Florida’s Attorney General’s Office on Pill Mills

Florida Attorney General Special Prosecutor for Prescription Drug Trafficking addresses FCSR audience to educate them on progress made shutting down pill mills.

Mr. Aronberg’s Bio:

Dave Aronberg was born and raised in North Miami, Florida, where he attended public schools before going on to attend Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he graduated with honors in 1996.

As an attorney for a large South Florida law firm, Dave worked closely with Insurance Commissioner (now U.S. Senator) Bill Nelson to investigate European Insurance companies that refused to honor World War II-era policies sold to victims of the Holocaust.

In 1999, Dave became a Florida Assistant Attorney General for economic crimes, leading one of the nation’s first investigations of Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of the prescription drug Oxycontin, for its marketing practices. He also headed the State’s lawsuit against “Miss Cleo,” the “Jamaican Shango Shaman Psychic,” who had become an international celebrity among late-night television viewers.

In 2000, Dave was selected to be one of 15 White House Fellows from across the country. In this non-partisan position, Dave served in two presidential administrations as a Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury Department for international money laundering.

Dave Aronberg was elected to the Florida Senate in 2002. As a State Senator, Dave represented a challenging, diverse district that stretched from eastern Palm Beach County, through Glades, Hendry, and Charlotte counties, all the way to Lee County on Florida’s gulf coast. Even though Democrats comprised only 39% of his district, Dave was elected three times as a Democrat until he left the Senate in 2010.

During his eight years in the Senate, Dave led the State’s efforts to secure federal funding for Everglades restoration. He also led a consumer protection project within his office that returned more than 4 million dollars to people who had been ripped off. Called the “strongest consumer advocate” in the Florida legislature by two major newspapers, Dave’s priorities also included tightening Florida’s laws against prescription drug diversion and reforming Florida’s Medicaid laws to make it harder to “doctor shop” for controlled substances at taxpayer expense.

In January 2011, Republican Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed Dave Aronberg as her Special Prosecutor for Prescription Drug Trafficking. In this role as the State’s “Drug Czar,” Dave combats Florida’s epidemic of prescription drug abuse—the #1 public safety threat in our State today—by targeting the hundreds of “pill mills” in Florida criminally, civilly, administratively, and legislatively. Although his jurisdiction is statewide, Dave is based in South Florida in the heart of the pill mill problem.