Pubdate: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA) Copyright: 1999 Mercury Center Contact: http://www.sjmercury.com/ Author: BY H.G. REZA Los Angeles Times SMUGGLED MEDICINE PLAGUES LATINOS Major shipments of Mexican prescription drugs are being smuggled into Southern California from Tijuana, fueling greater sales through illegal back-room clinics and storefronts, state and federal officials say. The pervasive black market sales, mainly by Latino merchants, has emboldened shop owners not only to sell pharmaceuticals to immigrant customers but to take a more dangerous new step: Some merchants are giving injections and practicing medicine on customers. Tustin police are investigating whether the illegal practice contributed to the death Monday of 18-month-old Selene Segura Rios. The girl died two hours after receiving what her parents were told was a penicillin injection in the back room of a toy store. She was the second Latino child in the last 10 months to die after receiving injections from unlicensed practitioners in Orange County. ``Stores selling illegal prescription drugs of all kinds are a pervasive problem in the Hispanic community,'' said Howard Ratzky, supervising drug investigator for the state Department of Food and Drug. ``It's very hard to stop, and nobody knows how many stores out there are engaging in this.'' Ratzky said the issue has gone beyond ``the trend of an unlicensed store selling prescription drugs.'' Some stores, he said, ``have begun offering medical treatment by people identifying themselves as physicians.'' A U.S. Customs agent in San Diego also noted a growing number of cases where people who sell the drugs also inject them into patients. ``Unfortunately, immigrants know where these places are. They'll go to the back of the store and someone will say, `You look OK,' and an untrained person will give a kid an injection,'' the agent said. The problem with Mexican drugs is that many are counterfeit medicines and the quality control is lax, said U.S. Customs Agent Lisa Fairchild. ``A scarier danger is that sometimes the packets don't contain the medication that the label says is inside,'' Fairchild said. Buyers of illegal prescription drugs are typically low-income and uninsured persons, mostly immigrants from Mexico and Central America. But they can also be unwitting customers of pharmacies that bring in medications from Mexico. - --- MAP posted-by: Don Beck