ILLEGAL PRESCRIPTION-DRUG `RIVER' FLOWS FROM MEXICO

High demand, low cost and scattered law enforcement have created an
underground river of prescription drugs that flows across the border
from Mexico into U.S. medicine cabinets, the pockets of people
practicing do-it-yourself medicine and the illegal pharmacies
frequented by recent immigrants.

"It's not like cocaine," said Sachi Hamai, who heads a Los Angeles
task force that has raided 148 backroom pharmacies and clinics since
September. "It's not like there's one big kingpin in Colombia. There
are lots of drugs in Mexico. It's easy access. Anyone could go over
there."

At least nine agencies - local police, the state medical board and
Customs - have jurisdiction to investigate and refer cases of
prescription-drug smuggling for prosecution. But some efforts are not
coordinated.

`Trying to close the loop'

"We're trying to close the loop between local agencies, our agency and
U.S. Customs," said Jud Bohrer, head of criminal investigations for
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in San Diego.

Bohrer - whose agency is involved in a grand-jury probe of an Orange
County, Calif., family linked with illegal pharmaceutical sales in the
1990s - said there has been a concerted effort to improve contacts
between agents working on the case, and that there may be permanent
changes in the way cases are coordinated in the future.

Pharmaceutical-drug investigations involving addictive drugs get the
most attention. Lower-level drugs such as heart medications or
penicillin attract attention mainly when they are sold to customers or
injected in backroom clinic-pharmacies by people who are not doctors.

Helen Curran of Laguna Woods, Calif., said she was concerned that some
prescription-drug-smuggling laws could make criminals of people who
choose treatments not available in the United States. Those include
cancer patients seeking alternative treatments and immigrants who want
to use familiar brands made in Mexico.

Curran began taking laetrile for melanoma 21 years ago, when people
smuggled it across the border into the U.S. by tying it around their
waist or hiding it in bread or containers. Her late husband, she said,
learned how to inject the drug and would administer it to her at home.

Now, Curran, who considers herself cured of cancer, orders it
hassle-free, direct from a mail-order distributor in Mexico.

In Orange County, police recall fewer than a dozen people who have
been prosecuted for selling prescription drugs without a license in
the past 10 years, according to a survey of a dozen police
departments. Most said they have not had prosecutions because no one
reported them.

And unlike Los Angeles, where emergency-room personnel became alarmed
at the number of drug reactions they were seeing, none of the large
hospitals in Orange County say they have seen similar problems.

4 members of same family

Of the cases that have been prosecuted in Orange County since 1990,
four involved members of the same family, including patriarch Manuel
Javier King, 70, who has been arrested three times in three cities on

pharmaceutical-related misdemeanors.

Illegally imported drugs from Mexico have been linked to clinics that
treated three Orange County children who later died.

Selene Segura Rios, 18 months, died Feb. 22, just two hours after she
was given an injection at Los Hermanos gift shop in Tustin. The cause
of her death is not known, pending toxicology studies.

An allegedly unlicensed doctor at a Santa Ana clinic treated
13-month-old Christopher Martinez last April, just days before the boy
died.

Miguel Angel Morales, 15, died Dec. 31, 1997, a day after being
injected with prescription medicine purchased from Nashelies, a Santa
Ana, Calif., gift and novelty store.

Walter Allen, head of the Orange County office of the state Bureau of
Narcotics Enforcement, said his agency tends to focus on health-care
providers who use their prescription-writing authority to traffic in
addictive drugs.

"Pharmaceuticals are probably the most abused drug in the country
because it's readily available through prescription sources," Allen
said. But the agency rarely gets involved with investigations of
someone trafficking in penicillin and similar drugs.

From last October through January, U.S. Customs Service officials
seized pharmaceuticals ranging from the date-rape drug Rohypnol to
antibiotics to steroids from 107 people crossing California's five
border checkpoints.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Lasater, head of the border-crimes
division in San Diego, said the 42 attorneys in his office prosecute
about 3,000 cases a year, half of them narcotics felonies.
Prescription-drug cases, he said, are usually handled administratively
by U.S. Customs, which can levy fines, issue citations and seize property.

Federal sentencing guidelines make it clear that Congress perceives
addictive drugs to be a far greater threat to public safety than
antibiotics, steroids and heart medication.

Federal guidelines

Lasater said a person with no prior criminal history would get up to
six months in prison for smuggling more than 40,000 units of
penicillin under federal sentencing guidelines.

"The same person caught with 20 pounds of cocaine, which is fairly
routine here . . . if that person has no prior criminal history,
they're looking at a 10- year mandatory minimum," Lasater said.