uPotent New Brand Of Synthetic Marijuana Linked To 120 NYC Hospitalizations In One Weekr

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  (pimento of doom)

  Lest you think health officials have been overreacting to the dangers of synthetic marijuana, a recent spate of hospitalizations may change your mind: In New York City area, one particular new brand of potent synthetic cannabis has sent 120 people to the hospitals in the last week.

  That’s just one brand, only in NYC. The hospitalizations happened during the week of April 8, according to DNAInfo.com, citing a report from the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. That’s compared to two to three synthetic marijuana-related hospitalizations per week between January and March of 2015, on average.

  Apparent victims of “Mr. Big Shot” were all men, mostly over the age of 25, who suffered from a wide array of health problems requiring a hospital trip: They experienced seizures, rapid heart rate, high blood pressure, vomiting, nausea and hallucinations after smoking the chemical substance that is often disguised and sold as incense.

  “’Mr. Big Shot was too strong,” one man who lives near an area where synthetic marijuana is often found told DNAInfo. “It made people jittery, I saw them throw up and pass out. Since April they’ve stopped selling it.”

  Though some bodegas and smokes shops have removed Mr. Big Shot from their shelves, there are other brands of synthetic marijuana out there. The drug is gaining popularity because while it has the effect of a strong marijuana, it doesn’t show up on drug screens.

  “It’s very cheap, you can buy a bag from anywhere between $2 and $5,” Diana Ayala, deputy chief of staff for Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito told DNAInfo. “It doesn’t come up on drug tests. So if you are on parole, if you have an ACS case, this is the ideal drug because nobody is going to be able to test for it.”

  It’s especially dangerous because the ingredients are constantly changing, as manufacturers adjust to authorities outlawing the chemicals used to make the drug: In 2012, the State’s Health Department banned the sale and possession of dozens of chemicals used to create the synthetic drug.

  “The tough thing is that the ingredients are constantly changing,” said Ricky Wong, the Health Department’s Director of Community Affairs. “Distributors are adapting to the environment as far as a legal perspective.”

  ‘Mr. Big Shot’ Linked to 120 Synthetic Marijuana Hospitalizations in a Week [DNAInfo.com]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uFTC Rolls Out Interactive Resource For Victims Of Identity Theftr

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  The FTC launched a new tool today that aims to make it easier for consumers to recover from identity theft.

  With seemingly daily reports of new data breaches and related scams, it’s no secret that identity theft is now more of a concern than ever. In an effort to help victims work their way through the process of restoring and protecting their identities, the Federal Trade Commission has launched a new online interactive tool.

  IdentiyTheft.gov – and its Spanish counterpart RobodeIdentidad.gov – are the FTC’s latest resources for identity theft victims; aiming to make it easier for consumers to report and recover from the often devastating intrusion.

  The website provides an interactive checklist, sample letters and other materials that are intended to simplify the recovery process and help victims to understand which recovery steps should be taken as soon as they are alerted that their identity has been stolen.

  According to the FTC, immediate steps that should be taken include contacting the companies where you know fraud has occurred and placing fraud alert on your credit reports.

  The site also offers specialized tips for different forms of identity theft, including tax-related and medical identity theft, the FTC says in a statement.

  Additionally, the tool provides specific information for consumers who have been notified that their personal information was exposed in the case of a now all-too-common data breach.

  According to the FTC, the resource was developed as a response to the growing number of identity theft incidents reported to the agency each year.

  While identity theft has always been a top consumer complaint reported to the Commission, in 2014 it received more than 330,000 reports from consumers who were victims of such incidents.

  FTC Launches New Resource for Identity Theft Victims [Federal Trade Commission]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uFamily Switches To Sprint To Get Bill Cut In Half, Ends Up With Bill For $3,800r

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  (Image: KDKA-TV)

  While we’ve criticized Sprint’s “half off” promotion, which says it will cut your current wireless bill in half, for really only providing savings of about 20%, we’re pretty sure the idea wasn’t to stick customers with nearly $3,800 in bills for service they never used.

  KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh has the story of a family that tried to take advantage of the Sprint offer and switched all five of their wireless numbers over to the carrier in January.

  However, they immediately realized a huge problem: There was no Sprint signal in and around their home, effectively making the phones useless for them.

  So the mom contacted Sprint and was told the company would switch her back to her old provider. But then the bills started coming.

  After the first invoice came, she called Sprint and was assured that it was just an error. The bill must have gone out before her account was credited, so she should just ignore it.

