Football leans on tradition, providing convenient cover for the NFL’s lenient stance on smelling salts, ammonia crystals that players believe enhance performance when inhaled.
Does the olfactory exhilaration also enhance play-calling, amplifying one’s grasp of X’s and O’s?
Kyle Shanahan apparently believes so.
The San Francisco 49ers coach was caught by a Fox television camera moments before a playoff game Sunday against the Philadelphia Eagles taking several whiffs from a small packet before handing it to an assistant.
Earlier this season, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that 49ers players created a system to make sure everyone has immediate access to smelling salts during games. General manager John Lynch and Shanahan are users, according to the story, which stated that Shanahan “isn’t opposed to the occasional whiff.”
Is the NFL OK with this? The answer is a qualified yes.
Ahead of the 2025 season, the league’s head, neck and spine committee recommended that teams end the longtime practice of providing smelling salts to players. The decision was prompted by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration warning about the potential side effects of inhaling ammonia, which include lung damage and masking signs of a concussion.
“I’m a regular user of smelling salts, taking them for a boost of energy before every offensive drive,” he said. “We have got to figure out a middle ground here, guys. Somebody help me out.”
The NFL came to his rescue, saying smelling salts — also known as ammonia inhalants, or AIs — were not banned. Teams could no longer provide them, but players could bring their own. It’s a compromise that may or may not pass the smell test. Either way, it’s not just the 49ers using them.
An ESPN Magazine piece in 2017 reported that “just a few minutes into the game, the Cowboys have discarded so many capsules that the area in front of their bench looks like the floor of a kid’s bedroom after trick-or-treating.”
Bottom line, legions of NFL players believe AIs enhance performance. They do so by irritating the linings of the nose and lungs, triggering a reflex that increases breathing rate and blood flow, fostering alertness.
Their effectiveness was discovered long before football was invented. Craft beer drinkers know Pliny the Elder as the inspiration for his namesake double IPA. The noted Roman naturalist and historian was indeed an early expert in fermentation, yet he also wrote about “sal ammoniac” — yes, smelling salts — in his encyclopedic work “Natural History,” published in AD 79.
Their popularity spread through Europe until, in Victorian tradition, they were used to rouse women after fainting spells. Later they were used in battle, with British medics supplying World War II soldiers with a whiff of the substance that doctors say triggers the body’s “fight-or-flight” response.
These days, the Federal Aviation Administration requires that U.S. airlines carry smelling salts onboard in case a pilot needs to be awakened after fainting. Blocking and tackling on a flight, however, remains strictly forbidden.
The NFL’s middling position isn’t curious. Experts say it’s an attempt to reduce liability in case of concussions or other medical complications. But it is their constant use that concerns doctors.
“The use of smelling salts in sports is definitely not their intended use,” Dr. Laura Boxley, a neuropsychologist at Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center, told NPR. “What’s happening with some athletes is they’re using them with much higher frequency than their intended use.”
Given the relative safety of the sidelines, Shanahan isn’t in danger of a brain-rattling concussion. Shortly after the NFL ceased supplying AIs, he was asked by a reporter whether he had concerns about their prevalence.
“I mean, I don’t,” Shanahan replied with a grin. “If someone gives me one, I’ll take a smell of the salt. I’m not too worried about it. I like to take one to wake myself up and lock myself in.”
After the eye strain, the greatest occupational hazard of being a TV critic is people asking what’s good on television. It’s a question I typically find impossible to answer on the spur of the moment, as a show will run out of my head as soon as a review is filed in order to make room for the next one. (I buy time by responding, “What do you like?”) It is only at this reflective season of the year that I can stop, look back and list them.
Our picks for this year’s best in arts and entertainment.
Every year, television has its ups and downs, its ebb and flow, depending on a host of reasons I will only ever vaguely understand. I will take this opportunity to say that there are way too many psychological thrillers on way too many platforms nowadays, but there are always more than enough shows to praise — and as always, I include only series that are new this year. Some are here because they deliver real surprises — not just plot twists and sudden revelations, but new directions and original formats. Others are here by dint of good old-fashioned storytelling, memorable characters and terrific performances — or just because they made me laugh.
Here they are, in no special order.
‘Hal & Harper’ (Mubi)
Lili Reinhart and Cooper Raiff in Mubi’s “Hal & Harper.”
