessly tested multiple times a week, generating staggering insurance payouts. In one case reported by <em>The Palm Beach Post</em> in 2015, nine months of urine testing totaled $304,318. In another instance, the parents of a young woman who overdosed in a sober home after four weeks received urine test bills topping $30,000.</p>
<p>But insurance paid only if a doctor would green-light the expensive test as medically necessary.</p>
<p>As medical director for dozens of facilities, Ligotti obliged, said prosecutors. In addition to ordering millions of dollars in needless tests, they said he prescribed addictive drugs to patients from his Whole Health clinic in Delray Beach. That included <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23779220-ligotti-indictment-2020#document/p20/a2241617">benzodiazepines, a drug</a> lethally mixed with opioids by people who are addicted.</p>
<p>The scheme reached into the pocketbooks of employees at Amtrak, Bank of America and the state of New Jersey who sought treatment and found fraud, an attorney for Aetna Insurance testified at Ligotti’s sentencing hearing. Aetna and organizations using Aetna paid $24 million to providers in the scheme, he said, but worse was the continuing fallout once it was exposed: It created distrust of addiction treatment by people who might need it the most. </p>
<p>Even after a federal subpoena issued in 2016 put Ligotti on notice that he was under investigation, he continued ordering tests, an FBI agent <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23988830-ligotti-transcript-1052020#document/p44/a2388700">testified</a>.</p>
<p>He was indicted in 2020 on 12 counts of health care fraud and money laundering, and one count of conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud.</p>
<p>He pleaded guilty to the conspiracy count in 2022. Other charges were dropped.</p>
<h4><strong>Fallout beyond fraud</strong></h4>
<p>Like many other physicians arrested in local treatment fraud crackdowns, Ligotti was never charged with the overdose or death of a person seeking help for addiction.</p>
<p>But the fallout from urine testing schemes extended far beyond financial fraud.</p>
<p>That’s because unscrupulous local sober home owners and addiction treatment operators didn’t need people seeking treatment to stay drug-free.</p>
<p>They needed people with a drug use diagnosis, insurance and a supply of urine, not a commitment to sobriety. As a result, some sober homes advertised as safe and drug-free turned a blind eye to drug use. People hoping for help wound up overdosing.</p>
<p>Jamie Daniels was among them.</p>
<p>The Michigan State University graduate clerked at a law firm and was studying for his law school entrance exam. </p>
<p>But he had struggled to stay sober since at least college, where his family believed he had easy access to opioids.</p>
<p>In July 2016, Jamie, 23, did what thousands of others had done and flew to Palm Beach County for treatment.</p>
<p>On Dec. 7, he overdosed here.</p>
<p>Then came a wave of insurance bill records totaling tens of thousands of dollars for urine screens and blood tests, including those ordered by Ligotti for Jamie when he was in Michigan, not Florida.</p>
<p>“It's one thing to have an addiction and not being able to overcome it because the addiction overtakes you,” Jamie’s father, longtime Detroit Red Wings play-by-play broadcaster Ken Daniels told ESPN. “But then when bad people get involved and they contribute to it, it makes you sick.”</p>
<p>ESPN produced a <a href="https://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/23053946/how-detroit-red-wings-ken-daniels-voice-hockeytown-lost-son-drugs-insurance-fraud-espn">documentary</a> on the testing fraud and Jamie’s death. When the production crew showed up at Ligotti’s Delray office, he denied ordering the tests. His identity had been stolen, he told reporters: “I’m the victim.”</p>
<h4><strong>Paying a price</strong></h4>
<p>It’s not clear how many other schemes Ligotti has helped prosecutors identify and take to trial. However, records show he offered evidence in one Central Florida case involving rural hospitals and high-priced bogus drug testing that led to multiple convictions. And the judge in that case found that Ligotti had information on people not yet arrested in “a large number of healthcare facilities across the country.”</p>
<p>“I want them all to have to pay a price for what they did,” explained Daniels-Goldman of her reluctant acceptance of Ligotti’s freedom while he helped put two others behind bars.</p>
<p>But other aspects rankled Daniels-Goldman and others. It was late May before Ligotti finally surrendered his <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24182916-ligotti-license-aug-board-final-order">license to practice</a> medicine and another three months before the state’s Board of Osteopathic Medicine formally accepted the relinquishment. In June, his expected prison entry date was <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23935186-ligotti-extended-surrender-date">pushed back</a> to December in part because he was providing testimony in the Central Florida case. In July, he received court <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23935185-ligotti-universale-studios-permission-to-travel">permission</a> to take his family to an upscale resort hotel at Universal Studios.</p>
