City Drug seeks legal action against Board of Pharmacy

CHEYENNE — Last week, the Wyoming Board of Pharmacy held an emergency meeting to order City Drug, one of Cheyenne’s two independent pharmacies, to immediately cease dispensing prescriptions and wrap up any outstanding business as they believed the pharmacy to be a threat to the health and safety of the public.

Per an amendment at their meeting on Wednesday, City Drug has been ordered to cease dispensing of prescriptions for hospice patients and wrap up prescriptions in its queue by Sept. 26, and wrap up any outstanding business by Oct. 10.

On Thursday, City Drug filed an amended petition for judicial review in the Laramie County District Court.

The petition states that City Drug and Kelsey James, the pharmacy’s owner, are “aggrieved or adversely affected in fact by any other agency action.” It further says that the board’s summary suspension of City Drug is “arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion, or not supported by substantial evidence in light of the fact that the Board found that emergent action was necessary to protect the public, but then ordered that City Drug to continue to fill prescriptions for another two weeks?”

City Drug’s resident retail license was summarily suspended at a Sept. 12 Board of Pharmacy meeting after Senior Investigator Liz Wood alleged that City Drug filled a prescription in violation of a board order from March.

According to minutes from the board’s March 14 meeting, Wood found that City Drug did not have the necessary equipment to perform sterile compounding, which is the process of mixing, combining or altering ingredients to create a medication that’s tailored to a patient’s needs. However, they were found to be compounding semaglutide.

At the same meeting, James said she had ceased sterile compounding of semaglutide and informed patients they are no longer dispensing it.

The board voted unanimously to order City Drug to cease all compounding activities until the investigation is complete.

On Sept. 6, the board office was contacted by South Street Pharmacy in Wheatland regarding a patient requesting a refill of compounded prescription bearing a label with South Street Pharmacy’s information. However, it was not a prescription issued by South Street Pharmacy, according to the board’s summary suspension.

The board’s investigation found that this prescription matched information of a prescription alleged to have been transferred to South Street by City Drug.

This led to suspicion from Wood that City Drug had compounded one of the medications because South Street was unable to make the second prescription, even though they were not allowed to do so.

The summary suspension from the board notes that their order is not a final agency action of the board because there may be further proceedings upon completion of the board’s investigation.

Meeting aftermath

More than 100 community members showed up at Wednesday’s meeting with signs in support of City Drug and prepared speeches to offer as public comment in support of the local pharmacy.

However, attendees were not allowed to offer their comments because Board President Brenda Upton said it is a pending matter and an active investigation. She noted that City Drug has a right to a contested case hearing, where the public may be allowed to offer comment.

Nonetheless, passionate community members were moved to offer unofficial public comment during a recess in the board’s meeting. When attendee Sally Whelan continued to speak while Upton banged her gavel in an attempt to resume the meeting, she was eventually removed from the meeting by law enforcement.

The Wyoming Highway Patrol released a statement saying that a woman, though they do not name Whelan specifically, was subsequently issued a citation for disrupting government facilities, a misdemeanor offense.

Due to the disruption, the meeting was cut short and rescheduled for Thursday at 9 a.m.

At the time of publication, the Board of Pharmacy has not confirmed whether they discussed City Drug at their rescheduled meeting. However, there were no items on the agenda yet to be discussed regarding City Drug when the meeting adjourned on Wednesday.