DEA chief: Matthew Perry’s doctors wanted “a huge sum”

Doctors arrested in connection with Matthew Perry's death wanted “a huge payment” from the actor, Anne Milgram, head of the Drug Enforcement Agency, told Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “They demanded about $50,000 from him over the course of a month for the supply of ketamine.”

Dr. Salvador Plasencia and Dr. Mark Chavez were arrested on Thursday. That same day, Chavez agreed to a deal with prosecutors.

The misuse of ketamine by a physician is similar to what happened in the early stages of the opioid epidemic, Milgram added. “That's why we have brought charges in Matthew Perry's death against the five people we believe are responsible.”

“And what happened there began with two unscrupulous doctors who broke their oath – we accused them of breaking their oath to care for their patients – and instead supplied Matthew Perry with enormous amounts of ketamine in exchange for huge sums of money,” Milgram said.

“And then it went down the street where Matthew Perry bought the ketamine from two drug dealers on the streets of Los Angeles,” Milgram continued. “And that's unfortunately a tragic job that we've seen — if you think back to opioids, the beginning of the opioid epidemic, when many Americans became addicted to controlled substances in doctors' offices and by doctors, which then became addictions on the street as well.”

Ketamine is classified as a controlled substance and is regulated as such by the Federal Drug Administration, Milgram said. “The FDA regulates the medical prescription of ketamine and has approved it as an anesthetic. They have approved it as a nasal spray to treat depression. So they regulate the medical side of it,” she explained.

But the DEA's focus is on health care providers who abuse access to ketamine in order to gain financial gain in return – “anyone who is essentially diverting legal controlled substances from normal medical practice to accomplish what we see happening here,” Milgram said.

Plasencia and Chavez “did not evaluate Matthew Perry” as a patient, she continued. “They left vials of ketamine for Matthew Perry to inject his assistant into him.”

Like ketamine, fentanyl is used by medical professionals in a supervised setting for legitimate treatment – but the latter drug is “the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45,” the DEA has found, Brennan pointed out. Milgram agreed, noting that 107,941 people lost their lives to the drug in 2022.

“So we're fighting what I believe is the greatest drug threat we've ever faced,” Milgram said. “And at the DEA, we're focused on saving American lives.”

You can watch the interview with DEA ​​Administrator Anne Milgram in the video above.