<p>Ligotti surrendered to the U.S. Marshals Service on Dec. 1. Defense attorney Quinon asked Judge Ruiz to recommend that Ligotti be sent to a prison close to home and not to the Atlanta Penitentiary. </p>
<p>"He's done everything (that prosecutors asked) and he's done it from the heart," Quinon said.</p></div>Along the Coast: Feds seek to slash prison time for disgraced addiction doctorhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/along-the-coast-feds-seek-to-slash-prison-time-for-disgraced-addi2023-12-07T20:31:14.000Z2023-12-07T20:31:14.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p style="text-align:center;"><em><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}12310840488,RESIZE_400x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}12310840488,RESIZE_400x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="12310840488?profile=RESIZE_400x" width="330" /></a>Jamie Daniels with his mother, Lisa Daniels-Goldman. She and Jamie’s father, Ken Daniels, created the Jamie Daniels Foundation to help young adults struggling with substance abuse. Jamie, 23, died in a Boynton Beach sober home. <strong>Photo provided by Jamie Daniels Foundation</strong></em></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>By Pat Beall</strong></p>
<p>Jamie Daniels made it just 228 days in Palm Beach County’s fraud-ravaged addiction treatment system before <a href="https://jamiedanielsfoundation.org/jamies-story/">overdosing</a> in a local sober home seven years ago this month.</p>
<p>A college graduate and aspiring lawyer, Daniels landed in the heart of a $746 million scheme built on exploiting drug users and bilking insurance companies.</p>
<p>Delray Beach osteopath Michael Ligotti was a key player and profiteer who pocketed millions from it, prosecutors <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23779219-ligotti-probable-cause-affidavit-7302020">said</a>. When he was sentenced to two decades behind bars in January, a Department of Justice press release heralded his arrest and conviction as <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/florida-doctor-sentenced-substance-abuse-treatment-fraud-scheme">the largest addiction fraud</a> case ever brought by the DOJ.</p>
<p>Ligotti, though, was not locked up. Instead, he remained free as he worked with prosecutors on investigating and prosecuting other fraudsters. And while he was booked into prison last week, prosecutors are now asking a Miami federal judge on Dec. 8 to shave eight years off his sentence. </p>
<p>Jamie’s mother, Lisa Daniels-Goldman, was in the courtroom when the original 20-year penalty was handed down. She knew his cooperation would delay his entering prison and hasten his exit. </p>
<p>Daniels-Goldman said prosecutors assured her that even with a sentence reduction, Ligotti would never serve less than 10 or 11 years. “I want to make sure it’s no less than that,” she said. She can’t travel to the hearing Friday in Miami. But she intends to make a victim’s statement on her son’s behalf.</p>
<p>“He doesn’t deserve a quiet entrance to prison,” she said of Ligotti. “He doesn’t deserve to be forgotten.”</p>
<p><strong>One test, millions of dollars</strong></p>
<p>It would be hard to overstate the scope and toll of the addiction treatment fraud sweeping through Palm Beach County by 2013.</p>
<p>The county was an international for-profit treatment destination. Posters plugging addiction help in Palm Beach County greeted arriving passengers at Orlando International Airport. High-wealth drug users could access concierge care in beachfront homes with gourmet meals.</p>
<p>Estimates pegged the industry at $1 billion, making it one of Palm Beach County’s largest industries.</p>
<p>And it was rife with abuse.</p>
<p>A urine test that will detect drugs is cheap. It can be bought for as little as $25 at local drugstores.</p>
<p>By contrast, a single, sophisticated “confirmatory” urine test could reap thousands of dollars from a patient’s insurance company.</p>
<p>People in sober homes and treatment centers were needlessly tested multiple times a week, generating staggering insurance payouts. In one case reported by <em>The Palm Beach Post</em> in 2015, nine months of urine testing totaled $304,318. In another instance, the parents of a young woman who overdosed in a sober home after four weeks received urine test bills topping $30,000.</p>
<p>But insurance paid only if a doctor would green-light the expensive test as medically necessary.</p>
<p>As medical director for dozens of facilities, Ligotti obliged, said prosecutors. In addition to ordering millions of dollars in needless tests, they said he prescribed addictive drugs to patients from his Whole Health clinic in Delray Beach. That included <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23779220-ligotti-indictment-2020#document/p20/a2241617">benzodiazepines, a drug</a> lethally mixed with opioids by people who are addicted.</p>
<p>The scheme reached into the pocketbooks of employees at Amtrak, Bank of America and the state of New Jersey who sought treatment and found fraud, an attorney for Aetna Insurance testified at Ligotti’s sentencing hearing. Aetna and organizations using Aetna paid $24 million to providers in the scheme, he said, but worse was the continuing fallout once it was exposed: It created distrust of addiction treatment by people who might need it the most. </p>
