Task Force Targets Illegal Prescription Drug Sales to Immigrant Buyers

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 speak a secret code word. He simply said he needed something for a cold. According to police, the man behind the counter then handed the officer a few tablets of ampicillin, an antibiotic that by law can be prescribed only by a doctor.

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

The sting two weeks ago at the El Torito meat market on Cypress Avenue was the latest of nearly 200 such operations by the seven-member Health Authority Law Enforcement Task Force, formed two years ago to target the illegal sale of prescription drugs in heavily immigrant communities of Los Angeles County. The unit was formed after an 18-month-old Orange County girl died from an injection by an unlicensed practitioner at a Tustin gift shop.

The task force--made up of Los Angeles police, county sheriff’s deputies and state health officials--issued a first offense warning to the meat 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, causing merchants who peddle pharmaceuticals illegally to become more cautious.

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

“There are a 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.”

Orange County has focused on education. The Safe Healthcare Coalition of Orange County, a group of volunteers, has worked to encourage immigrants who don’t speak English to seek legitimate medical attention.

The coalition was formed after three deaths in the last three years, of a baby, a toddler and a teenager who received illegal prescription medicines and fraudulent medical care.

The coalition, which is the advisory body of the Safe Healthcare Project, meets about once a month. The publicly funded project, created in the spring of 1999, provides health education training to professionals and community groups to encourage use of legitimate health care services. It has also promoted a Spanish-language advertising campaign in bus shelters.

Joe Vargas, the project’s coordinator, said callers are directed to low-cost community clinics, public clinics and low-cost health insurance plans.

Through the advertising, “We are laying our cards on the table. We are explaining the dangers to [consumers],” he said.

But the task is formidable because immigrants are used to self-medication. Still, since the project began, there have been no other deaths attributed to illegally purchased prescription drugs or unlicensed practitioners, he said.

But the drugs are still streaming into shops in heavily Latino, Asian and Russian immigrant communities, Ashton said.

Stopping such sales has not been easy, task force members said, because immigrants are often unfamiliar with U.S. prescription laws.

Many immigrants come from countries where pharmaceutical drugs are sold without 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 there. In fact, Molina said, some of her constituents resent her role in the crackdown.

For the same reasons, Vargas said, Orange County’s education project has been an uphill battle.

“It is very difficult for people brought up in other countries to break that cycle,” he said. “What we hear a lot is, ‘My mother used that, so why can’t I?’ ” he said.

Immigrants say obtaining unprescribed medicines often seems like a quick fix for a worrisome illness. When they are educated about inexpensive, safe alternatives, they are willing to try them.

Maria Elena Santiago, 29, a housecleaner, said when her 5-year-old daughter caught a lingering cold last year, “a friend” obtained antibiotics for her for about $30. She said her daughter suffered no adverse affects, and she thought the purchase cost less than seeing a doctor. “It was easy. It seemed like a quick solution,” she said.

Since then, she has learned there are low-cost clinics that can treat her and her daughter for less money.

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

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

Jenny Sok Tae, 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 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 U.S. 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.’ ”