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Vegas Mixx was a treatment for male sexual dysfunction using two drugs — Diazepam and Sildenafil, better known as Valium and Viagra. The Vegas Mixx Web site — aimed at guys who come to Vegas for a fling — used crude terms: “Vegas Mixx … makes you rock hard, and keeps you that way. Enjoy the ride.”
Sunday, Nov. 29, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Only in Vegas
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Sun Coverage
Pharmacist Scot Silber thought he was sitting on a gold mine when he developed a drug compound to help men suffering from sexual dysfunction.
Silber, part-owner of Green Valley Drugs, combined Valium and Viagra into a single pill and called it Vegas Mixx. He advertised it with the promise that the combination would mellow the mind, relax the muscle that causes ejaculation and provide a lasting erection.
Silber invested thousands of dollars in research and an edgy Internet marketing campaign, promising men in obscene terms on a Web site that they could perform “like a porn star.”
Silber owned the pharmacy with entertainer Danny Gans, who was known for his squeaky-clean Christian image and died May 1 of a prescription narcotics overdose.
Gans was not aware of Vegas Mixx, Silber said. “As you could probably guess, he would not have approved,” he said.
As reported on “Face to Face With Jon Ralston,” Silber took the Vegas Mixx Web site down about a month ago. And now, after years of effort, Silber says, he no longer fills prescriptions for the drug. Vegas Mixx was a bust.
But Silber could face bigger troubles. Green Valley Drugs is a compounding pharmacy — meaning it can combine unique mixes of drugs, based on a doctor’s prescription — but may have been operating outside the bounds of its license. That could lead to investigations by the Nevada State Pharmacy Board and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Larry Pinson, executive director of the pharmacy board, would not say whether the board was investigating Green Valley Drugs. And while he could not talk specifically about Vegas Mixx, he said that generally speaking, compounding pharmacies are allowed to make drugs only to fill individual patient prescriptions, versus making batches in advance and then marketing their availability.
According to Silber and his marketing agent, Dale Matteson, Vegas Mixx was initially produced in quantities large enough to provide samples to urologists, family doctors and medical spas.
A compounding pharmacy should not be making samples, Pinson said.
“If you make batches, that’s manufacturing and you have to be licensed by the FDA to do that,” Pinson said. “A compounding pharmacy can only compound prescriptions that are patient-specific. Making samples is not patient-specific. You can’t make up batches of a drug and give them to doctors to do what they want. That’s manufacturing.”
Licensed in 25 states
Illegal or not, the rise and fall of Vegas Mixx provides insight into the fringes of the business of medicine in Las Vegas.
Silber and Matteson were interviewed for this story in Silber’s corner office at Green Valley Drugs, in a business park in the Whitney Ranch development in Henderson. The company’s lobby is adorned with framed thank-you notes for Silber, who supports Little League teams and is chairman of the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation. The company, which is also known as Green Valley Med, is licensed in 25 states and brings in millions of dollars monthly as a compounding pharmacy and medical supplier, Silber said.
Vegas Mixx was never going to become the company’s primary product, Silber said, but the men thought they had found a product that would be successful. In December 2006, Silber hired a researcher who concluded that between one-third and two-thirds of men suffer from premature ejaculation. “The market is huge! The market is wide open!” proclaims a presentation by the researcher.
The combination of Diazepam and Sildenafil, better known by the brand names Valium and Viagra, solved the problem, Silber said. The anti-anxiety drug Valium relaxed the mind, allowing a man who suffered from premature ejaculation to perform without worries. The Viagra relaxed the muscle that causes ejaculation and prolonged the erection.
The Vegas Mixx Web site — aimed at guys who come to Vegas for a fling — used crude terms: “Vegas Mixx ... makes you rock hard, and keeps you that way. Enjoy the ride.”
Silber and Matteson don’t apologize for their style of marketing. They say they were going after a young demographic of men who like to party.
Matteson recalled the optimism when they launched the product: “It’s Business 101 — find a need and fill it.”
Referral by Internet
Silber and Matteson initially hoped to use the Vegas Mixx Web site to refer patients to local doctors, who would perform examinations and prescribe the drug. The site promised easy access to the drugs: “Even if you are in Vegas from out of town to play, we can accommodate a quick MD visit and a quick RX for a long-lasting experience.”
And this is where they may have been treading on dangerous ground legally, according to two doctors who met with them as they were developing the drug.
About two years ago, Dr. Warren Magnus and his then-business partner, Dr. Ivan Goldsmith, were taken to lunch by the men and recruited to join the team. The pitch was that the Web site would funnel patients to the doctors, who would prescribe the Valium-Viagra mix.
According to Magnus, prescribing the drug legally required a physical examination. But Silber told the doctors, according to Magnus, that Internet evaluations and medical histories would take the place of the physical examination.
“They were looking for doctors to sign up, to basically put themselves in the clear on dispensing (controlled) substances,” Magnus said.
The proposal made Magnus uncomfortable. He said that even if it was OK with Viagra, which he was unsure about, it could not possibly be OK to bypass actual examinations to prescribe Valium, a controlled substance closely monitored by the Drug Enforcement Administration.
