Date-rape drug OK’d for sleep disorders

Friday, Feb. 27, 2004 | 10:59 a.m.

RENO -- The state Board of Pharmacy Thursday approved a version of the date-rape drug GHB to be prescribed for some sleep disorders.

A woman testified at a previous hearing of the pharmacy board that it should change its rules on Gammahydroxybutyrate to allow its prescription for treatment of narcolepsy.

The street version of GHB is infamous for being dropped into drinks of unattentive victims. State pharmacy board member Marcie Ranick of Las Vegas cast the only vote against the proposal to provide a limited legal use for the drug. Board executive director Keith Macdonald pointed out that many drugs that have legitimate uses also can be abused.

Macdonald said under the new regulation, there would be limited use of GHB and it would probably be prescribed and distributed by doctors.

Louis Ling, attorney for the board, said unlike the street version of the drug, the legal version would not be used for illicit purposes. The GHB would come in a pill form with a bitter taste, Ling said. That's different from the homemade illegal kind that is liquid and easy to slip into a drink.

Raymond Flores, 25, a former Marine was placed on five years' probation in Las Vegas on Wednesday for doing just that to a woman at The Beach nightclub in August 1999.

Flores pleaded guilty to attempted sexual assault, coercion and perjury in the case where the woman said she drank a shot of tequila he had given her and she then woke up in his motel room.

The board also voted 4-3 to adopt a regulation to require pharmacists to check identification cards in certain circumstances before dispensing a controlled substance.

The regulation requires positive identification of persons picking up controlled substances if they have not had prescriptions filled in that pharmacy and the pharmacy staff is unfamiliar with the person. No identification would be required if the prescription is covered by insurance. But if the person is not known and paying cash, the identification would be required.

Macdonald said the regulation was needed because of an "abundance of fraudulent prescriptions coming through the pharmacies." State investigators are looking into one case, for example, in which a Las Vegas man faces multiple counts of using false prescriptions, he said.

He estimated the identification card would be required in less than 10 percent of the prescriptions written.

Board members Ray Seidlinger of Las Vegas and Michael Triolo of Elko said the law already allows a pharmacist to ask for identification. They said this regulation would be another burden on the pharmacist.

Triolo, Seidlinger and Ranick voted against the regulation.

Triolo also said there was a large transient population in Las Vegas that this would affect.

Armin Quedzuweit, a district sales manager for Albertson's Food & Drug, protested that the regulation singles out cash-paying customers since those with insurance would not be required to show identification.

Quedzuweit said, "You're making a pharmacist more of a policeman." He said pharmacists are "getting more and more frustrated with being policemen."

Elizabeth MacMenamin, representing the Retail Association of Nevada, also asked the regulation be amended.

Macdonald said the regulation could be changed later if it becomes too burdensome on the pharmacists. The board also adopted a permanent regulation allowing pharmacists to administer intranasal flu vaccine. There has been a temporary rule in place and Seidlinger said 25,000 to 30,000 vaccines were administered in Las Vegas this flu season.