A pharmacist from Moselle has just been indicted. He is suspected of having participated in the trafficking of Subutex. A substitute product for opiates, the delivery of which is very restricted.
“Infringement of the legislation on poisonous substances or plants classified as narcotics and fraud at the CPAM”. This is what is criticized for a pharmacist in a small town in Moselle. After being in police custody, he was therefore indicted for trafficking in Subutex, a heroin substitute.
This pharmacist from Hombourg-Haut is suspected of having profited from the practices of Dr Jacques Furlan. The latter was indicted last October after having prescribed between March 2011 and April 2013 nearly 25,000 prescriptions of Subutex to 285 patients.
For its part, the Regional Health Agency had carried out the investigation in the Moselle pharmacy and found “dysfunctions”, such as inconsistencies in the dates of delivery of drugs compared to those of the prescriptions. The pharmacist would also have delivered several substitution treatments at once, which is prohibited.
Both the pharmacist and the doctor dispute the facts. The pharmacist’s lawyer acknowledges that his client may have made management errors. And for his part, the general practitioner had indicated that he was one of the only doctors in the department to take care of heroin addicts, which, according to him, would explain the impressive number of prescriptions.
A highly regulated prescription product
The prescription of Subutex responds to precise rules. The prescription is limited to 28 days. But the products are then only delivered in fractional form, for a maximum of 7 days. In addition, the doctor must contact the pharmacist (appointed by the insured) before writing his prescription, and the pharmacist’s name must be mentioned on the prescription. Finally, given the risks of abuse, dependence and misuse, but also of trafficking, a risk management plan was thus put in place in 2006 by the National Medicines Safety Agency.
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