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Alabama, unless blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court, will attempt to put an inmate to death with nitrogen gas on Thursday night, a never before used execution method that the state claims will be humane but critics call cruel and experimental...Kenneth Eugene Smith, a 58-year-old convicted killer whose 2022 lethal injection was called off at the last minute because authorities couldn’t connect an IV line, is scheduled to be executed at a south Alabama prison...READ MORE

The former Sparks fire chief accused of illegal possession and distribution of steroids says he never gave his resignation and wants to be reinstated...Mark Lawson’s lawyers said in a letter sent to Sparks officials this week he should be returned to his role and placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of his criminal case...They said Lawson maintains his innocence and threatened to file a civil lawsuit alleging he was “condemned, terminated and tried in the public” before criminal charges had been filed. But he is confident the criminal complaint will be dismissed...READ MORE

...recent busts, largely made possible by advances in tapping criminals’ encrypted phones, underscore a reality that European drug authorities have been warning about: More cocaine than ever is pouring into the continent, where South American chemists, traffickers and local mafias are helping to bring it to market...With increasingly clever ways of smuggling the drug and its coca base — including infusing cocaine into plastic chips, charcoal or clothes — authorities and analysts believe they may be finding only 10% to 15%, or even as little as 1%, of what’s coming into Europe, a booming market for cocaine that now rivals the one in the United States...READ MORE

A mother and her daughter have been indicted on health care fraud charges after they allegedly received millions in false Medicare claims...Mirosis Gonzalez...and her daughter Berioska Sosa...used the pharmacy they owned and operated, Aviva Care Pharmacy, to submit over $12 million in false Medicare claims...received payments totaling about $8.4 million...The marketing and telemedicine companies recruited patients and referred Medicare beneficiaries and doctors’ orders and prescriptions to Aviva Care Pharmacy and were paid kickbacks and bribes in return...the companies sent Aviva orders, which the pharmacy accepted...“without considering medical necessity or Medicare reimbursement eligibility.”...They are accused of disguising the kickbacks and bribes they paid to these companies by saying the payments were for marketing and other services...READ MORE</strong>

When Nevada legalized recreational cannabis, people expected the normal array of problems as Las Vegas tourists over-indulged...Legalized cannabis, however, has come with its own set of unique problems. First and foremost casino operators including the Las Vegas Strip's biggest operators...Since they're regulated by federal law, casino operators can't house dispensaries or Las Vegas's newly-approved cannabis lounges. That means that people not only have to leave their Strip or downtown resort in order to buy marijuana, but they also have to leave to legally smoke it...that quirk in the law keeps tourists from smoking and driving. That could change later this year when new rules allow dispensaries like Planet 13 to add consumption lounges to their locations...READ MORE

Four felony drug charges were announced Friday against Mark Lawson after he resigned Monday as Sparks fire chief...The charges include possession of a controlled substance and sale of a controlled substance...A co-defendant listed in the case is Lance Forrester. As recently as 2020, Forrester was employed as a correctional officer with the state, according to Transparent Nevada...Arraignment is set for Jan. 31 in Sparks Justice Court...The charges seemed to take the city of Sparks by surprise. Lawson’s hiring was approved by the Sparks City Council on Nov. 28 with pay of $200,000 plus benefits...READ MORE

In addressing a mountain of price-fixing claims in the United States, Teva has shown a preference for dealing with charges on a state-by-state basis...Teva agreed to settle with Georgia for $3.346 million, the company checked a third state off its price-fixing litigation list and then crowed about the success of its strategy...The agreement comes on top of settling price-fixing claims with Mississippi last year for $925,000 and with Louisiana five months ago for $1.45 million...The figures are relatively modest compared to the $420 million Teva agreed to pay investors earlier this year who alleged that the company concealed a price-fixing scheme which allowed it to raise the cost of some of its drugs by more than 1,000%...The allegations came to light three years ago when 43 states sued 20 generic drugmakers for divvying up markets and raising prices on more than 100 drugs...READ MORE

The Drug Enforcement Administration has alleged that telehealth and digital pharmacy company Truepill unlawfully dispensed thousands of prescriptions for stimulant medications such as Adderall...The DEA announced last week that it served the startup with an order to show cause, which is an administrative action to determine whether a DEA certificate of registration should be revoked...Between September 2020 and September 2022, Truepill filled more than 72,000 controlled substance prescriptions, 60% of which were for stimulants including generic forms of Adderall, according to the DEA's investigation...READ MORE

The convicted ex-CEO of blood-testing startup Theranos got a multi-year prison term Friday. Prosecutors had sought a term with deterrent effect...Elizabeth Holmes, who was convicted 10 months ago of defrauding investors in the blood-testing startup Theranos, was sentenced Friday to 11 years and two months in prison followed by three years of supervised release...Judge Edward Davila, who also presided over Holmes’ four-year criminal fraud case and her four-month trial in U.S. District Court in San Jose, said the case was “troubling on so many levels,” as he handed down the sentence...“Failure is normal. But failure by fraud is not OK,”...READ MORE

Nevada state police arrested a Washington state man and seized 56 pounds of suspected fentanyl with an estimated street value of $3.6 million from a vehicle a trooper stopped near the Utah line...Jorge A. Rivas-Vizcarra, 50, of Royal City was being held on multiple drug charges...in the White Pine County Jail in Ely where his bail was set at $750,000...He was arrested Monday after a traffic stop on U.S Highway 93 about 20 miles north of Ely...READ MORE