Court Opinion

ID: 9689357
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 18:28:44.714048+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:47.243416
License: Public Domain

Beasley, J.
(dissenting). I respectfully dissent. On September 18, 1980, defendant, Edward R. Turmon, pled guilty to possession of a controlled substance, pentazocine, in violation of MCL 333.7403(2)(b); MSA 14.15(7403)(2)(b). After being sentenced to two years probation and $200 court costs, he appeals as of right.
Defendant was originally charged in a two-count information with possession with intent to deliver phenmetrazine and possession with intent to deliver pentazocine. As a consequence of a plea-bargain agreement, the prosecutor dismissed the original charges in exchange for defendant’s guilty plea to the lesser offense of possession of pentazocine.
On appeal, defendant claims that his conviction *356must be reversed because the Legislature did not criminalize the possession of pentazocine. Rather, the drug was classified as a controlled substance by the State Board of Pharmacy, which was delegated legislative power by a statutory enactment. Alternatively, defendant contends that, even if the Legislature properly delegated power to the pharmacy board, he was not sufficiently apprised of the criminal nature of his act.
Pentazocine, more commonly known by the brand name Talwin, is a potent analgesic which is equivalent in analgesic effect to codeine.1 Although not originally classified as a controlled substance in schedule 3 of the controlled substance section of the Public Health Code,2 pentazocine was added as a schedule 3 controlled substance by the State Board of Pharmacy pursuant to MCL 333.7215; MSA 14.15(7215), which provides:
"The administrator shall place a substance in schedule 3 if it finds all of the following:
"(a) The substance has a potential for abuse less than the substances listed in schedules 1 and 2.
"(b) The substance has currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
"(c) Abuse of the substance may lead to moderate or low physical dependence or high psychological dependence.”
The Michigan Board of Pharmacy is the administrator referred to in the foregoing statute.3 This board designated pentazocine as a schedule 3 depressant in 1979 in the following regulation:4_
*357"Rule 20. * * *
"(2) Unless specifically excepted or unless listed in another schedule, a material, compound, mixture, or preparation that contains any quantity of the following substances having a depressant effect on the central nervous system, including its salts, isomers (whether optical, position, or geometric), and the salts of such isomers, whenever the existence of such salts, isomers, and the salts of isomers is possible within the specific chemical designation, is included in schedule 3:
"(a) Chlorhexadol
Glutethimide
Lysergic acid
Lysergic acid amide
Methyprylon
Pentazocine
Sulfondiethylmethane
Sulfonethylmethane
Sulfonmethane”
The State Board of Pharmacy is authorized to supplement, delete, or reschedule substances by MCL 333.7202; MSA 14.15(7202), which provides the following guidelines:
"In making a determination regarding a substance, the administrator shall consider all of the following:
"(a) The actual or relative potential for abuse.
"(b) The scientific evidence of its pharmacological effect, if known.
"(c) The state of current scientific knowledge regarding the substance.
"(d) The history and current pattern of abuse.
"(e) The scope, duration, and significance of abuse.
"(f) The risk to the public health.
"(g) The potential of the substance to produce psychic or physiological dependence liability.
"(h) Whether the substance is an immediate precursor of a substance already controlled under this article.”
Defendant claims that the Legislature may not *358lawfully delegate to the State Board of Pharmacy the power to add proscribed substances, as this constitutes an unlawful delegation of legislative power to an administrative agency.
In People v Uriel,5 where defendants were charged with delivery of the controlled substance of methaqualone, we upheld the statutory scheme which empowers the State Board of Pharmacy to supplement, delete, or reschedule substances. The Uriel Court stated:6