“There’s far too much legal exposure — if not an outright violation of the law — to prescribe for people you’ve never seen,” Magnus said.
Magnus said he operates on the “cutting edge” of medicine — he’s involved with anti-aging therapies, for instance — but “when I smell a rat I run like hell. I distanced myself as quickly as possible.”
Silber and Matteson downplay the conversations with Magnus and Goldsmith, who is involved in a lawsuit with Green Valley Drugs. They said they found a medical director, whose name they would not reveal, and that to their knowledge, Vegas Mixx was never distributed without an actual patient examination that resulted in a prescription.
Never a big seller
To Silber and Matteson’s disappointment, Vegas Mixx never gained traction in the marketplace. They said that perhaps 100 doctors filled prescriptions of 10 to 20 pills each. The pills were advertised online as costing between $10 and $17.50 each, depending on the formula.
Pinson, from the pharmacy board, was aware of Vegas Mixx because of queries by Face to Face. But in 2007, about the same time Green Valley Drugs was making Vegas Mixx, the board sent out a memo to pharmacists regarding “some questionable compounding practices ... with regard to the supplying of physicians of certain compounded medications.”
Silber said that before the memo, he thought that as long as a doctor had a license to dispense drugs — as opposed to just writing prescriptions, which is the case with most physicians — a pharmacy could sell the dispensing doctor’s compounds just like any other medication. After receiving the memo, Silber hired an attorney to provide a legal opinion on the matter.
“It is our understanding that Green Valley Med is in complete compliance of all state and federal guidelines,” Silber said.
The FDA would not comment for this story, but forwarded the Sun its compliance policy guide for compounding pharmacies. Compounding traditionally refers to making reasonable quantities of drugs “upon receipt of a valid prescription for an individually identified patient from a licensed practitioner,” the guide states. The FDA will “seriously consider enforcement action” when a pharmacy compounds drugs “in anticipation of receiving prescriptions,” the guide said.
In an unrelated issue, the pharmacy board investigated and disciplined Silber in 2004 after he missed a technician’s error while working as a pharmacist at a Sav-on Pharmacy. Pharmacy board records show that the label was supposed to instruct the patient to take doses of 1/2 to 1 cc of Roxanol — a highly concentrated form of morphine. But the label said 1/2 to one teaspoon of Roxanol. The patient’s wife watched him take hydrocodone and then drink directly from the Roxanol bottle, and he later died, pharmacy board records show.
Silber told the Sun that he did make an error by not catching the mislabeled drug, but that the patient intentionally killed himself, which is why the board’s discipline was light, a $500 fine.
Silber said he has not heard from the pharmacy board or FDA about an investigation into Vegas Mixx.
These are dangerous drugs that pharmacists are mixing much like a bartender mixes a drink. Anyone would be well advised to stay away from this type of thing, as users are also undoubtedly mixing this with alcohol and god knows what else. Sex is a gift of life, however these compounds can turn it deadly.
i wonder if the pharmacy board is as absolutely, positively, totally and completely pathetic as the medical board is???
are these licensing boards full of nothing but maggots???
I remember Scott when he bought out the Green Valley Drugs That used to be in the shopping center Trader Joe's is at on the corner of Green Valley Parkway and Sunset. He then move the pharmacy down GVP to the east to a little shopping center in front of where Lee's Liquor now stands.
He was always a hard working person and his family was always around helping. I hope this doesn't bring him any grief.
Hard working or not, this guy is a major SLEAZEBUCKET.
They could have mixed Viagra with sugar and got similar results.
Are people that far gone that they need to mix drugs to get off (no pun intended)! Everyone talks about the legalization of weed and what that would bring upon society but nobody has put their foot forward in addressing prescription drug abuse. We all know big pharma will not lay a dime into preventing prescrition drug abuse or misuse they have too much to lose. I also blame the state oversight boards for these problems because they are normally appointed positions by the same politicians who are bought out by the pharma industry.
Nothing will ever change.
p
you've got to be kidding fremm??? Silber is just another one of these money grubbing angleshooters who is trying to skirt the system for a quick buck....Unfortunately the NV medical and pharmacy boards have no teeth....
Silber is lucky he's not in the slammer. Back in 1998, I obtained Viagra and Claritin from Norfolk Mens Clinic, an internet drug provider. To get the stuff, I filled out a form on-line. That's all. Some mystery doctor approved my prescription. Several weeks later, after paying with a credit card, I received the drugs. Curiously, the drugs were sent from Alabama, although Norfolk was based in Australia.
The story doesn't end there. I got a call from the company's president when I tried to get a refill. Anton Pusztai told me he was having trouble getting more Claritin. Trouble? A few months later, Anton was arrested for providing the drugs without actual examinations. He was sentenced in US Court to 15-1/2 years! His helper got 6 years.
The point is that this Silber guy actually believed that doctors didn't need to see a patient-at all-to receive drugs. "But Silber told the doctors, according to Magnus, that Internet evaluations and medical histories would take the place of the physical examination". In the Pusztai case, the Fed said "Internet sites that claim to provide the services of a doctor when a prescription is issued on the basis of answers to questions on a form can be scams like the one charged here," Assistant Attorney General David W. Ogden said. "People who need a prescription should consult a physician, not a website".