<p>Even after a federal subpoena issued in 2016 put Ligotti on notice that he was under investigation, he continued ordering tests, an FBI agent <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23988830-ligotti-transcript-1052020#document/p44/a2388700">testified</a>.</p>
<p>He was indicted in 2020 on 12 counts of health care fraud and money laundering, and one count of conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud.</p>
<p>He pleaded guilty to the conspiracy count in 2022. Other charges were dropped.</p>
<h4><strong>Fallout beyond fraud</strong></h4>
<p>Like many other physicians arrested in local treatment fraud crackdowns, Ligotti was never charged with the overdose or death of a person seeking help for addiction.</p>
<p>But the fallout from urine testing schemes extended far beyond financial fraud.</p>
<p>That’s because unscrupulous local sober home owners and addiction treatment operators didn’t need people seeking treatment to stay drug-free.</p>
<p>They needed people with a drug use diagnosis, insurance and a supply of urine, not a commitment to sobriety. As a result, some sober homes advertised as safe and drug-free turned a blind eye to drug use. People hoping for help wound up overdosing.</p>
<p>Jamie Daniels was among them.</p>
<p>The Michigan State University graduate clerked at a law firm and was studying for his law school entrance exam. </p>
<p>But he had struggled to stay sober since at least college, where his family believed he had easy access to opioids.</p>
<p>In July 2016, Jamie, 23, did what thousands of others had done and flew to Palm Beach County for treatment.</p>
<p>On Dec. 7, he overdosed here.</p>
<p>Then came a wave of insurance bill records totaling tens of thousands of dollars for urine screens and blood tests, including those ordered by Ligotti for Jamie when he was in Michigan, not Florida.</p>
<p>“It's one thing to have an addiction and not being able to overcome it because the addiction overtakes you,” Jamie’s father, longtime Detroit Red Wings play-by-play broadcaster Ken Daniels told ESPN. “But then when bad people get involved and they contribute to it, it makes you sick.”</p>
<p>ESPN produced a <a href="https://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/23053946/how-detroit-red-wings-ken-daniels-voice-hockeytown-lost-son-drugs-insurance-fraud-espn">documentary</a> on the testing fraud and Jamie’s death. When the production crew showed up at Ligotti’s Delray office, he denied ordering the tests. His identity had been stolen, he told reporters: “I’m the victim.”</p>
<h4><strong>Paying a price</strong></h4>
<p>It’s not clear how many other schemes Ligotti has helped prosecutors identify and take to trial. However, records show he offered evidence in one Central Florida case involving rural hospitals and high-priced bogus drug testing that led to multiple convictions. And the judge in that case found that Ligotti had information on people not yet arrested in “a large number of healthcare facilities across the country.”</p>
<p>“I want them all to have to pay a price for what they did,” explained Daniels-Goldman of her reluctant acceptance of Ligotti’s freedom while he helped put others behind bars.</p>
<p>But other aspects rankled Daniels-Goldman and others. It was late May before Ligotti finally surrendered his <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24182916-ligotti-license-aug-board-final-order">license to practice</a> medicine and another three months before the state’s Board of Osteopathic Medicine formally accepted the relinquishment. In June, his expected prison entry date was <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23935186-ligotti-extended-surrender-date">pushed back</a> to December in part because he was providing testimony in the Central Florida case. In July, he received court <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23935185-ligotti-universale-studios-permission-to-travel">permission</a> to take his family to an upscale resort hotel at Universal Studios.</p>
<p>Ligotti entered prison Dec. 1. Citing his cooperation, prosecutors the same day <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24182917-ligotti-request-for-reduction">asked </a>a federal court judge in Miami to consider cutting Ligotti’s sentence from 20 years to 12, a 40% reduction. Ligotti’s attorney is seeking a larger reduction.</p>
<p>Neither his attorney nor prosecutors responded to requests for comment.</p></div>Delray Beach: City leaders going after drug makers related to opioid crisishttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/delray-beach-city-leaders-going-after-drug-makers-related-to-opio2017-08-02T13:51:12.000Z2017-08-02T13:51:12.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p><strong>By Jane Smith</strong><br /><br /> Beleaguered by increasing overdoses in the city and receiving little help from state and federal agencies, Delray Beach leaders plan to sue big drug makers. They want to offset the financial drain on their public safety budget of responding to overdoses.<br /> In the first six months of 2017, drug overdoses rose 36.4 percent to 412 when compared with the first six months of 2016, according to the Delray Beach Police Department. Fatal overdoses were up by 27.6 percent to 37 in the same period, the data showed.