  “Then I got a second bill and I got a third bill,” she tells KDKA’s Marty Griffin. “Then I got a notice my service was going to be terminated and that I was going to be turned over to a collection agency.”

  Over the course of four months of back-and-forth with Sprint, the bill had ballooned to $3784.91 — again, for service her family was never able to use and which had been cancelled months earlier.

  Had the alleged debt gone into collections and been reported to the credit agencies, that could have had a very negative impact on her credit score. In a last-ditch attempt, she contacted KDKA for help.

  And, as happens most of the time when the media gets involved, Sprint suddenly realized that it had screwed up. Within a matter of hours, the company was apologizing and telling the customer that her account had been zeroed out. Sprint also said it was working to make sure her credit reports were not negatively impacted.

  Sprint recommends that anyone looking to switch check the company’s coverage map to see if their ZIP code is covered. However, not all ZIP codes are the same size so the mere presence of a wireless signal in one part of a neighborhood doesn’t mean you’ll get a signal elsewhere in the area.

  We’d recommend that you ask neighbors what wireless providers they have and what their coverage is like. Or ask a friend who has the service you’re considering to come by the house for a second to see if they get a strong enough signal.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uEvery Regular Grocery Store Is Already A Downmarket Whole Foodsr

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  (Frankieleon)

  The idea of a lower-priced version of Whole Foods aimed at younger consumers is intriguing, but there’s already a hugely popular downmarket alternative to Whole Foods for people seeking natural and organic groceries. It’s called Walmart.

  Well, there’s also Costco, Kroger, Wegmans, Trader Joe’s, and whatever your preferred local grocery chain is. While Whole Foods plans a whole chain aimed at younger shoppers, the problem is that the current generation of young adults are used to seeing organic vegetables for sale everywhere that conventionally grown vegetables are found. Whole Foods isn’t growing as quickly as it did in the last decade because millennials can’t afford to shop there. They’ve stopped growing so quickly because what used to be their exclusive products are now for sale in every store.

  The Walmart-Whole Foods comparison is interesting because of the companies’ interesting connection when it comes to organic offerings: they now sell organic foods under the Wild Oats brand. Wild Oats was a competing natural-foods grocery chain that Whole Foods acquired in 2007, then were forced to sell two years later when the Federal Trade Commission forced the company to reverse the merger and sell Wild Oats.

  The New Organic Walmart Is Eating Whole Foods’ Lunch [Bloomberg News]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uClass Action Suit Filed In California Over Wells Fargo’s Alleged Customer Account Abusesr

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  (Mike Mozart)

  A lawsuit filed earlier this month by the city of Los Angeles accuses Wells Fargo of pushing employees to engage in fraudulent conduct with regard to consumer accounts in order to meet the bank’s sales quotas. Now, one of those customers has filed his own lawsuit against the San Francisco-based bank alleging the same misconduct deceived and defrauded consumers across the country.

  The Los Angeles Times reports that the new lawsuit, filed by a California man on behalf of all wronged Wells Fargo customers, claims the bank’s unfair practices created undue hardships and financial stress to clients.

  The man claims, among other things, that bank employees opened at least 7 accounts in his name without permission and that he was routinely hounded by bill collectors to pay fees on those accounts – both issues detailed in Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer’s original complaint.

  The city claims in its lawsuit filed two weeks ago that Wells Fargo’s high-pressure sales culture encouraged employees to misuse customer information to open unwanted accounts and then charge those accounts fees – essentially creating a “fee generating machine.”

  Other harmful practices reportedly backed by the bank – and detailed in the city’s suit – include allegations that employees at the bank hid fees, refused to close accounts on request and forged signatures in order to meet quotas set forth by the bank.

  As for the new class action suit, the California man says he – and other consumers – were victims of nearly all of the deceptions described in the city’s case, including: employees withdrawing money from customers authorized accounts to pay for the fees assessed by Wells Fargo on unauthorized accounts; placing customers into collections when fees and other debts accumulated in the unauthorized accounts; and placing negative information in credit reports when the unauthorized fees went unpaid.

  The man says he began banking with Wells Fargo in 2011 and soon noticed “some anomalies, such as unwanted fees,” the L.A. Times reports.

  Two years after opening just one checking and one savings account, the man visited a local branch to discuss an unauthorized charge. At that time he learned that seven unauthorized accounts had been opened in his name, using a signature that was not his, the suit states.

