Feds Crack Down On Hundreds Of Medical Marijuana Shops In California

Associated Press

Federal prosecutors have sent dozens of letters warning medical marijuana shops in Los Angeles and Long Beach to shut down or risk potential criminal or civil action. Authorities say more than 100 pot clinics across Los Angeles County received the letters Tuesday. Lawsuits also were filed against two property owners in Long Beach, telling them it's illegal to allow pot sales in buildings they own.

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AM Alert: California SEIU lobbies lawmakers on health care

Sacramento Bee

The Service Employees International Union California, fresh off a major local securing a tentative contract agreement that includes a raise, is marshaling its members this morning to lobby lawmakers. Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina, and Assemblyman Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, are scheduled to address attendees, who will be pressing health-related initiatives such as a Medi-Cal expansion as well as legislation to prohibit large employers from paying employees a wage low enough that they would qualify for Medi-Cal. The rally starts at 10 a.m. on the Capitol's south steps.

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State employees to receive raises in proposed deal

Associated Press

About 95,000 state employees could be in line for a 4.5 percent pay raise as part of a tentative three-year agreement reached Tuesday between Gov. Jerry Brown and California's largest public employee union.In an email to members, Service Employees Union International Local 1000 President Yvonne Walker said the pay hike would be received by July 1, 2015, with specific timing dependent on state revenues.

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Chantix effective in curbing alcohol abuse

Examiner.com

Recent research is supporting the efficacy of using Chantix (varenicline)gum to reduce cravings for alcohol abuse. Yesterday’s Boston Globe reported that the popular stop-smoking drug reduced cravings and alcohol use in 200 people in a controlled study. Another recent study of 64 participants, classified as “heavy drinkers” at the Wheeler Center for the Neurobiology of Addiction at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center at the University of California, San Francisco, saw the group reduce their average number of drinks per week by 35.32% through the use of Chantix.

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CA Doctor Indicted For Illegally Dispensing Oxycodone

Workerscompensation.com

Fresno, CA (WorkersCompensation.com) - On Thursday, a federal grand jury returned a 27-count indictment against Terrill Eugene Brown, 61, of Visalia, charging him with conspiracy to dispense oxycodone, dispensing of oxycodone and hydrocodone, and structuring currency transactions to avoid bank reporting requirements, United States Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner and Fresno County District Attorney Elizabeth Egan announced.

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Former California politician facing new charge

Associated Press

A longtime California politician convicted of using campaign donations and taxpayer funds to fuel what he described as a gambling addiction has been charged in a separate case involving an illegal campaign flier, prosecutors said Wednesday. Former Santa Clara County Supervisor George Shirakawa was charged with false impersonation after authorities said his DNA matched DNA found on a stamp used on the flier sent during a city council race in 2010.

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Divvying up California healthcare funds

Los Angeles Times

The 2010 federal healthcare law will make health coverage available to millions of the uninsured, but it won't reach all of them. In California, county health officials and the Brown administration are now tussling over how much to spend on the remaining uninsured, and on county health programs in general. Gov. Jerry Brown wants to reclaim some of the state tax dollars that counties have been spending because there will be fewer uninsured to care for, and that's not unreasonable. But the state should be careful not to undermine the counties' efforts to protect public health, nor should it deny them the ability to care for more people in a more cost-effective way, if they choose.

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California budget talks set to finish this week amid much better tone than usual

San Jose Mercury News

With California lawmakers facing a midnight Saturday deadline to pass a spending plan, the annual number-crunching debate no longer centers on whether the state's books are balanced but how much of a possible surplus should be spent. Instead of fighting tooth and nail to prevent cuts to their favorite programs, leaders at the state Capitol will spend the rest of the week deciding how to divvy up extra revenues to schools, social services and public safety programs.

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Treatments of physical and mental health are coming together

Los Angeles Times

Many days, the sheer weight of Iszurette Hunter's clinical depression becomes more than she can lift. She clings to her bed in her South Los Angeles home. Important obligations slide away, including keeping appointments with doctors who are trying to control her asthma and high blood pressure. "I don't have no desire," she explains. As the nation seeks to extend healthcare coverage to millions of new and in many cases chronically ill patients, one of the great parallel challenges to controlling costs and improving delivery of care will be managing the mental health problems of people like Hunter.