<br /><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960730872,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960730872,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-left" width="99" alt="7960730872?profile=original" /></a>“Our city, indeed our state and country, struggle with an unprecedented crisis of people addicted to heroin and synthetic opioids,” Mayor Cary Glickstein said at the mid-July commission meeting. “No pathogen, virus, or war on this country’s soil has caused the death and destruction as the scourge of opioid addiction.” <br /> Commissioners unanimously voted to work with the Boca Raton office of the Robbins Geller Rudman & Heller law firm. The agreement, which calls for no up-front tax dollars from Delray Beach and the law firm to share a portion of the proceeds if the city wins, was to be reviewed Aug. 2, a day after press time. The law firm’s proposed contingency agreement calls for a 23 percent share of the recovery, plus costs and expenses, for filing a lawsuit through a motion for summary judgment. Anything after that filing, the firm wants a 26.5 percent share.<br /> Robbins Geller will represent the city against leading drug makers, distributors and possibly insurance companies. Delray Beach may be the first city in Florida to take such action. Palm Beach County is considering whether to file such a lawsuit.<br /> At least four states and 12 cities have sued the pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors of narcotic pain relievers with claims similar to the tobacco litigation. Even Mike Moore, former Mississippi attorney general, has become involved in the opioid lawsuits, representing the state of Ohio. <br /> As Mississippi attorney general in 1994, Moore filed the first state lawsuit against tobacco companies, claiming they harmed the public health by misrepresenting the dangers of smoking. He spearheaded national efforts that led to a $240 billion settlement. <br /> Many public health officials think heroin users started when they were prescribed prescription pain relievers for injuries. When people become addicted to the prescription pain killers but can no longer get them legitimately, they often turn to street drugs such as heroin. The street drugs are often much cheaper. <br /> Pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma was said to have made billions of dollars in profits from selling OxyContin, “a highly addictive and dangerous painkiller originally designed only for end-stage cancer pain where addiction didn’t matter, but marketed as nonaddictive,” Glickstein said.<br /> In Florida, prescription pain killers in 2015 were written at the rate of 72 to 82 per 100 people, meaning that number of people were taking them at a given time, said Mark Dearman, a Boca Raton partner in the Robbins Geller law firm.<br /> Dearman touted the firm’s big wins: $17 billion against Volkswagen, a $7.2 billion settlement against Enron Corp. and a $1.57 billion settlement against HSBC, a banking and financial services company.<br /> Glickstein also railed against insurance companies for “paying billions in insurance claims” for counseling and urine tests “as if these were established medical procedures, which they are not, and which have, in fact, provided little in the way of sustained recovery for suffering addicts and desperate families.”<br /> Nearby Boynton Beach has seen a more shocking rise in the numbers of overdoses and fatalities. For the first six months of 2017, overdoses more than doubled to 331 from the same period the year before, according to the Boynton Beach Police Department. Fatalities increased about 2.5 times, with 32 deaths, the data showed.<br /> Mayor Steven Grant plans to talk to the city attorney so Boynton Beach doesn’t miss an opportunity to offset its costs of dealing with the opioid crisis.<br /> “I want to talk with the city attorney and my commission colleagues about whether it makes more sense to pursue a case on our own or go to an outside counsel on a contingency basis,” he said. <br /> The claims of negligence and deceptive marketing seem “like milquetoast when people are dying,” Delray Beach Vice Mayor Jim Chard said.<br /> Dearman said, “We don’t have the ability to go after them criminally; we have the ability to go after them civilly.”</p></div>Along the Coast: State responds to rise in overdose deaths with new legislationhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/along-the-coast-state-responds-to-rise-in-overdose-deaths-with-ne2016-03-30T15:27:28.000Z2016-03-30T15:27:28.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p><strong>By Mary Hladky</strong><br /><br /> Facing an epidemic of drug overdose deaths, Florida lawmakers passed a number of bills in the recently completed legislative session that take steps to rein in the problem.<br /> “I think the Legislature has really developed an understanding of the impact of substance abuse disorders and mental health … and an understanding of the epidemic we are facing with heroin and opioids,” said Mark Fontaine, executive director of the Florida Alcohol and Drug Abuse Association. “These bills together show a deliberate effort by the Legislature to start addressing how we can be more effective to deliver care, respond to the opioid/heroin epidemic and coordinate services.”<br /> The legislative action comes as drug overdose deaths have surged in Palm Beach County, the state and the nation.