Pharmacies

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday cautioned consumers against using quinine for leg cramps, warning that the drug could cause severe side effects, including death. Quinine, sold in this country under the brand name Qualaquin, is approved for treatment of uncomplicated malaria, but has a long history of use as a remedy for leg cramps, especially at night. In many countries, it is sold over the counter. Studies have shown that it can reduce the incidence of cramps by one-third to one-half but that as many as one in every 25 users can suffer serious side effects.

SACRAMENTO - The state paid a $74,400 settlement to a company co-owned by the husband of state Sen. Mimi Walters (R-Laguna Niguel) after her office repeatedly called the prisons agency to check on a claim filed by the firm. The senator's husband, David Walters, co-owns a company that provides pharmacists to the California corrections system. The firm filed a claim with the state last year contending that the business was underpaid for its services. A spokesman for Mimi Walters said this week that the aide who made the calls, D. Everett Rice, was following the senator's policy to aggressively help constituents deal with state red tape.

Medications banned or highly restricted in the United States because of severe, and sometimes fatal, side effects are being smuggled in from Mexico and peddled out of back-room shops across Southern California. These potentially dangerous drugs, which multinational pharmaceutical companies market in Mexico, where regulations and enforcement are less stringent, have shown up consistently in more than 70 raids over the last year of markets, dress shops and swap meets catering to Latino immigrants.

Here's looking at you, Medco. Jerry Lacy played Humphrey Bogart in the 1972 film "Play It Again, Sam. " He also appeared in various soap operas. These days, though, he's playing a bit part in the disaster movie known as the U.S. healthcare system. Lacy, 76, of Calabasas, requires prescription meds to control his cholesterol and blood pressure. His wife takes pills for a thyroid condition. But now Lacy has a choice to make: Pay full price for the meds at drugstores like CVS or Walgreens, or buy from a single source - the online drugstore belonging to Medco.

The Internet has already changed how people shop for books, music, cars and a host of other consumer goods. Next up: prescription drugs. Or so the founders of a Santa Monica start-up called GoodRx are hoping. "There's no other site like it that we know of," said Scott Marlette, a former Facebook employee who's hoping to hit it big again with his new company. "We wanted to create a product where people can find the best pharmacy to go to. " GoodRx, based in a modest office building shared with other tech and media companies, has already attracted some big-name investors, including former Disney President Michael Ovitz and a handful of heavyweight venture-capital funds.

At Molina Medical Group clinics in Southern California, a vending machine rather than a pharmacist dispenses prescription drugs. Molina officials say the machines make life simpler for patients, but their use has drawn objections from some pharmacists. The kiosks are the size of a large refrigerator. They hold a stock of medications for common ailments such as colds, flus and rashes, so patients can have their prescriptions filled before leaving the clinic. "With our patient population, there may be some barriers to getting over to the pharmacy to pick up medication," said Gloria Calderon, vice president of clinic operations for Molina.

Federal agents investigating Michael Jackson's death seized prescription drug records Friday from a Beverly Hills pharmacy favored by the pop star. Nine Drug Enforcement Administration agents armed with a search warrant spent five hours sifting through records at Mickey Fine Pharmacy for "evidence of improper dispensing of controlled substances," Special Agent Jose Martinez said. Jackson was known to have prescriptions filled at the Roxbury Drive store, running up a $101,000 drug bill in 2005, which the pharmacy collected after filing a lawsuit.

Pharmacist Dennis Witherwax, 62, owner of the Medical Arts Rexall Pharmacy in Anaheim, was looking forward to retiring in a few years, but had no successor. He was determined not to sell his 50-year-old business to a chain operator, despite multiple offers to do just that. Pharmacy student Cliffton Amend, 28, dreamed of owning his own pharmacy but lacked the money to buy one and the experience to run it.

The Netherlands became the first country to make marijuana available as a prescription drug in pharmacies to treat cancer, HIV and multiple sclerosis patients, the Health Ministry said. Dutch doctors will be allowed to prescribe it to treat pain, nausea and loss of appetite in cancer and HIV patients, to alleviate MS sufferers' spasm pains and reduce tics in people with Tourette's syndrome. Two companies have been given licenses to grow cannabis to sell to the Health Ministry.

Syncor International Corp. has filed suit against the U. S. Food and Drug Administration to try to stop the agency's plan to regulate pharmacies that prepare special diagnostic drugs. The FDA wants to regulate pharmacies that mix so-called positron emission tomography (PET) drugs used to diagnose patients suffering from tumors, stroke, cancer and heart disease.

