The court of Sarreguemines (Moselle) sentenced Doctor Jacques Furlan to two years in prison with a suspended sentence and two years of prohibition from practicing his profession. This general practitioner is in fact accused of having fueled trafficking in Subutex, a drug substituting forheroin, with 285 patients. Indicted since 2013, this doctor practiced in the city of Hombourg-Haut and would have prescribed nearly 25,000 prescriptions of this medication between the end of March 2011 and April 2013. At the opening of the trial, on November 30, 2015, court prosecutor Marion Freitag requested three years in prison, two of which were suspended and banned for life from practicing medicine. The more lenient final verdict, however, requires the doctor to pay a fine of 50,000 euros and reimburse 150,000 euros to help repair the damage suffered by social security, estimated at 500,000 euros.
A drug often diverted, under close surveillance
Dr Furlan wishes to appeal, saying he has never sought to defraud Social Security. Accused of having prescribed Subutex to people who did not need it, the doctor said at the start of his trial that he could not “lead [lui]- even a survey of each patient“. And to add:”we want me to serve as an example and other doctors to be afraid and no longer prescribe Subutex“. The molecule contained in Subutex, buprenorphine, is in fact closely supervised by the Academy of Medicine which last July asked the public authorities to take measures to strengthen the fight against its trafficking. Effective for the withdrawal of opioid drugs, it is also often sought after by heroin addictswho misuse it by dissolving it in water for intravenous injection. Each year, the traffic of Subutex would be responsible for 30 to 40 deaths and would cost 250 million euros to health insurance.
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