  The new complaint, which seeks restitution and damages, asserts that the bank’s alleged abuses “caused significant stress to, and hardship and financial losses for, its customers.”

  Statements from Wells Fargo employees included in the suit reportedly confirm some of the company’s purportedly deceptive tactics.

  In one account, a current employee claims to have witnessed other bank employees opening unauthorized accounts on a “nearly daily basis,” the L.A. Times reports.

  According to the suit, the opening of such accounts was enabled by a database called ClientTrack that supposedly made sensitive customer information accessible to bank employees across the country.

  A spokesperson for Wells Fargo challenged that point, saying the bank does not “have a system that matches the description in the complaint. And all our systems are designed to comply with applicable laws, including privacy laws.”

  Suit seeks damages for all victims of alleged Wells Fargo customer abuses [The Los Angeles Times]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uHardee’s/Carl’s Jr. Slaps A Hot Dog & Potato Chips On A Cheeseburger, Calls It “Most American Thickburger”r

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• When it comes to stacking meat-upon-meat, pretty much nothing surprises us these days. So a hot dog on a hamburger? Pretty much inevitable (see: bacon on hamburgers). Adding potato chips? Sure, why not get it all done with at once. That’s the lineup for the Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s upcoming Most American Thickburger.

  Along with the meat and Lay’s chips will be ketchup, mustard, tomato, red onion, pickles and American cheese, reports the Associated Press, with the whole thing weighing in at 1,030 calories and 64 grams of fat. It goes on sale for $5.79 alone or $8.29 for a combo at both restaurants starting May 20.

  “The hot dog is like a smoked meat product, so it’s not unlike bacon,” Brad Haley, chief marketing officer of CKE Restaurants, the owner of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s told the Associated Press. “We’ve had this idea, believe it or not, for a long time,” Haley said.

  We do believe, you, Brad. Because America does seem to go for meat overdoses — remember the Meat Mountain?

  This isn’t the ME Thickburger will be joining Thickburger siblings that have come before it, including the Philly Cheesesteak Thickburger and the Texas BBQ Thickburger.

  CARL’S JR., HARDEE’S TOP BURGER WITH HOT DOG AND CHIPS [Associated Press]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uCVS Feels Pain Of $22 Million Penalty For Florida Painkiller Pill Millsr

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  (zipsonic)

  When you think of Florida and the Drug Enforcement Administration, your head might be filled with images of cocaine-packed speedboats or propeller planes sneaking in pallets of marijuana. But in recent years, the DEA has also been focused on major drugstore chains that looked the other way as stores filled massive numbers of questionable painkiller prescriptions. Nearly three years after shutting down a pair of CVS pharmacies in the Orlando area, the company has agreed to pay $22 million to put the matter behind them.

  The two CVS stores, both located in Sanford, FL, had their DEA registrations revoked in 2012 after investigators found that pharmacists there were filling painkiller prescriptions far in excess of the average pharmacy. It marked the first time the DEA had accused a major pharmacy chain of operating a pill mill.

  For example, in 2011 the average drugstore in the U.S. placed orders for 69,000 oxycodone dosage units for the entire year. The two Sanford CVS stores, located around 5 miles from each other, combined to order more than 3 million dosage units. The DEA and other authorities maintained that CVS had to filling prescriptions were not based on legitimate medical needs.

  The DEA says that Florida became the “nation’s epicenter for the illegal distribution of prescription drugs,” due to the combination of doctors willing to prescribe pain medication without regard to medical need and pharmacies willing to cash in by filling prescriptions that should have been red-flagged.

  CVS is not alone in having painkiller problems in Florida. In 2013, Walgreens agreed to pay $80 million for its alleged negligence in allowing prescription painkillers to hit the black market in the state.

  Subsequent revelations about that investigation showed the extent to which Walgreens management ignored signs of a growing pill problem and may have even encouraged it.

  In 2010, a Walgreens pharmacy in Oviedo, FL, not far from Sanford (or from my high school in Winter Park — go Wildcats!) was chastised by the corporate office for not selling enough pain pills.

  “We need to make sure we aren’t turning legitimate scripts away,” the company wrote in a letter to the store. “Please reinforce.”

  At the same time, Walgreens paid bonuses based on the number of prescriptions filled, which may have encouraged pharmacies to fill orders even when the pharmacists knew the drugs were not being used for legitimate medicinal purposes.

  In one year, that Oviedo store went from purchasing the average amount of oxycodone to nearly three times the national average.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist