Todd E. Watson, owner of the South Florida Pain Relief & Injury Center, now resides in a cell at the Broward County Jail, a month after his arrest on charges of trafficking prescription painkillers.
But business continues to hum along at his Oakland Park pain clinic.
With state lawmakers poised to approve reforms to curb illegal pill trafficking through South Florida's pain clinics, Watson's case highlights the legal gaps that have allowed these clinics to proliferate with little scrutiny -- loopholes largely untouched by the new proposals.
South Florida -- and Broward County in particular -- has become the nation's chief supplier of black-market prescription narcotics, police and health officials say, a trend fueled by a cottage industry of storefront pain clinics that has grown from an estimated 60 to 150 clinics in the region in the past year alone.
Just 50 South Florida doctors dispensed nearly nine million pills of the dangerous painkiller oxycodone in a six-month span last year, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Narcotics investigators say these clinics are feeding an epidemic of overdose deaths from Florida to Appalachia. The crisis prompted the Legislature -- after seven years of inaction -- to move forward on efforts to monitor and prevent prescription-pill abuse.
The Florida Senate on Friday passed a bill that would create a database to track narcotics prescriptions filled by doctors and pharmacists -- a tool to detect possible "doctor shopping" by drug addicts who seek pills from several doctors.
IN TALLAHASSEE
The Senate bill also requires pain clinics to register with the state and submit to annual inspections by the Department of Health. Currently, most pain clinics operate without the oversight or even the knowledge of state health agencies.
The state House of Representatives is expected to vote on the bill early this week.
But even if these reforms become law, many pain clinics will still operate with less oversight than many other healthcare providers.
For example, the Senate bill does not require criminal background checks for clinic owners or key personnel, which state law requires for workers at most other health facilities.
So the new reforms wouldn't touch people such as Watson, who continues to own -- and presumably profit from -- his pain clinic on East Commercial Boulevard, despite two recent felony arrests on drug charges.
Watson, 45, was arrested on Feb. 6 on charges of driving while intoxicated and illegal possession of oxycodone, after he drove his Mercedes-Benz up on a sidewalk to avoid a Broward sheriff's deputy who tried to pull him over for speeding, according to an arrest report. The deputy said he found 16 oxycodone pills in Watson's car, in a bottle labeled for a different medication.
On March 24, Watson -- who is not a doctor or licensed medical professional -- was arrested again on charges that he gave a bogus prescription to to a police informant to obtain oxycodone pills, court records show. Detectives arrested Watson after they watched him receive a bottle of pills from the informant in the parking lot of a Days Inn hotel, the records show.
Watson, of Cooper City, has pleaded not guilty in both cases. He remains in jail on $500,000 bail.
Watson has a criminal record including guilty pleas to battery and welfare fraud, court records show. He also attended two 30-day drug-treatment programs run by the Broward Sheriff's Office in 2005 and 2006.
Records show Watson opened his pain clinic last May. He once owned an MRI facility in Hallandale Beach.
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