Boiling points have been reached recently in a startling conflux of corrupt overreach by the Alabama Board of Pharmacy, the predatory pursuit of a Lee County drug monopoly by East Alabama Medical Center and political ambitions in the City of Opelika. Ground zero for the dark forces driving Alabama's economic decline and toxifying its body politic has strangely enough become an independent pharmacy plainly named "The Drug Store". Formerly co-owned by Lisa Hill Leonard and her husband Craig and located on North Dean Road in Auburn, this nexus point of Alabama's authoritarian DNA merged with corporate greed has plagued a small business for nearly twenty years and become enough of an embarrassment to Lee County to merit a lawsuit in federal court as well as statewide media scrutiny.
AL.com:
A disciplinary hearing against an Auburn pharmacist who tested nearly 6,000 people for COVID antibodies early in the pandemic will move forward. An appeals court this week ruled that federal protections shouldn’t stop the state’s case against the pharmacist.
Lisa Leonard, a pharmacist who co-owns the Drug Store in Auburn, asked federal courts to stop a 2021 hearing by the Alabama State Board of Pharmacy. She claimed that the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act shielded her because she was providing pandemic testing.
Leonard began offering antibody tests at the end of April 2020 and tested more than 5,900 people by September, according to court documents. Officials with the Alabama Board of Pharmacy accused Leonard of misrepresenting the value of the antibody tests, improperly disposing of used needles and failing to use personal protective equipment. Leonard argued that the federal PREP Act, which protects providers and vaccine manufacturers from lawsuits during public health emergencies, should block the state’s action.
It is not Leonard’s first run-in with the Alabama State Board of Pharmacy. In 2006, the board imposed $9,000 in fines and five years’ license probation on Leonard and her husband in a case that involved dispensing drugs without valid prescriptions.
The investigation in the 2006 case became extremely heated. According to court documents, the Leonards called the police on an investigator for the board of pharmacy. Leonard claimed board investigator Glenn Wells pulled a gun on her, although Wells denied doing it. He was also involved in the COVID testing investigation, which Leonard claimed was improper.
Leonard also alleged the 2020 COVID test investigation began when another Auburn-area pharmacist lodged a complaint with the board. The complainant worked for a pharmacy that also offered COVID antibody tests and wanted to limit competition from the Drug Store, court documents said.
“The plaintiffs allege that the Board’s intent in bringing the charges and pursuing the hearing is to drive the plaintiffs out of the market to allow ‘favored entities’ to absorb The Drug Store’s market share,” the lawsuit said. “They also allege that the Board’s charges have anticompetitive effects on the market by reducing citizens’ access to COVID-19 antibody testing, decreasing access to information, and decreasing the availability of antibody testing, which increases the cost.”
A pharmacist with East Alabama Medical Center reached out to the board of pharmacy after patients called confused about the results of the Drug Store’s antibody tests, the lawsuit said. On Sept. 4, 2020, staff at the Drug Store stopped doing COVID-19 antibody tests because of “intimidation, threatening actions, and bullying” by board investigators.
For most regular folks in Alabama, the Board of Pharmacy is an unknown quantity. So, what kind of reputation do they have? Here are a few recent headlines chronicling their exploits to help fill you in.
Well, that about answers that question. How about this Chuck Beams character and the EAMC connection?
Mr. Beams runs the EAMC pharmacy and is fixin' to boss up in his run for a seat on the Opelika City Council. Isn't he just a big mule on a small ranch? Working surreptitiously as a front man for the downtown Birmingham medical mafia at EAMC by partnering up with the slimeballs at the Board of Pharmacy to destroy a small business independent pharmacy in Auburn really is a feather in his dunce cap. Beams becoming a made man in the blue cross cosa nostra sure does have its rewards, woe unto any brave soul who might have the courage to run against this corporate shill in what is sure to be a rigged contest to coronate another government goon in the halls of local government. With friends in high places like good ol' Chucky boy, who needs enemies? Not the Drug Store in Auburn, that is sure enough.
Beams appears to be exactly what the Felon Hubbard, Mayor Fuller, Eddie Smith, et al political theft ring types would want in a candidate... monkey business as usual in Opelika