DOCTOR: DRUGS, ILLS DIDN'T MATCH

Prescription abuse expert testifies at Bucks OxyContin trial that early
refills indicated misuse.

Robert Cipollini walked into Dr. Richard Paolino's office complaining about
a bee sting. He walked out with a prescription for Xanax, a powerful
anti-anxiety drug usually administered to people exhibiting panic attacks.

"There is nothing in his diagnosis that shows acute panic attacks or
anxiety," Dr. William Vilensky, a nationally recognized expert on abuse of
prescription drugs, testified Monday in Bucks County Court.

Cipollini later received prescriptions for OxyContin, the powerful
painkiller sought by drug abusers because it can deliver a heroin-like
high. Vilensky said Paolino wrote an OxyContin prescription for Cipollini
when the patient requested a refill just 21 days into a 40- day prescription.

"It indicated there was too much medicine being used or something else was
being done with it," Vilensky said.

Cipollini provided that answer himself last week. The witness testified
that he was selling his bottles of OxyContin and Xanax to Severio "Sammy"
Borelli of Philadelphia, who recently died of an overdose. Cipollini said
Borelli paid him as much as $1,500 a bottle for OxyContin, and that he
obtained nine of 10 prescriptions from Paolino for the drug. Cipollini said
Borelli sold the drug on the street.

Vilensky testified as the trial of Paolino and Dr. Wesley Collier moved
into its second week. The two physicians are charged with selling
prescriptions for OxyContin and Xanax to drug dealers, who allegedly
obtained the prescriptions from Paolino's clinic in Bensalem Township
simply by paying the cost of a $60 office visit. On the street, OxyContin
brings a price of as much as $80 a dose.

Paolino lost his license to practice medicine in the fall of 2000, but
allegedly continued to see patients and write prescriptions until his
arrest in March 2001. In early 2001, Paolino allegedly enlisted Dr. David
Harmon and later Collier to sign blank prescription forms because
pharmacies had begun to refuse to fill prescriptions bearing his signature.
Harmon pleaded guilty in February.

Vilensky has degrees in pharmacology and osteopathic medicine, and has
served on the faculties of several medical schools in New Jersey. He has
testified in about 400 criminal and civil trials, and was enlisted by
prosecutors in Bucks to study the charts of Paolino's patients and render
opinions on whether the heavy doses of OxyContin and Xanax prescribed were
justified according to Paolino's notes on the charts.

In Cipollini's case, Vilensky said, the 25-year-old Philadelphia man
received Xanax after complaining of a bee sting in April 2000. By the fall,
he also was prescribed OxyContin after complaining of back pain.

Paolino performed a cursory examination on Cipollini, and started him out
at an 80-milligram dose of OxyContin, which is the strongest dose available
on the market.

"On the first complaint he gives him the strongest stuff," said Vilensky.
"He starts him out with the atomic bomb without knowing if a cap gun would
work."

According to the medical records, Vilensky said, Cipollini continued to see
Paolino into the early months of 2001. Unknown to Paolino, by that time
Cipollini had been recruited by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to
obtain OxyContin prescriptions from the physician. By January 2001,
Vilensky said, Cipollini had been prescribed heavy doses of both OxyContin
and Xanax and was coming into the office for refills weeks ahead of schedule.

"That should have indicated to Dr. Paolino that his patient was taking
twice as much as what was prescribed," said Vilensky. "That didn't faze
him, because he gave him another prescription. He was either taking twice
as many tablets or was diverting them."