While newspaper editorial boards and some GOP leaders bang the drum for a state prescription-drug monitoring system, a zero-cost and seemingly more effective alternative is quietly proceeding through the House.
A proposed bill by the Health and Human Services Committee would attack the "pill mill" problem by banning physicians from dispensing controlled substances at their offices or clinics.
Restricting the dispensing of controlled substances to established pharmacies, the bill (PCB HHSC 11-03) would:
- make it illegal for doctors to dispense controlled substances (Schedules II through V). Instead, doctors will write prescriptions for the legal use of controlled substances and patients will fill their prescriptions from a pharmacy;
- prohibit wholesale drug distributors from selling controlled substances to practitioners;
- create a mandatory buy-back program for physicians to transfer controlled substance inventory back to distributors by a date certain;
- require the Department of Health to declare a state of emergency and require law enforcement to quarantine the inventories of high-risk dispensing practitioners to ensure legal transfer through the buy-back program;
- make controlled substances possessed by dispensing practitioners after the date of the buy-back program contraband, and require law enforcement to seize it;
- repeal existing pain management clinic regulations because this proposed legislation prohibits the dispensing of medication by practitioners at pain management clinics.
House leaders, led by Speaker Dean Cannon, say their approach will shut down pill mills and doctor shopping more effectively, and less intrusively, than the controversial and potentially costly drug database proposed by the Senate.
"Recent studies have shown that there is no correlation between a Prescription Drug Monitoring Program and a reduction in the number of prescription drug-related deaths," said Cannon spokesman Katie Betta.
"Ultimately, the PDMP will merely track -- not prevent -- prescription drug abuse in Florida. The speaker believes the quickest and most effective way to stop prescription drug abuse in Florida is to ban practitioners from dispensing controlled substances."
Tea party activist Robin Stublen hailed the House initiative.
"Instead of taking someone's privacy for future court action, just stop the dispensers," Stublen said.
"Big-name pharmacies keep their own databases, and no reputable pharmacy is going to hand out 300 pills at a time."
Florida's problems with doctor-run "pill mills" are well-documented. For example, 156 Florida practitioners -- a whopping 11 percent of the national total -- are authorized to dispense oxycodone.
Abuse and deaths related to controlled substances have prompted a wave of knee-jerk newspaper editorials demanding Florida join 41 other states that operate varying forms of drug databases.
House bill writers say the quickest way to shut down shady doctors is to bar them from dispensing or selling drugs at their offices or "clinics."
Stublen would go a step further by prohibiting drug sales representatives or pharmaceutical companies from delivering controlled substances to physicians' clinics or offices.
Michael Jackson, spokesman for the Florida Pharmacy Association, did not respond to Sunshine State News' requests for comment. The FPA is on record as supporting a prescription-drug database.
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."
The pill mill debate has fractured state GOP leadership, with Senate President Mike Haridopolos and Attorney General Pam Bondi supporting a prescription-drug database.
On the other side, Cannon and Gov. Rick Scott call the database unnecessarily intrusive, potentially costly and ultimately ineffective.
Sen. Joe Negron also opposes the database concept, which he said "is on the way out."
The Stuart Republican, who chairs the Subcomittee on Health and Human Services Appropriations, told Sunshine State News last month, "There won't be one penny in the HHS budget" for a Prescription Drug Monitoring Program.
Though advocates say the database would be funded through yet-to-be-secured private grants, questions remain about the ongoing cost of administration -- as well as its effectiveness in actually halting pill mills.
"It's big government taking all of our private information, and not getting at the root of the problem," said House Health and Human Services Committee Chairman Rob Schenck.
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Reach Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