(Mubi)
Writer-director Cooper Raiff’s delicate drama looks at a brother and a sister — played by Raiff and Lili Reinhart both as adults and children, with no sacrifice of reality — made close by the early loss of their mother and the grief of their father (Mark Ruffalo, identified only as Dad). The sale of their old house and the prospect of a new sibling — Dad’s girlfriend (Betty Gilpin, going from strength to strength) — sets things in motion. The dialogue avoids exposition, the silences say much. (Read the review.)
‘The Lowdown’ (FX)
Ethan Hawke and Ryan Kiera Armstrong in FX’s “The Lowdown.”
(Shane Brown / FX)
In Sterlin Harjo’s shaggy dog follow-up to “Reservation Dogs,” the ever-evolving Ethan Hawke plays Lee Raybon, a raggedy Tulsa “truthstorian,” citizen journalist and used-book dealer, looking into the apparent suicide of the oddball member of a powerful family. The series pays homage to noir film and fiction, even as it’s too bright, mischievous and full of love to qualify as noir itself (though Lee does get beat up a lot). Politicians, land developers, white supremacists and Natives collide. The cast also includes Kyle MacLachlan, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Peter Dinklage, Keith David, Kaniehtiio Horn (the Deer Lady in “Reservation Dogs”) as Ray’s ex-wife and the marvelous Ryan Kiera Armstrong as his teenage daughter and eager accomplice. Look for X’s John Doe as a purveyor of bootleg caviar. (Read the review.)
‘Women Wearing Shoulder Pads’ (Adult Swim), ‘Common Side Effects’ (Adult Swim), ‘Oh My God … Yes!’ (Adult Swim), ‘Long Story Short’ (Netflix)
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1.“Women Wearing Shoulder Pads” on Adult Swim.(Warner Bros)2.“Common Side Effects” on Adult Swim.(Adult Swim)3.“Oh My God … Yes!” on Adult Swim.(Warner Bros. Discovery)4.“Long Story Short” on Netflix.(Netflix)
Animation! “Women Wearing Shoulder Pads” is a queer Spanish-language stop-motion comedy melodrama, set in the aesthetic world of a 1980s Pedro Almodóvar film, involving the fate of the cuy, a South American guinea pig (pets? food?), and a struggle between two powerful women. (Read the review.)
“Common Side Effects” is a semicomical thriller with heart, centered on a mushroom with curative properties and pitting its discoverer against the pharmaceutical-industrial complex; Martha Kelly fans will be happy to find her here as a DEA agent. (Read the review.)
“Oh My God … Yes!” is an Afro-futurist, surrealist, girlfriends-in-the-city superhero comedy — like the Powerpuff Girls, grown up, earthy and Black — featuring humanoid robots, anthropomorphic animals and gayliens (the preferred term for gay aliens). (Read the review.)
And “Long Story Short,” from “Bojack Horseman” creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg is the sweet, melancholy, satirical, silly, poignant, hopeful, sometimes slapstick cartoon tale of a normal middle-class Jewish family; the world it portrays is (mostly) ordinary, but the drawings make it extra-special. (Read the review.)
‘Demascus’ (Tubi)
Okieriete Onaodowan in Tubi’s “Demascus.”
(Jace Downs / AMC Networks)
In this Black science-fiction comedy about the search for identity and purpose, Okieriete Onaodowan plays the title character, propelled into alternative visions of his life and self by an experimental virtual reality gizmo that “follows the path of your conscious and subconscious impulses.” The settings change along with him — into a relationship reality show, a “sad Thanksgiving” domestic comedy, a setting out of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” — as supporting actors (Martin Lawrence among them) become different people around him. (Read the review.)
‘Pluribus’ (Apple TV)
Rhea Seehorn in Apple TV’s “Pluribus.”
(Anna Kooris / Apple TV)
I find Vince Gilligan’s take on “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” in which a virus from outer space turns nearly all of humanity into one giant, contented, cultish hive mind, more interesting than compelling, but it’s interesting enough, and comes with a great performance by Rhea Seehorn as one of a dozen earthlings immune to the bug — jealous of her discontent, standing up for her right to be angry. This is a slow series, yet never a boring one, and Seehorn, in a kind of one-woman-versus-everyone show, is electric even when nothing much is happening. (Read the review.)
‘The Studio’ (Apple TV)
Clockwise from left: Ike Barinholtz, Kathryn Hahn, Chase Sui Wonders and Seth Rogen in Apple TV’s “The Studio.”
