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The danger lurking in your home

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By STEVE OTTO Steve Otto

sotto@tampatrib.com sotto@tampatrib.com

Published: June 17, 2009

They are calling the event Friday at the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay a "Prescription Drug Summit."

That sounds a little much. "Summits" are more what you expect between the leaders of superpowers at a meeting in Iceland or maybe mafia bosses at a hotel in New Jersey.

But in the greater scheme of things, the discussions among medical and law enforcement groups at the Hyatt will be dealing with something more relevant and real to most of us: the abuse of prescription drugs.

The event is more a series of seminars, and it is pretty expensive at $135 to $185. There are some interesting people on the list, however, including Robert O'Neill of the U.S. attorney's office; Abraham Rivera, president of the Tampa Bay Pain Management Association; and state Senate President Pro Tem Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, a likely congressional candidate next time around and a longtime advocate of the "Prescription Drug Monitoring Bill" that finally made it through the Legislature and is waiting on the governor.

Household epidemic

"It has become an epidemic in Florida," Fasano says. "In South Florida there are so-called pain management clinics where not just Floridians but people from out of the state are lining up to get prescription drugs. They pay cash and then go down the street and get more.

"I'm not talking about the legitimate clinics, which support this bill, but clinics being run not by doctors but people out to make a fast buck.

"People are dying. More than 3,000 people in Florida alone died from legal prescription drugs last year. That's more than died from illegal drugs. These are your children and your neighbor's children."

Sharon Kelley is CEO of Associates in Emergency Medication Inc, which is hosting the conference. She is a former Tampa police officer and member of the state attorney's office.

Pills for sale

"Last year," she says, "more people were arrested in Pinellas County for prescription drugs than illicit drugs. You see physicians writing scripts for as many as 250 tablets that can in turn be sold on the street for thousands of dollars. We have physicians who have serious concerns as well as law enforcement agencies that don't know how to deal with privacy laws. That's one of the purposes of this summit, to bring all of the parties to the table and see if we can work closer together."

Let's hope so. White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske recently said, "Unintentional deaths from these painkillers exceeded those of cocaine and heroin, and they exceeded deaths from gunshot wounds."

For information, call Kelley at (813) 949-9282.

Keyword: Otto Graphs, for more of Steve Otto's musings.

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