CHIROPRACTOR, DOCTOR ACCUSED OF SELLING PAINKILLERS ILLEGALLY IN BROWARD

Law enforcement officials shut down the offices of a chiropractor and a
medical doctor Tuesday, charging each with illegally prescribing Oxycodone,
Xanax, Valium and other powerful painkilling drugs.

Dr. Raul De Jesus Jimenez, 51, was arrested Tuesday morning while he was
writing a prescription in his car at a parking lot between his Fort
Lauderdale home and his office in Pompano Beach, said Broward Sheriff's
Office spokesman Hugh Graf.

Detectives later arrested Kathy Anne Ragone, a chiropractor who runs the
Tender Loving Multi-Medical Pain Center in Oakland Park, and charged her
with conspiracy and with practicing medicine without a license.
Chiropractors are not permitted to prescribe drugs, but Graf said between
Jimenez and Ragone, undercover investigators were able to buy 2,000 pills
in a six-month period.

"They were giving out painkillers like crazy," Graf said. "Sometimes you
didn't even need a prescription." The Oakland Park clinic was the center of
the illegal operation, Graf said.

The Oxycodone was sold for as little as $2.50 each, and Graf said it was
likely that many pills were sold on the street for as much as $6 a pill.

The arrests came after a five-month investigation that began when the
Broward Sheriff's Office identified Jimenez and Ragone as Oxycodone
sources. The Sheriff's Office, the Hollywood Police Department, the Florida
Department of Law Enforcement, the FBI and the Florida Department of Health
all took part in the investigation.

Deaths from abuse of prescription medicines have soared throughout Florida
in recent years, far surpassing illegal street drugs such as cocaine and
heroin. Last year, a South Florida Sun-Sentinel investigation traced almost
400 deaths to pill overdoses in seven counties from Miami-Dade to
Okeechobee during 2000 and 2001.

Part of the reason, state officials contend, is the explosive growth of
pain clinics, some staffed by doctors with little or no training in the
specialty, that routinely order heavy doses of narcotics for their patients.

Under state law, anyone can open a pain clinic so long as a licensed
physician is hired to serve as medical director. Florida law also allows
doctors who register as "dispensing practitioners" to sell narcotics in
their offices, rather than send patients to pharmacies to fill
prescriptions for the drugs.

According to Broward County Medical Examiner's Office records, Jimenez
prescribed drugs involved in the June 2001 death of Lee Hinkle, 27, of
Deerfield Beach, whom the doctor was treating for heroin addiction. At the
time, Jimenez practiced at a clinic in Wilton Manors.

Jimenez holds a dispensing license, though not at Ragone's Oakland Park
location, according to state records.