(Apple TV+)
Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s breakneck farcical ode to the motion picture business (in which they do very well). Rogen stars as a new studio head, promoted from below, dealing with bad ideas (a Kool-Aid movie), big egos, and his own insecurities and need to feel appreciated. Episodes take place at the Golden Globes, a fundraising dinner and a Las Vegas trade show, with Ike Barinholtz and Kathryn Hahn on his team, Bryan Cranston as his boss — reminding you he was on “Seinfeld” and “Malcolm in the Middle” before he became Walter White — and Catherine O’Hara (brilliant, naturally) as the woman Rogen replaced. (Read the review.)
‘North of North’ (Netflix)
Anna Lambe in Netflix’s “North of North.”
(Netflix)
A sweet small-town romantic comedy, set (and filmed) in Canada’s northernmost territory among the Indigenous Inuit people. A luminous Anna Lambe stars as the 26-year-old mother of a rambunctious 7-year-old, tied to a narcissistic husband and resentful of her mother, a reformed alcoholic and former bad girl; she dreams of something more, even if it just means hauling large items to the dump. Mary Lynn Rajskub plays the cheerful, credit-grabbing town manager whose assistant she becomes. Love and a family secret will arrive from the south. The beaded parkas are gorgeous. (Read the review.)
‘The Pitt’ (HBO Max), ‘Adolescence’ (Netflix)
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1.Noah Wyle and Tracy Ifeachor in HBO Max’s “The Pitt.”(John Johnson/HBO)2.Owen Cooper and Stephen Graham in Netflix’s “Adolescence.”(Netflix)
These two series do their work in real time, making space for naturalistic acting and a special kind of pressure. “The Pitt,” whose 15 episodes are set in a hectic Pittsburgh ER over a 15-hour shift puts Noah Wyle back in scrubs, herding (with Tracy Ifeachor) a large cast of doctors, nurses and student doctors. Cases include electrocution, drowning, overdose, scurvy, sickle cell anemia, a nail in the chest, a fastball in the eye and gallstones, with all the personal drama one expects from a hospital show. (Read the review.)
The tightly focused, brutally intimate “Adolescence,” surrounding the arrest of a 13-year-old boy (Owen Cooper) for murder, unveils its unconventional mystery in four discrete episodes, each executed in a single tracking shot. A field day for actors, it earned Emmys for Cooper, co-creator Stephen Graham as his father and Erin Doherty as a child psychologist. (Read the review.)
‘Dope Thief’ (Apple TV), ‘Deli Boys’ (Hulu)
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1.Brian Tyree Henry, left, and Wagner Moura in Apple TV’s “Dope Thief.”(Apple)2.Saagar Shaikh, left, and Asif Ali in Hulu’s “Deli Boys.”(James Washington/Disney)
Drugs are bad, but they fuel a lot of television. (I mean the plots; I wouldn’t know about the productions.) These two very different series feature heroes in over their heads, caught between cops and a cartel. “Dope Thief” gives Brian Tyree Henry (Paper Boi on “Atlanta”), as a man robbing low-level drug dealers dressed as a DEA agent, his first starring role, which would be sufficient for me to recommend it sight unseen — but it is excellent, seen. (Read the review.)
In “Deli Boys,” an old-fashioned comedy of Idiots in Danger, Asif Ali and Saagar Shaikh play temperamentally opposite Pakistani American brothers who inherit what they believed to be a chain of convenience stores but turn out to be the front for their father’s cocaine empire. Poorna Jagannathan is marvelous as their beloved, fearsome Lucky Auntie, who knows the score. (Read the review.)
‘Ludwig’ (Britbox)
David Mitchell in Britbox’s “Ludwig.”
(Colin Hutton)
In this Cambridge-set dramatic comedy-mystery, irascible David Mitchell, of “Peep Show,” “Upstart Crow” and “Would I Lie to You?” fame, plays an awkward, isolated genius with little practical experience of the world, drawn right into it when he winds up impersonating his missing twin brother, a police detective. A professional puzzle-maker, he’ll turn out to be good at the job, though he calls a medical examiner’s report a “how-did-they-die test,” and, moving in with his sister-in-law, he’ll learn something about the benefits of family. Properly moving, and very funny. (Read the review.)
Gaza City – Dr Hussam Abu Safia, 52, remains in an Israeli prison a year after Israel detained him without charges or trial.
His family and supporters are demanding his release as his health deteriorates amid reports of the inhumane conditions under which he is being held.
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Abu Safia, known for his steadfast presence as director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, north of Gaza City, has become central in international discussions on the protection of medical personnel in armed conflicts.
He insisted on staying at the hospital, along with several medical staff, despite continuous Israeli attacks on the facility.
