Monday, March 05, 2012  TYC prescribed drug while Attorney
General sued over its off-label use with children  Here's an
ironic story from a Dallas TV station that speaks as much to the
overmedication of youth in the juvenile justice system as to
flaws in Medicaid billing. It opens: The state won a $158
million settlement last month from a pharmaceutical company that
the Texas attorney general said promoted an antipsychotic drug
for uses not yet approved by federal regulators.  Attorney
General Greg Abbott said Johnson & Johnson marketed Risperdal as
the drug of choice for children and the elderly for
schizophrenia and dementia even though the Food and Drug
Administration had not approved its use in children or the
elderly.  Yet while the state was suing J&J, the Texas Youth
Commission, one of the state's largest purchasers of
pharmaceuticals, prescribed it nearly 3,000 times to youth in
the Texas prison system, according to financial documents
uncovered by NBC 5.  The state's lawsuit, which was filed in
2006,