An Absecon doctor recently released from prison for illegally prescribing opioids has voluntarily surrendered his license permanently.
Alan Faustino was sentenced to four years in prison last July for a drug ring that the state estimated put 1,200 pills on the street a day.
He was released from a halfway house Jan. 30, and is currently on an intensive supervision plan, or ISP.
“This physician was abusing his medical license and acting like little more than a drug dealer,” Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said. “The permanent revocation of his license ensures that he’ll never be able to repeat his criminal conduct.”
At Faustino's sentencing, Chief Assistant Prosecutor Janet Gravitz likened him to a drug dealer with a medical license, whose practice had “busloads” of people paying $300 for a visit that included no examination, only a prescription that put more opioids on the street.
But defense attorney Mark Roddy said Faustino was feeding his own addiction, sparked by medical issues that included a painful nerve condition.
The agreement signed last month prevents Faustino "from managing, overseeing, supervising or influencing the practice of medicine or provision of healthcare activities, including by testifying as an expert witness, in the state of New Jersey."
“Dr. Faustino knowingly used his prescribing privileges to supply tens of thousands of OxyContin pain pills to a narcotics trafficking ring that sold these pills to individuals seeking a high,” said Paul R. Rodríguez, acting director of the Division of Consumer Affairs. “Public protection is well served by the permanent revocation of his license.”
He must send any prescription blanks he still has to the executive director of the Drug Control Unit to be destroyed.