Israel eventually surrounded the hospital and forced everyone to evacuate. Since then, Abu Safia has been in detention, and the hospital has been out of service.
He was transferred between Israeli prisons, from the notorious Sde Teiman holding facility to Ofer Prison, being mistreated continuously.
No charges have been brought against Abu Safia, who is held under the “unlawful combatant” law, which allows detention without a standard criminal trial and denies detainees access to the evidence against them.
A family’s suffering
Abu Safia is being held in extreme conditions and, according to lawyers, has lost more than a third of his body weight.
His family is worried about him as he also suffers from heart problems, an irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure, skin infections and a lack of specialised medical care.
His eldest son, Ilyas, 27, told Al Jazeera via Zoom from Kazakhstan, where the family fled a month ago, about their grief over Abu Safia’s detention, adding that his father’s only “crime” was being a doctor.
Ilyas, his mother Albina and four siblings stayed with his father at Kamal Adwan through the Israeli attacks, despite opportunities to leave Gaza, especially as Albina is a Kazakh citizen.
On October 26, 2024, Israel killed Ilyas’s brother, Ibrahim, 20, while it shelled the hospital.
“The entire medical staff cried in grief for [my father] and for Ibrahim,” Ilyas said.
The taking of Dr Abu Safia
At dawn on December 27, 2024, the hospital woke up to a tightened Israeli siege with tanks and quadcopter drones.
Israeli tanks had been around Kamal Adwan since mid-October 2024, gradually moving closer – destroying parts of the infrastructure like water tanks – until that day when they were so close nobody could move outside.
Dr Walid al-Badi remained with Abu Safia in Kamal Adwan until they were forced to evacuate [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/ Al Jazeera]
Patients and staff gathered in the emergency reception corridor, according to Dr Walid al-Badi, 29, who stayed with Abu Safia until his arrest, and spoke to Al Jazeera on December 25 at the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City.
“The situation was extremely tense, loudspeakers were calling on everyone to evacuate, but Dr Abu Safia asked us to remain calm. Then the loudspeakers called Dr Abu Safia to come to the tank.”
Abu Safia was ordered to enter an armoured vehicle. According to al-Badi, the doctor returned carrying a sheet of instructions, dishevelled, his clothes dusty and a bruise under his chin.
Everyone rushed to check on him, and he told them that he had been assaulted.
“Israeli media showed a video claiming they … treated him with respect, but they didn’t show … how he was assaulted in the tank, threatened,” al-Badi said.
Abu Safia was ordered by the Israelis to prepare a list of everyone in the hospital, which he did and returned to the armoured vehicle, where he was told that only 20 staff could remain. The rest had to leave.
“Around 10am, the Israelis allowed some ambulances to take patients, wounded people, some displaced civilians, and the doctor’s family to the Indonesian Hospital [about 1km away] while the medical teams left on foot,” al-Badi recounts.
However, several patients remained, besieged along with the medics.
“The doctor told me to go, but I told him I would stay with him until the end.”
The only female medic who remained was intensive care unit head, Dr Mai Barhouma, who spoke to Al Jazeera from the Baptist Hospital.
Barhouma had been working with critical patients dependent on medical equipment and oxygen, and her conscience would not allow her to leave, despite Abu Safia asking her to.
The Israeli army repeatedly summoned Abu Safia for new instructions, once, according to Drs Barhouma and al-Badi, offering a safe exit for him alone.
He refused, insisting that he would stay with his staff. At about 10pm, the quadcopters ordered everyone to line up and evacuate.
During this time, Israel shelled and set fire to the upper floors and turned off the electricity.
“We were heartbroken as Dr Abu Safia led [us] out,” al-Badi recalled. “I hugged Dr Abu Safia, who was crying as he left the hospital he tried so hard to stay in.”
Testimonies from that day say medical staff were taken to al-Fakhoura School in Jabalia, where they were beaten and tortured by Israeli soldiers during interrogations.
Barhouma left in an ambulance with an ICU patient, but the ambulance was held for hours at the school.
Dr Mai Barhouma, who oversaw the ICU at Kamal Adwan Hospital, insisted on staying with Dr Abu Safia until the moment the hospital was evacuated [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/ Al Jazeera]
“The soldiers bound our hands and forced us to walk towards al-Fakhoura school, [2km away] from the hospital. Our colleagues who had left in the morning were still there, being tortured,” al-Badi recalled, adding that they arrived at about midnight.
“They ordered us to strip down to our underwear, tied our hands and began severely beating us with boots and rifle butts, insulting and verbally abusing us.”