Word that Wal-Mart is opening a Neighborhood Market in Panorama City is getting a markedly different reception than the criticism heaped on a similar grocery-only store that the retailing giant plans to open in downtown Los Angeles. Residents of the northeast San Fernando Valley have watched as the recession turned once-thriving commercial hubs into vacant storefronts. The Vannord Center, a 90,000-square-foot-center at the corner of busy Van Nuys Boulevard and Nordhoff Street, has been hit particularly hard with more than half of its 30 tenants closing their doors.

The Internet has already changed how people shop for books, music, cars and a host of other consumer goods. Next up: prescription drugs. Or so the founders of a Santa Monica start-up called GoodRx are hoping. "There's no other site like it that we know of," said Scott Marlette, a former Facebook employee who's hoping to hit it big again with his new company. "We wanted to create a product where people can find the best pharmacy to go to. " GoodRx, based in a modest office building shared with other tech and media companies, has already attracted some big-name investors, including former Disney President Michael Ovitz and a handful of heavyweight venture-capital funds.

The investigation into the death of Whitney Houston is shifting to a new phase, with officials focusing on the prescription drugs found in her hotel room and who prescribed them to her. Investigators are expected in the next few days to serve subpoenas on the doctors, as well as the pharmacies where Houston obtained the prescriptions, as they try to determine her cause of death, according to a source with knowledge of the case. Authorities collected several bottles of drugs from Houston's suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where she was found dead Saturday.

Pharmacy and prescription drug management company CVS Caremark Corp. has agreed to pay nearly $20 million to settle three lawsuits involving allegations that it defrauded pension systems in three states, including California's giant pension fund, attorneys said. The whistle-blower lawsuits, filed by two former CVS Caremark pharmacists, accused the company of reselling returned drugs, changing prescription orders to make them more expensive and submitting false reports about how long it took to fill prescriptions.

Google Inc. has agreed to pay $500 million for carrying advertisements by online Canadian pharmacies targeting consumers in the United States, according to the U.S. Justice Department. The ads resulted in the illegal importation of prescription drugs, the Justice Department said. The $500 million represents the money Google made from selling the drug ads, plus the revenue earned by Canadian pharmacies from sales to American customers. A government investigation found that Google knew as early as 2003 that many online Canadian pharmacies were selling medicine to Americans without valid prescriptions, the Justice Department said.

CVS Pharmacy has agreed to pay more than $2 million in fines and other costs to settle a consumer protection lawsuit alleging that the drugstore chain overcharged customers for sale items and engaged in misleading advertising. The civil complaint, filed Aug. 11 in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleged that CVS failed to provide an immediate discount for certain advertised items. An investigation also determined that since 2006, the company routinely charged consumers more for items than the advertised sale price.

About one in five online pharmacies offering discount prescription drugs from Canada appears to be actually located in that country, raising concerns that many may be peddling counterfeit or adulterated medications, a report for the Food and Drug Administration has found. "We are looking at some of these sites to see if they are truly pharmacy sites, or if this is somebody trying to fool consumers," said Tom McGinnis, the FDA's director of pharmacy affairs.

George Szabo is a happy man when he comes across an antique surgeon's tool or a 19th-Century prescription for aching joints. Because Szabo, who operates an electronic shop in Anaheim, finds the stuff of bygone drugstores fascinating. A few years ago, Szabo began collecting outdated medical equipment and the entire stocks of long-past apothecaries. "It's just my hobby. I enjoy reading about them, how much science has progressed," said Szabo, 48.

Fifteen people — including a physician, a pharmacy manager and gang members — have been arrested in an unusual conspiracy to smuggle prescription drugs into Mexico from Los Angeles by strapping thousands of pills onto human mules. The alleged source of the drugs was Tyron Reece, an Inglewood physician who admitted to regularly writing fraudulent prescriptions for commonly abused medications — including hydrocodone, a powerful painkiller, according to an affidavit filed in federal court in support of a search warrant.

At Molina Medical Group clinics in Southern California, a vending machine rather than a pharmacist dispenses prescription drugs. Molina officials say the machines make life simpler for patients, but their use has drawn objections from some pharmacists. The kiosks are the size of a large refrigerator. They hold a stock of medications for common ailments such as colds, flus and rashes, so patients can have their prescriptions filled before leaving the clinic. "With our patient population, there may be some barriers to getting over to the pharmacy to pick up medication," said Gloria Calderon, vice president of clinic operations for Molina.