Mr. Silber, thank your lucky stars that those doctors told you to pound sand. Do you have any snake oil on sale?
Believe me I am not trying to stick up for Scott, I think it is hard for anyone to believe that someone you have known of for years would be involved in illegal practices as this.
Again greed takes over a mans soul. Anyone that breaks the law gets what they deserve.
It worked for me.
I feel like no one actually read this article there were no prescriptions given without an examination which means there was no wrong doing. And what is really being missed is that it seems like this was not a harmful mix and helped people, i know hundreds of men that would love to have a med like this.
Vegasmixx saved my sex life, Mr. Silber is a community angel.
Drjoyson,
Perhaps you didn't read the story. It is illegal to mix up a batch of drugs and offer them as samples to doctors. Mr. Silber told Marshall Allen the vials I obtained were samples given to doctors, which they were not. Regardless, they should have been individually packaged and labeled with the ingredients clearly identified. It is also illegal to market this compounded drug on the web. Why isn't Mr. Silber willing to identify his medical director if he did nothing wrong? Why did he take down his website after I made calls about Vegas Mixx... or refuse to be interviewed for Face to Face?
I'm sorry ms. Gentry but I don't express my opinion on an article in order to be bitterly attacked by a member of the staff I hold to my opinion and see no reason to discuss it with you
I apologize if you feel I attacked you, Drjoyson.
Comment removed by moderator. Contained an advertisement.
Dana,
I think those questions that you asked Drjoyson need to be asked to Marshall Allen. It seems that Mr. Allen, a credible and respectable journalist, was granted an interview for a reason. Contact him for some answers and tips....
Dana Gentry,
You can not apologize for someone else's feelings; you can only apologize for your own actions.
I read the article and both yours and Drjoyson's comments(I would have thought a doctor would be better educated, this Drjoyson is barely literate). I see no reason for you to apologize, but if you do, then apologize for your actions, not Drjoyson's feelings.
"Believe me I am not trying to stick up for Scott, I think it is hard for anyone to believe that someone you have known of for years would be involved in illegal practices as this."
fremmasmind -- don't be too hard (no pun intended) on yourself. Most law and its thousands of pages of administrative code are a confused, self-contradicting trap deliberately set for the innocent -- this makes "illegal" virtually meaningless. Two approved drugs dispensed by pre-approved, apparently competent pharmacists, with a case-by-case oversight by pre-approved, apparently competent physicians, is prima facie as proper as it gets. It's not like these guys were hawking priapism enhancers. It's more like the mega-players in the game run by the FDA just eliminated some minor players.
"Again greed takes over a mans soul. Anyone that breaks the law gets what they deserve."
You need to reconsider your opinion of greed -- c'mon, this is Vega. Greed is what built this city and continues to fuel it. Greed is also what made this nation great -- without it there would have been no entrepreneurs, no gold rushes, no railroads, no cars, no industry, no progress.
And this is why that American "can do" spirit is now choked off and stifled -- lawmakers, bureaucracies and regulators in a frenzy to replace every last vestige of freedom with ruling over single aspect of our lives. If a presumably mature guy decides to buy a product to put some lead in his pencil, stupid legal technicalities should not interfere.
Drjoyson -- back off. You were NOT "bitterly attacked" by anyone.
Man, now they tell me. I just bought a case of that stuff.
And dipstick, you don't have to be so mean...
Sounds like something that would appeal to the hate-talk radio pig stye. Along with the weight loss pills that reduced stress, the baldness cures that didn't work, the cold stop formula that ruined the sense of smell, the vitamin C drink that was supposed to cure cancer, the work at home program that didn't work, etc.
When you have people that Buy Palin's book, you know you have a class of chumps good for the milking.
These guys should be in trouble. They were obviously manufacturing drugs, not dispensing, and marketing those drugs. The internet marketing makes it clear that this was manufacturing and not compounding and dispensing as a pharmacy should.
The V&V Cock-tail. For those that want to get sloshed and still get it up!
Here's some inneresting reading... Remember when it was VERBOTEN to advertise this kind of junk??? mred is correct; it's ALL OVER the AM/hate talk airwaves. Must be gittin' all the good ol' boys to ante up for their snake oil! "Got wood? NO? Well, have we got a deal for YOU! Have wood constantly! WOO HOO! We guarantee it!" Of course, if you have wood for over 4 hours, please, we have another medication for that; call immediately!
http://www.naturalnews.com/010315_advert...
Scot Silber is a killer with no remorse whatsoever!!! The patient mentioned at the end of this story was my 38 year old brother who DID NOT "intentionally" kill himself! Our family is sick over the untrue comments made by Silber and the fact that the State Pharmacy Board only fined him $500.00 for the fatal error. How would Scot Silber feel if it were his family member? My brother, Matt Moore, was a newlywed that wanted nothing more than to start a family. He had a zest for life, loved his family and friends, and was an awesome role model. We love and miss him very much and regret that his time was cut short at the hands of Silber. How many more people need to die before Scot Silber pays for his mistakes?