The interrogation and beatings of the medics in the freezing cold continued for hours while Barhouma was in the ambulance with the critically ill patient.
“The oxygen ran out, so I started using a manual resuscitation pump. My hands swelled from pumping nonstop, terrified that the patient would die,” she said.
She described hearing the screams of the male medics being tortured, and then being ordered out of the ambulance by Israeli soldiers.
“The soldier asked for my ID and took an eye scan, then ordered me to get out, but I refused and told him I had a critical patient who would die if I left them.”
Eventually, the Israelis released the medics, including al-Badi and Abu Safia, ordering them to head for western Gaza, while sending the ambulance with Barhouma in it on an alternate route westwards.
But the relief didn’t last. They had only walked a few metres when an Israeli officer called out to Abu Safia.
“Our faces froze,” al-Badi said. “The doctor asked what was wrong. The officers said: ‘We want you with us in Israel.’”
Al-Badi and a nurse tried to pull the doctor away, but he rebuked them and told them to keep walking.
“I was crying like a child being separated from his father as I watched the doctor being arrested and dressed in the white nylon uniform for detainees.”
Calls for his release
Abu Safia’s family are appealing to human rights and legal bodies for his immediate release.
“My father’s lawyers visited him around seven times over the past year, [each visit allowed only] after exhausting attempts with the prison administration. Each time, my father’s condition has deteriorated significantly,” Ilyas told Al Jazeera.
Ilyas Abu Safia, Abu Safiya’s eldest son, speaking to Al Jazeera via Zoom from Kazakhstan about the latest updates on his father’s case and detention conditions [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/ Al Jazeera]
“[He] has fractures in his thigh and shrapnel in his foot from an injury while at the hospital before his arrest. He also suffers other health problems and is subjected to severe psychological and physical abuse that does not befit his age.
“Israel is trying to criminalise my father’s work, his continued service to people and his efforts to save the wounded and the sick in an area Israel itself considered a ‘red zone’ at the time.
“My father’s presence and steadfastness inside the hospital posed a major obstacle to the Israeli army and its plan to empty the north of its residents.”
Ilyas is proud of his father.
“My father is a doctor who will be held up worldwide as an example of adherence to medical ethics and courage.
“I am proud beyond words, and I hope to embrace him soon and see him emerge from the darkness of prison safe and well.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday, seeking to block nearly $12 million in cuts to the group.
Earlier this month, the federal government “abruptly terminated” grants to the group, the lawsuit says.
The funding supported numerous public health programs, including efforts to prevent sudden unexpected infant death, strengthen pediatric care in rural communities and support teens facing substance use and mental health challenges.
“AAP does not have other sources of grant funding to replace the federal awards, and without the necessary funds it must immediately terminate its work on its dozens of programs that save children’s lives every day,” says the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “Within a few weeks, AAP will have to begin laying off employees dedicated to this critically important work.”
The suit alleges Health and Human Services made the cuts in retaliation for the doctors’ group speaking out against the Trump administration’s positions and actions.
The doctors’ group has been vocal about its support for pediatric vaccines and has publicly opposed the agency’s positions. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who helped lead the anti-vaccine movement for years — is seeking to broadly remake federal policies on vaccines. Earlier this year, the pediatrics group released its own recommendations on COVID-19 vaccines, which substantially diverged from the government’s recommendations.
The group also supports access to gender-affirming care and has publicly criticized Health and Human Services positions on the topic, saying it opposes what it calls the government’s infringements on the doctor-patient relationship.
“The Department of Health and Human Services is using federal funding as a political weapon to punish protected speech, trying to silence one of the nation’s most trusted voices for children’s well-being by cutting off critical public health funding in retaliation for speaking the truth,” Skye Perryman, president and chief executive officer of Democracy Forward, said in a statement. Perryman’s organization is representing the doctors’ group in the case.
A spokesman for Health and Human Services could not immediately be reached for comment.
Mark Del Monte, CEO and executive vice president of the 67,000-member doctors’ group, said the organization depends on its relationship with the federal government.
“We need this partnership to advance policies that prioritize children’s health. These vital child health programs fund services like hearing screenings for newborns and safe sleep campaigns to prevent sudden unexpected infant death,” he said in a statement. “We are forced to take legal action today so that these programs can continue to make communities safer and healthier.”
Barry Manilow has been diagnosed with lung cancer and will be postponing his January concerts.