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Embattled board mulls prescription abuse solutions

Los Angeles Times

Under pressure from state lawmakers to reform, the Medical Board of California on Tuesday embarked on a search for a new executive director and considered a host of proposals aimed at combating reckless prescribing by doctors that is contributing to overdose deaths.

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Sebelius Asked Companies to Support Health Care Law

New York Times

Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, disclosed on Tuesday that she had made telephone calls to three companies regulated by her department and urged them to help a nonprofit group promote President Obama’s health care law. She identified the companies as Johnson & Johnson, the drug maker; Ascension Health, a large Roman Catholic health care system; and Kaiser Permanente, the health insurance plan.

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Dan Walters: California budget has many holes to fill in 10 days

Sacramento Bee

Anyone who would tune into the Legislature's budget conference committee sessions this week expecting to learn how the 2013-14 budget is shaping up would be disappointed. The committee is going through the budget item by item, at least those items where the Assembly's Democrats and the Senate's Democrats differ, but anything more than slightly controversial is being "left open."

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Study Finds too Many Americans Drink too Much

San Diego Union-Tribune

On any given day in the United States, 18 percent of men and 11 percent of women drink more alcohol than federal guidelines recommend, according to a study that also found that 8 percent of men and 3 percent of women are full-fledged “heavy drinkers.” That means the great majority of Americans stay within the advised limit of two drinks a day for men and one for women, according to the study that appeared in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

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California: Marijuana Seller Takes Plea Deal

New York Times

A medical marijuana store owner whose prosecution by the federal authorities highlighted vast disparities in how California and the Justice Department are responding to the medical marijuana industry abandoned a six-month battle against Washington on Friday and pleaded guilty to 10 charges of marijuana cultivation and distribution.

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California Senate passes bill to curb prescription drug abuse

Los Angeles Times

The state Senate on Thursday unanimously passed the last bill in a broad package of proposed reforms aimed at combating prescription drug abuse and mounting overdose deaths in California. The bills, inspired by a series of investigative stories in The Times, would help authorities track drug abusing patients as well as doctors who overprescribe painkillers and other addictive narcotics. One bill would give the state medical board the power to immediately suspend the prescribing privileges of doctors suspected of putting patients at risk.

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Marijuana regulatory bill stalls in California Legislature (blog)

Sacramento Bee

Lawmakers quashed a bill that would have created a state agency to tax and regulate California's overgrown medical marijuana landscape on Friday. Since California voters gave the green light to medical cannabis in 1996, the state has seen cities and municipalities deal with quasi-legal pot in a variety of different ways, with critics saying many dispensaries serve all comers under the pretense of helping the sick.

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Affordable Care Act's challenge: getting young adults enrolled

Los Angeles Times

Arsine Sargsyan is 23 years old, healthy and uninsured. She chooses to forgo coverage for one simple reason: "I never get sick." Despite her reluctance, Sargsyan is exactly the type of person insurance plans, states and the federal government are counting on to make health reform work.

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California health exchange tops expectations

Modesto Bee

Californians can breathe a sigh of relief over a crucial first step in implementing health care reform. State officials last week unveiled the health plans and premium rates that will be available under the California health exchange. They show the market is working as intended — actually better.

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New insurance market taking shape

HealthyCal.org

California’s new health insurance marketplace is starting to come into focus as a state agency in charge of implementing President Obama’s federal health reform steadily adds more and more detail to the emerging picture, like a painter filling in a vast canvass. But exactly how the final image will look to consumers remains a bit murky. And we probably won’t know the answer until after the health benefits exchange, known as Covered California, opens for business Oct. 1.

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Obamacare's California dreamin'

Politico         

The best news for Obamacare these days is coming out of California — but it’s a best-case scenario that might not work everywhere else in the country. The state surprised many when it announced that there won’t be any big price hikes for the health plans available through its insurance exchange — the marketplace that will serve people who don’t have another place to get health coverage.

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