DRUG CZAR SEEKS TO EXPAND REGISTRIES

Hopes to Target Prescription-Drug Abuse

WASHINGTON -- The White House today will announce a national
anti-drug strategy that includes prodding more states to set up
databases that can track people who get multiple prescriptions of
frequently abused prescription drugs such as OxyContin and Vicodin.

The strategy, to be announced in Denver today by White House drug
czar John Walters, does not include any new programs, a reflection of
how the tight federal budget is limiting anti-drug initiatives.

Twenty-eight states have passed laws to set up prescription-drug
registries, which are funded with a mix of federal and state money.
President Bush's proposed budget for fiscal 2007 includes $9.9
million to help establish registries in more states, up from $7.4
million this year.

The impact of the existing registries is unclear; the first data
measuring their effectiveness will not be available until next year.
Walters, whose office provided a copy of the strategy to USA TODAY,
is focusing on 20 states that do not have prescription-drug
registries and whose legislatures meet this year, plus Washington,
D.C. Among the states likely to consider new registries are Florida,
Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Hampshire,
South Carolina, Vermont and Washington, says John Horton, an aide to Walters.

The registries have faced opposition from critics who have expressed
concern about patients' privacy and the potential for interference in
medical care.

"We're sympathetic to registries if they are used for public-health
purposes, but we're really concerned that they'll be used as a law
enforcement tool," says Bill Piper of the Drug Policy Alliance, a
non-profit based in New York City that pushes for drug abuse to be
treated as a health problem rather than as a criminal one. "We don't
want doctors afraid to prescribe pain medication."

Drug abusers often collect prescriptions for narcotics by visiting
several doctors, Horton says. Doctors in states without registries
have no way to check whether a patient is "doctor shopping" to get
several prescriptions, he says.

States with such programs require doctors and pharmacists to log
prescriptions into computer registries that the medical professionals
can monitor. Many states give police access to the registries.

The nation's most extensive study of drug use among youths indicated
recently that illicit drug use is down or holding steady. However,
the 2005 Monitoring the Future study by the University of Michigan
found that abuse of sedatives, OxyContin and inhalants is rising. It
said 5.5% of high school seniors reported using OxyContin during the
previous year. That represented a jump of nearly 40% since 2002.