“I’m very sorry that you have to change your plans,” the “Mandy” singer wrote in a statement posted to Instagram on Monday revealing his diagnosis. According to Manilow, his doctors had discovered “a cancerous spot” on his left lung that he will have surgically removed.
“As many of you know I recently went through six weeks of bronchitis followed by a relapse of another five weeks,” Manilow wrote in the statement. “Even though I was over the bronchitis and back on stage at the Westgate Las Vegas, my wonderful doctor ordered an MRI just to make sure that everything was OK.”
The “Copacabana (At the Copa)” singer said it was “pure luck” that the cancer was found early and that his doctors “do not believe it has spread.” He added that he is taking additional tests to confirm that diagnosis.
“[N]ow that the Christmas A Gift of Love concerts are over I’m going into surgery to have the spot removed,” Manilow continued in his statement. “So that’s it. No chemo. No radiation. Just chicken soup and I Love Lucy reruns.”
The January arena concerts have been rescheduled because recovery from the surgery will take a month, said the 82-year-old singer, whose hits also include “Could It Be Magic,” “I Write the Songs” and “Weekend in New England.” The new dates, starting in late February and continuing through April, were included in the Instagram post. Ticketholders for the canceled shows will be able to reschedule to the new dates.
Manilow also noted his next scheduled performances will be over Valentine’s Day weekend back at the Westgate Las Vegas, where he has a lifetime residency.
“Something tells me that February weekend is going to be one big party,” Manilow wrote, before wishing his fans “a wonderful Christmas and New Year.” “And remember, if you even have the slightest symptom… get tested!”
Another physician who played a role in providing ketamine to Matthew Perry weeks before the actor’s overdose death was sentenced to eight months of house arrest by a federal judge Friday.
Mark Chavez, a former doctor, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine last October. In his plea agreement, Chavez acknowledged that he and Salvador Plasencia — an ex-doctor sentenced to nearly three years in prison earlier this month — colluded to deceive medical ketamine suppliers and illegally distribute the drug to Perry for profit.
Chavez, 54, was also sentenced to three years of supervised release following his house arrest and must perform 300 hours of community service.
Chavez was one of five individuals charged last year for their alleged roles in Perry’s October 2023 death. The others include Perry’s acquaintance Erik Fleming, personal assistant Kenneth Iwamasa, and Jasveen Sangha, a North Hollywood woman allegedly known as the “Ketamine Queen.” All have pleaded guilty to federal charges and await sentencing in the coming months.
During the sentencing, U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett brought up concerns about sentencing disparities between Chavez and Plasencia. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ian Yanniello argued that the government’s recommended sentence of six months of house arrest was due to Chavez’s cooperation with investigators.
“As doctors, their conduct was egregious,” Yanniello said. “The difference was what they did when they got caught.”
Before charges were brought against the five alleged distributors, Chavez surrendered his medical license and sought a plea deal with the government.
According to an indictment, Plasencia contacted Chavez to purchase ketamine after learning Perry was interested in depression-related treatments in September 2023. Chavez then supplied Plasencia with ketamine vials and orally transmitted “lozenges” that were fraudulently obtained under another patient’s prescription, his plea agreement said.
“If today goes well we may have repeat business,” Plasencia texted Chavez less than a month before Perry’s death.
“Let’s do everything we can to make it happen,” Chavez responded, court records show.
Chavez had faced a potential maximum of 10 years in prison, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors argued that Chavez improperly obtained authorization from the Drug Enforcement Administration to prescribe and administer medical ketamine.
Chavez purchased 22 vials of liquid ketamine, ketamine lozenges and other medical supplies from wholesale distributors to provide to Plasencia, who would personally deliver them to Perry, the judge said before her ruling.
During his Dec. 3 sentencing hearing, a federal judge castigated Plasencia for his medical malpractice and for teaching Perry’s personal assistant to administer the drug at the actor’s Pacific Palisades home. Chavez never met with Perry in person, but allowed Plasencia to continue the treatments despite knowing that Plasencia had “little” experience with ketamine treatments, according to his plea agreement.
According to the plea agreement, Chavez called Plasencia on the day of Perry’s death to inquire whether he believed they distributed drugs that may have killed him. Prosecutors said that ketamine was not supplied by the physicians.
Chavez offered a brief apology immediately before his sentencing.
“As a doctor, I’ve had a wonderful opportunity to help people’s lives, but I’ve also had to deal with the tragedies,” Chavez said. “My heart goes out to the Perry family.”
Chavez’s attorney said that he would reside in Mexico with his father after serving his sentence.
