A 2009 law authorizing a statewide prescription drug database is "on the way out," says state Sen. Joe Negron.
The database has become a political football since Gov. Rick Scott announced last week that he wants to boot it. His call for repeal appeared to undercut Attorney General Pam Bondi's high-profile campaign against "pill mills" and elicited outrage from newspaper editorial boards darkly suggesting the governor, a former health-care executive, was playing into the hands of doctors and the pharmaceutical industry.
But Scott isn't the only one opposing the database, which is not yet operational due to a bidding dispute.
Negron, R-Stuart, told Sunshine State News: "Government has no business snooping into the medicine cabinets of citizens. The database is overly intrusive. It violates the privacy of law-abiding Floridians."
Negron, who chairs the Subcommittee on Health and Human Services Appropriations, vowed: "There won't be one penny in the HHS budget for this."
House Health and Human Services Committee Chairman Rob Schenck was equally downbeat on the database.
"It's big government taking all of our private information, and not getting at the root of the problem," the Spring Hill Republican said. "There are better ways to get at bad doctors."
Scott spokesman Brian Hughes says the governor is actively pursuing alternative remedies.
"He's committed to working with the attorney general and law enforcement to target criminal activity and criminal behavior. That's an appropriate core function of government," Hughes said.
Dave Aronberg, who heads up Bondi's pill mill task force, acknowledges that the database is a "hot topic." But as a proponent of the program since his pre-Legislature days as an assistant attorney general, the Greenacres Democrat believes it is perfectly aligned with government's regulatory role.
"It's a powerful tool for action against doctors because it provides investigators a tool to prove that a doctor has crossed the line. It's also a deterrent," Aronberg said.
Currently, 41 states have authorized various forms of prescription-drug databases. Florida was going to be No. 42, but a bidding challenge by one contractor has stalled implementation.
Meantime, political and fiscal questions have arisen.
The 2009 legislation called for the database to be financed by private grants. But skeptics, including Scott, remain concerned that the state will get stuck with at least a portion of the tab after the first two years of grant allocations run out -- if not earlier.
Sen. Mike Fasano, a database advocate, fanned those suspicions by introducing follow-on legislation, Senate Bill 818, which critics say could be used to tap state coffers for the project.
Negron says he's keeping a watchful eye on backdoor appropriations.
"If anyone tries other ways, we will use spending limits to block the database," he pledged.
If implemented, the database -- officially known as the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program -- would be operated by the state Department of Health, which also oversees the state Board of Medicine.
Some have criticized the Board of Medicine for being too lax in policing pill-pushing doctors. The Florida Medical Association says it "supports giving law enforcement and local governments the tools they need to more effectively crack down on illegal pill mills."
Claude Shipley, a former official in the state Office of Drug Control, said "active monitoring" can "reduce the supply and the rate of abuse."
Florida law-enforcement officers have spoken out about the need for a prescription-drug database.
"One problem, from an investigation standpoint, is getting on the inside of the medical community," Volusia County Sheriff Ben Johnson told the Daytona Beach News-Journal. "[The database] is one of the biggest ways we can figure out who's buying and who's writing these prescriptions."
Indian River County Sheriff Daryl Loar says pill mills are the nexus for a host of criminal activity, including burglary and robbery. By some estimates, seven Floridians die daily from the misuse of prescription drugs, though officials do not conclusively connect those deaths to pill mill activity.
A growing number of Florida Republicans appear more attuned to the tea-flavored libertarianism of limited government. In one of his first acts as governor, Scott disbanded the Office of Drug Control, a Fasano initiative that was signed into law by then-Gov. Charlie Crist.
Aside from creating a foundation to fund the prescription-drug monitoring program, critics said the office's work mainly consisted of "four guys sitting around writing white papers."
"[Scott] doesn't come from a law-enforcement background, so I think he is, in true tea party form, focused on policy. Does it protect the civil liberties and privacy rights of Floridians?" says Phil Russo, a founding member of the Orlando Tea Party.
"Ms. Bondi et al. are law-enforcement folks and they see things through that looking glass. But if prohibition and databases worked, we wouldn't have any illegal drugs or fake IDs or illegal immigrants," Russo said.
Aronberg responds that states with prescription-drug databases have "less drug diversion than states that don't." Fasano added: "Without the [database], Florida will return to the days as a haven for doctor shopping and drug diversion."
The Florida Pharmacy Association, which helped frame the 2009 database legislation, hopes the program will move forward,spokesman Michael Jackson said.
Pharmacists already are required to maintain logs of customers who purchase Pseudoephedrine (an over-the-counter drug that is a key ingredient in the manufacture of methamphetamine) and those records must be made available to law-enforcement officers upon request.
But an expansive state database tracking the prescribing and sale of all legal pharmaceuticals will be a tough sell at the 2011 Legislature.
House Speaker Dean Cannon, one of 13 lawmakers who signed a letter urging Crist to veto the 2009 database bill, says he is "open" to the idea of repeal this session.
Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff, another member of that "Gang of 13," says she wants to stop "doctor shopping and drug dealers disguised as pain clinics" -- but she also opposes the prescription database as currently constituted.
In an effort to bridge the pill mill debate, the Fort Lauderdale Republican is drafting her own database bill that would set tighter standards by requiring a "doctor-patient relationship" and mandating a subpoena before law-enforcement agencies "can start a fishing expedition."
"There is growing momentum in the halls of the Legislature to jettison [the current] law," said Negron, who also serves as vice chair of the Senate Budget Committee.
"The solution is not to ask Floridians to give up their right to privacy. The answer is to use existing laws against doctor shopping and to use creative private solutions to work with doctors and pharmacies," the senator said.
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Reach Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