<br /> The number of deaths jumped to 368 in the county last year, a 62.8 percent increase since 2013, according to data released by the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner’s Office in late February. <br /> Palm Beach County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Bell has said he thinks the mixing of heroin with fentanyl is causing the increase in drug overdose deaths.<br /> Nationally, drug overdose deaths have increased 137 percent since 2000, claiming nearly 500,000 lives, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in January. The biggest driver is the increased use of heroin and opioid pain relievers.<br /><br /><span class="font-size-3" style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Drugs outlawed by category</span><br /> One of the most significant new laws in Florida is the Designer Drugs Enforcement Act, proposed by Attorney General Pam Bondi.<br /> The law bans categories of drugs, such as those related to synthetic marijuana, rather than individual chemical compounds. It is aimed at solving the perpetual problem of illicit drug makers tweaking the composition of a drug so that it is not on the list of illegal substances.<br /> “It advances the ability to classify dangerous substances as being illegal even before they appear,” said James Hall, a Nova Southeastern University epidemiologist who studies substance abuse and drug outbreaks. <br /> In the past, it could take years to recognize the threat of a new compound and await legislative action to outlaw it.<br /> “We have had over 300 new drugs appearing in the illicit market in the last 10 years,” Hall said.<br /><br /><span class="font-size-3" style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Delivery of services reformed</span><br /> Lawmakers also approved wide-ranging reforms in a single bill aimed at improving the delivery of mental health and substance abuse treatment services. <br /> One key provision is a “no wrong door” policy so people who need treatment can get it regardless of whether they have committed a crime or have a personal crisis. It creates central receiving facilities intended to channel people to emergency care and intervention services. <br /> It also “aligns” the legal processes for assessment, evaluation and receipt of services under the Baker Act and the Marchman Act. The Baker act allows for involuntary examination or commitment of those with mental illnesses who may be a threat to themselves or others. The Marchman Act allows for involuntary commitment of those undergoing a substance abuse crisis.<br /><br /><span class="font-size-3" style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Some other new laws</span><br /> • A pilot program for Miami-Dade County that will allow drug addicts to exchange their dirty needles for free, clean ones. The aim is to reduce new HIV and hepatitis C infections caused by sharing needles and to give drug users information about treatment programs and other resources. <br /> Hall said the hope is to expand the program statewide. “That has been identified as a critical need with the rise in opioid deaths across the state,” he said.<br /> The bill was stalled for three years in the legislature because some say it would encourage drug use, although studies have shown that is not the case, he said.<br /> • A requirement that pharmacies sell lock boxes for prescription drugs to prevent drugs from getting into the wrong hands and to display signs saying the boxes are available for purchase.<br /> • A tool to combat prescription opioid abuse by making it easier for physicians to prescribe abuse-deterrent prescription opioids. These pills are more difficult to crush by addicts who want to smoke, snort or inject the drugs. Crushing drugs bypasses time-release properties, making overdose more likely.<br /> While Hall and Fontaine are glad to see the new legislation, they said much work remains to be done.<br /> “Florida has not kept up with the demand for treatment,” Hall said. “Until we address addiction through treatment and prevention programs and intervention and counseling, the cycle will continue.”<br /> Fontaine agrees.<br /> “We remain behind the rest of the country in funding for mental health and substance abuse treatment in proportion to the population,” he said. “Some of the other states have taken a more aggressive approach to the heroin epidemic.”<br /> Substance abuse, especially the rising use of heroin, has become an urgent topic at the national level and addressed by both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates.<br /> In March, the U.S. Senate passed a broad drug treatment and prevention bill 94-1. The measure authorizes money for treatment programs for addicts, including those in jail. It also strengthens prescription drug monitoring programs and expands the availability of the drug naloxone, which helps reverse overdoses.<br /> But a fight continues over extra funding for the programs, and the fate of the legislation in the U.S. House is uncertain.<br /> Also in March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidelines for prescription painkillers, recommending that doctors try pain relievers such as ibuprofen before prescribing highly addictive pills.<br /> The guidelines are intended to change the practices of doctors dating back 20 years when they began prescribing opioids for routine pain. Since then, opioid painkillers such as OxyContin, Percocet and Vicodin have become the most widely prescribed drugs in the country.</p></div>