04-19-2011, 01:38 PM
I'm posting this because I think that, ultimately, this will prove to be applicable to this case.
US aims to kill Florida pill mills
New plan uses education, law enforcement to cut prescription drug abuse by 15 percent in five years
MIAMI — As more people die from prescription drug abuse, the White House drug czar on Tuesday unveiled a new strategy to cut misuse of powerful painkillers like oxycodone by 15 percent within five years and take particular aim at Florida-based "pill mills" that have fueled an explosion of the drugs along the East Coast and into Appalachia.
The new approach will depend on education, stepped-up law enforcement and pill-tracking databases.
Under one part of the plan, more than 1 million doctors would have to undergo training on proper prescription practices as a condition for their ability to prescribe the highly addictive drugs known as opioids.
"The key is that everyone realizes there is no magic answer to this," Gil Kerlikowske, President Barack Obama's national drug policy director, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's a really complex problem."
An addiction expert who has advised FDA says 15 percent is doable and about right, in the face of a decades-long U.S. drug abuse problem that defies eradication.
"To say we are going to do away with the problem in five years, we cannot do that," said Dr. Roland Gray, medical director of the Nashville-based Tennessee Medical Foundation and a Food and Drug Administration adviser on addiction issues. "I think they are headed in the right direction."
The first-ever comprehensive federal plan focuses on four main areas: education for prescribing physicians and the public, including a media campaign about the drugs' dangers; pushing for tracking databases in all 50 states; better methods of throwing out unused or expired prescriptions; and more intense training and attention by law enforcement on illegal pill mill clinics.
Florida is the epicenter of the deadly rise in abuse of oxycodone and similar addictive painkillers, with doctors in the Sunshine State prescribing far more of the drugs than all other states combined, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. And Florida's pill mills are the supplier of choice for much of the eastern U.S., causing a ripple effect of drug overdoses and addiction in Appalachia and other points to the north — where phenomenon dubbed the "OxyContin Express" includes busloads of people coming to Florida just for pills.
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Full article here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42665151/ns/...ddictions/
US aims to kill Florida pill mills
New plan uses education, law enforcement to cut prescription drug abuse by 15 percent in five years
MIAMI — As more people die from prescription drug abuse, the White House drug czar on Tuesday unveiled a new strategy to cut misuse of powerful painkillers like oxycodone by 15 percent within five years and take particular aim at Florida-based "pill mills" that have fueled an explosion of the drugs along the East Coast and into Appalachia.
The new approach will depend on education, stepped-up law enforcement and pill-tracking databases.
Under one part of the plan, more than 1 million doctors would have to undergo training on proper prescription practices as a condition for their ability to prescribe the highly addictive drugs known as opioids.
"The key is that everyone realizes there is no magic answer to this," Gil Kerlikowske, President Barack Obama's national drug policy director, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's a really complex problem."
An addiction expert who has advised FDA says 15 percent is doable and about right, in the face of a decades-long U.S. drug abuse problem that defies eradication.
"To say we are going to do away with the problem in five years, we cannot do that," said Dr. Roland Gray, medical director of the Nashville-based Tennessee Medical Foundation and a Food and Drug Administration adviser on addiction issues. "I think they are headed in the right direction."
The first-ever comprehensive federal plan focuses on four main areas: education for prescribing physicians and the public, including a media campaign about the drugs' dangers; pushing for tracking databases in all 50 states; better methods of throwing out unused or expired prescriptions; and more intense training and attention by law enforcement on illegal pill mill clinics.
Florida is the epicenter of the deadly rise in abuse of oxycodone and similar addictive painkillers, with doctors in the Sunshine State prescribing far more of the drugs than all other states combined, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. And Florida's pill mills are the supplier of choice for much of the eastern U.S., causing a ripple effect of drug overdoses and addiction in Appalachia and other points to the north — where phenomenon dubbed the "OxyContin Express" includes busloads of people coming to Florida just for pills.
<snipped>
Full article here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42665151/ns/...ddictions/