Key Points
- The "acute effects of ketamine" were among the factors that caused Matthew Perry to lose consciousness and drown.
- Five people have now been charged for the role they played in the Friends star obtaining the drug.
- The group "took advantage" of Perry's addiction issues, a US attorney said.
Five people, including two doctors, have been charged with supplying Friends star Matthew Perry with large quantities of ketamine, the powerful sedative that led to his death nearly a year ago.
A personal assistant to Perry is among those charged, US authorities say.
The defendants, including a woman known in Los Angeles as the "Ketamine Queen" were part of "a broad underground criminal network" that distributed the drug to the actor and others, US attorney Martin Estrada said.
"These defendants took advantage of Mr Perry's addiction issues to enrich themselves," Estrada said at a news conference in Los Angeles.
Each defendant played a role in falsely prescribing, selling or injecting the ketamine that contributed to the actor's death, Anne Milgram, administrator of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, said.
Two of the people have been arrested and were expected to be arraigned later on Thursday local time.
They were 41-year-old Jasveen Sangha of North Hollywood, and Dr Salvador Plasencia, 42, of Santa Monica.
from "acute effects" of ketamine and other factors that caused him to lose consciousness and drown in his hot tub last October, an autopsy said.
For months, Los Angeles homicide detectives and federal agents have been investigating how Perry obtained the prescription drug.
A December 2023 autopsy report concluded Perry died from , which combined with other factors caused him to lose consciousness and slip below the water in the hot tub at his Los Angeles home.
Toxicology tests found Perry's body contained dangerously high levels of ketamine, a short-acting anaesthetic with hallucinogenic properties.
Typically, people with that much ketamine in their systems are in general anaesthesia during surgery, and being monitored by professionals, they said.
Perry had publicly acknowledged decades of drug and alcohol abuse, including during the years he starred as Chandler Bing on the hit 1990s television sitcom Friends. Source: Getty / Fotos International
Perry had publicly acknowledged decades of drug and alcohol abuse, including during the years he starred as Chandler Bing on the hit 1990s television sitcom Friends.
Witness interviews in the autopsy report said he had been undergoing ketamine infusion therapy for depression and anxiety.
But his last known treatment was a week and a half before his death, so the ketamine found in his system by medical examiners would have been introduced since that last infusion, the autopsy said.