"We apply Seaman [Dep’t of Natural Resources v Seaman, 396 Mich 299; 240 NW2d 206 (1976)] to the present case. Reading the Controlled Substances Act as a whole, we find the standards provided to the Board of Pharmacy 'as reasonably precise as the subject matter requires or permits’. The act contains five schedules listing various controlled substances and provides the board with specific grounds for listing a substance in a particular schedule. For example, if the board finds that a substance has (a) a high potential for abuse, and (b) has no accepted medical use in treatment in the United States or lacks safety for use in treatment under medical supervision, the board is required to place that substance in schedule 1. MCL 335.313; MSA 18.1070(13) [now MCL 333.7211; MSA 14.15(7211)]. MCL 338.1102; MSA 14.757(2) [now MCL 333.17721; MSA 14.15(17721)] provides that the Board of Pharmacy shall consist of seven members, six of which shall be registered pharmacists licensed in the state for at least five years, actively engaged in the practice of pharmacy and graduates of a recognized college of pharmacy and the seventh shall be a representative of the general public. Further, MCL 335.311(5); MSA 18.1070(H)(5) [now MCL 333.7206(1); MSA 14.15(7206X1)] of the act establishes 'a 6-member scientific advisory commission to serve as a consultative and advising body to the administrator in all matters relating to the classification, reclassification, addition to or deletion from, of all substances presently *359classified as controlled substances in schedules 1 to 5, or substances not presently controlled or yet to come into being. The scientific advisory commission shall be made up of 2 physicians to be appointed by the director of the department of health; 2 pharmacists to be appointed by the director of the department of licensing and regulation; the chief of the crime detection laboratory of the department of public health, and the director of the department of state police or his designee.’ ”
A recent article in the official magazine of the United States Food and Drug Administration discussed the perilous nature of Talwin, the brand name of pentazocine:7
"Talwin mixed with an antihistamine, Pyribenzamine, and injected can produce a 'rush’ or 'high’ as good or better than heroin. Pyribenzamine is sold as a blue tablet, hence the street name, T’s and Blues. As street supplies of heroin have become scarce, expensive, and of poor quality, addicts have turned, to T’s and Blues as a cheap and readily available substitute. Euphoria isn’t all they are getting for their money, however. Overdoses of Talwin can cause psychotic effects and may result in convulsions, coma, and possibly death. * * *
"Coupled with this evidence was the unfolding story of the abuse of T’s and Blues. A DEA pharmacist, appearing before FDA’s Controlled Substances Advisory Committee in March 1978, reported on a case in Chicago which clearly established pentazocine as a drug of abuse. City investigators audited records of a local wholesaler and found that 18 pentazocine orders were filled for one pharmacy in a 3-month period. A check of the pharmacist’s records found a discrepancy of approximately 1.5 million pentazocine and Pyribenzamine tablets between the amount ordered and the amount used to fill legitimate prescriptions. This represents $5 million at the price addicts were paying on the street. A diversion of this size is possible with uncontrolled *360drugs, according to DEA, because they are not subject to audits and inventory controls and investigators cannot see sales records except with a court order. Chicago authorities were able to build a case because they suspected a problem existed.”
This article is a further indication why the State Board of Pharmacy decided to classify pentazocine as a controlled substance. I would adhere to the ruling in Uriel and hold that the standards delineated by the controlled substances section of the Public Health Code are abundantly clear so as not to constitute an improper delegation of legislative power to the State Board of Pharmacy.
Defendant also contends that he was denied adequate notice that the drug was proscribed. The pharmacy board’s classification of pentazocine as a controlled substance is printed in the 1979 Michigan Administrative Code, page 2608, and first appeared in the code’s quarterly supplement number 99, page 92, published August 14, 1979. I would find that defendant was not denied fair notice of pentazocine’s classification as a class 3 depressant and would vote to affirm.

 Physicians’ Desk Reference (36th ed), p 2036 (1982).

 MCL 333.7216; MSA 14.15(7216).

 MCL 333.7103(2); MSA 14.15(7103X2).

 1979 AC, R 338.3120(2).

 76 Mich App 102; 255 NW2d 788 (1977).

 Id., 106-107.

 Hecht, The Saga of T’s and Blues, FDA Consumer (March, 1979).