Drug Abuse

Federal authorities Friday raided the office of a doctor suspected of prescribing narcotic painkillers and other widely abused medications to patients who had no legitimate need for them. Undercover agents posed as patients at John Dimowo's offices in Wilmington and Anaheim and were able to get prescriptions for addictive drugs without the doctor examining them, the affidavit states. Dimowo, a pain doctor featured last year in a Times investigation into prescription overdose deaths, is a prolific prescriber of painkillers, such as Vicodin , writing an average of at least 37 prescriptions a day, according to a search warrant affidavit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

For a muscular agency that combats vicious drug criminals, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration acts like a terrified and obstinate toddler when it comes to basic science. For years, the DEA and the National Institute for Drug Abuse have made it all but impossible to develop a robust body of research on the medical uses of marijuana. A pro-marijuana group lost its legal battle this week when a federal appellate court ruled that marijuana would remain a Schedule I drug, defined as having no accepted medical value and a high potential for abuse.

With this month's seizure of 7 tons of marijuana at the U.S.-Mexico border, it's probably time to stop pretending that the assorted statewide legalization measures sweeping the country in recent years are the foundation for a domestic pot-growing industry that will create jobs and can be taxed and regulated like other industries. Marijuana -- medical and otherwise -- has already been largely taken over by the Mexican drug cartels, which enforce their personnel regulations with bullets and do not pay taxes to ship their goods across the border.

New York police plan to distribute "bait bottles" of fake pain-killers equipped with invisible GPS devices in a drive to combat the scourge of pharmacy robberies by addicts and sellers looking for oxycodone tablets, which can fetch more than $80 per pill on the street. New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced the novel approach at the 2013 Clinton Health Matters Conference in La Quinta on Tuesday, saying his city's cases of  oxycodone-related crime have included a retired police officer who resorted to robbing pharmacies to satisfy his craving for the highly addictive narcotic.

California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris on Thursday called on Gov. Jerry Brown to restore funding to a prescription drug-monitoring program that health experts say is key to combating drug abuse and overdose deaths in the state. Harris' appeal to restore funding to CURES, as it is known, follows an article in The Times last month that reported that the system, once heralded as an invaluable tool, had been severely undermined by budget cuts and was not being used to its full potential.

Joey Rovero's quest for pills ended at Pacifica Pharmacy. It was the same for Naythan Kenney, Matt Stavron and Joseph Gomez. All four were patients of a Rowland Heights physician who was a prolific prescriber of narcotic painkillers and other addictive drugs. To get their fix, they needed more than a piece of paper. They needed a pharmacist willing to dispense the drugs, and at Pacifica they found one. All four died of drug overdoses after filling prescriptions at the tiny pharmacy in Huntington Beach, court and coroners' records show.

Cocaine dependence is a devilishly difficult addiction to break, owing to the drug's unique chemical ability both to reward users and to disrupt their impulse-control mechanisms. But a surprising drug combination may offer an equally clever way to loosen cocaine's hold on an addict, a new study has found. The experimental treatment regime used a mix of topiramate -- an anti-seizure drug that has shown promise in breaking dependence on nicotine and alcohol -- and stimulant drugs -- amphetamines -- which, in addition to being widely abused, are used to treat attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder.

The civil trial pitting Britney Spears' ex-manager Sam Lutfi against the singer's conservatorship and her parents opened ugly Thursday, with accusations of drug abuse and a desperate attempt to hide addiction leveled against Spears by Lutfi's lawyer.  But Friday it turned synchronistically weird as a lawyer for papa Jamie Spears said the pop star's downward spiral was actually set off by her 2002 breakup with Justin Timberlake, who coincidentally got...

A 25-year-old man has been found guilty of fatally stabbing the son of a Japanese filmmaker in a Beverly Hills carport in 2010, a crime that prosecutors claim was fueled by the belief that the victim had forced the man's girlfriend into prostitution and pornography shoots. Scott Barker was also convicted Tuesday, after less than a day of deliberations, of two sentencing enhancements: lying in wait and using a knife in the commission of a crime. Barker faces life in prison when he is sentenced Nov. 9. "I'm really disappointed," said Barker's attorney, Bradley Brunon, moments after the verdict.

A call for change is afoot in the difficult and often heartbreaking world of addiction treatment. For decades, 12-step programs and a medication-free approach have dominated the recovery industry. But now doctors and scientists and the leader of the National Institute on Drug Abuse are pushing for broad recognition of addiction as a disease and more medical approaches to therapy. In the last couple of years, a top addiction society officially declared addiction a "brain disorder.