Task Force Sweeping County for Illegal Prescription Drug Sales

The illegal drugs were stashed under a counter near the cash register in a cramped meat market in Cypress Park, police said.

The undercover officer didn’t utter a secret code word. He simply said he needed something for a cold. According to police, the man behind the counter handed the officer a few tablets of ampicillin, an antibiotic that by law can be prescribed only by a doctor.

After the buy was completed, health inspectors, working with a special task force, swarmed in, seizing the ampicillin tablets and a small quantity of a prescription-strength asthma medication that was hidden amid the pinatas, toys and groceries of the colorful little market.

The sting two weeks ago at the El Torito market on Cypress Avenue was the latest of nearly 200 such operations by the seven-member Health Authority Law Enforcement Task Force, a unit formed two years ago to target illegal prescription drug sales in heavily immigrant communities of Los Angeles County.

The task force--made up of Los Angeles police, county sheriff’s deputies and state health officials--issued a first offense warning to the market owner and confiscated the drugs. The owner could not be reached for comment.

Over the last two years, the task force has seized an estimated $5 million in illegal drugs, forcing merchants who illegally peddle pharmaceuticals to adopt more clandestine tactics.

Shop owners who once displayed drugs like candy on the store shelves now keep them in small quantities, stashed in purses, shoe boxes, car trunks or adjacent businesses that are less likely to be searched by police and health officials.

“There are lot of places where we can buy this stuff,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Det. Steve Opferman, a member of the task force. “But like other drugs, it is going underground.”

And with the crackdown have come skyrocketing prices.

“When we first started, a can of cream of penicillin sold for $1.50,” said Don Ashton, a state health officer who heads the task force. “Now it’s selling for $6.”

Often the illegal pharmaceuticals are smuggled in from Mexico and end up peddled in shops in heavily Latino, Asian and Russian immigrant communities, Ashton said.

Stopping such sales has not been easy, task force members said, because of unfamiliarity among many immigrants with U.S. prescription laws.

Many immigrants come from countries where pharmaceutical drugs are sold without doctors’ prescriptions.

“They come from countries where, if you have asthma, you know what drug you need so you go to the corner store and get it,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, who led efforts to create the task force. In fact, Molina said, some of her constituents resent her role in the crackdown.

In many cases, task force members say, poor immigrants turn to underground drug vendors because they cannot afford to visit licensed doctors or are leery of entering government clinics or hospital because they are not legal residents.

Often, merchants claim ignorance of U.S. drug laws.

Jenny Sok Tae, the owner of Sammy’s Market on Avalon Boulevard in South Los Angeles, pleaded no contest in August to charges of illegally selling prescription antibiotic creams and syringes. A task force sting operation had uncovered the drug sales a few months earlier.

In an interview at her store, Tae said she paid a $1,450 fine and served 30 days on a Caltrans work crew for the crime. She said she recently moved to the United States from China and had never owned a store before.

“I didn’t know the laws,” she said.

She explained that a man walked into her store and sold her the drugs and syringes, assuring her that they were legal to sell.

Since then, Tae said, some of her customers have asked to buy prescription drugs.

“One of my customers told me it’s legal to sell them now and I said: ‘I don’t think so.’ ”

Some merchants have gone to great lengths to hide the illegal drugs.

In January, the task force discovered a stash of antibiotics, contraceptives, anti-inflammatory medicines and steroids hidden in the trunk of a car parked in an alley behind a party supply store in Arleta.

Police said store employees were using the drug supply to fill orders placed by customers. The store owner pleaded no contest to charges of selling prescription drugs without a license and was sentenced to 90 days of community service.

Some officials see the higher prices and secretive tactics as a sign that the task force has been effective.

“Any time that it gets hot like this [the merchants] are going to go further underground,” Molina said.

Legislation written by Assemblyman Martin Gallegos (D-Baldwin Park) and supported by Molina authorized the task force.

Subsequently, the deaths of two toddlers after being treated in illegal back-room clinics in Orange County have drawn more attention to the problems of illegal drug sales and medical care.

The Los Angeles County task force has uncovered illegal drug sales in convenience stores, gift shops, botanicas, clothing stores and swap meets, among other businesses.

Later this month, Los Angeles prosecutors are scheduled to arraign Oscar Alvarez, 35, and his wife, Angela Alvarez, 33, and store clerk Maria Lucia Alvarez, all of Los Angeles, on charges of selling prescription drugs without a license at their knickknack store on Vermont Avenue in South Los Angeles.

A task force sting operation there in July allegedly uncovered hundreds of prescription pills--including pain relievers that have been banned by the Food and Drug Administration because of serious effects.

In an interview at her store, Angela Alvarez said she sells only legal, over-the-counter drugs, such as aspirin and cough syrup.

“The police can say what they want but we all know how corrupt they are,” she said.

Many of the drugs seized by the task force are past their legal expiration dates or have been banned because of potentially fatal side effects, task force members said.

Without consulting a doctor, customers who buy prescription drugs in meat markets and convenience stores also run the risk of combining two medications that can be fatal if taken together.

One of the drugs often seized by the task force is the pain reliever Metamizol, a drug banned in the United States more than 30 years ago because of potentially adverse reactions, said Monette Cuevas, a state pharmacist assigned to the task force.

She said needles and injectable drugs are also dangerous.

“If you don’t have a license and you get the drug in the wrong artery or vein you could cause some problems,” she said.

Despite the many arrests by the task force, Ashton, the group’s leader, said he cannot predict an end to the problem any time soon.

“It will always be there until we can educate the public that there are safer alternatives,” he said.