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Prescription Monitoring Law Sought For State

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By MIKE SALINERO

msalinero@tampatrib.com

Published: January 6, 2009

TAMPA - Prescription drugs now kill more Floridians than heroin or cocaine, yet the state does not monitor the prescribing and dispensing of deadly painkillers, such as oxycodone.

"We are the highest-population state in the nation that does not have some sort of a prescription drug monitoring program," said Hillsborough County Commissioner Rose Ferlita. "We are falling short of protecting all our citizens."

Ferlita, who is a pharmacist, will be one of the speakers at today's Statewide Awareness Day on Prescription Drug Monitoring Program at St. Petersburg College.

The conferees' goal is to persuade the Legislature to write a drug monitoring law this year. Florida is one of only 12 states without such a program.

"We have become a donor state, the supplier state, for all these states that have something in place," Ferlita said.

A monitoring program would use computers to track when a doctor prescribes an addictive drug and when the prescription is filled at a pharmacy. Doctors could see that someone had been collecting prescriptions or that one person is having numerous prescriptions filled.

Up to now, the Legislature has declined to set up a monitoring program because of privacy concerns, but lawmakers may be more receptive to a program this year because of the alarm in law enforcement and public health circles about the proliferation of the drugs.

"We still have a cocaine problem," said Bill Janes, head of the state Office of Drug Control, "but the prescription drug problem, because of the availability and widespread dispersion, is causing three times the number of deaths as all illicit drugs combined."

Reporter Mike Salinero can be reached at (813) 259-8303.

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