REMEDIES SOUGHT TO OVERDOSE PROBLEM

Officials Gather For Chalmette Discussion

Nearly 40 people representing local parish governments and state and
federal agencies interested in curbing the number of drug overdoses
statewide met Thursday in St. Bernard Parish to discuss what government can
do, from creating laws to better regulating pain management clinics that
dispense drugs that officials say caused some of the overdoses.

Several officials said the creation of a statewide prescription-monitoring
program, along with local laws that make it harder to open new pain
management clinics, are among the best tools in the fight.

St. Bernard Councilman Craig Taffaro, a professional substance abuse
counselor, initiated the recently approved law imposing a 180-day
moratorium on new pain clinics in St. Bernard. That action has been
mirrored by other local governments, including Slidell, St. Tammany Parish,
Jefferson Parish and Gretna. A partial moratorium is in place in New Orleans.

Now the state may take action. Several legislators, including state Rep.
Nita Hutter, R-Chalmette, said they are considering filing bills that could
further regulate pain clinics. Hutter attended Thursday's meeting to get
input for a bill she is preparing to file today, which is the deadline for
filing bills for the upcoming session that convenes April 25.

State Sen. Tom Schedler, R-Mandeville, who did not attend the meeting, has
said he plans to sponsor a bill for a statewide moratorium on pain clinics
and one requiring that clinics be owned by a doctor specializing in pain
management. That provision would put the clinics under the authority of the
Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners, the disciplinary agency for
doctors.

Thursday's task force meeting, which was planned earlier this month, came
on the heels of a federal raid Tuesday of three metro-area pain clinics.

Donald Hickman of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration told the
group the state ranks fourth in the nation for the consumption of methadone
and fifth for the painkiller hydrocodone, an ingredient in Lorcet and
Lortab. Methadone and hydrocodone can be lethal when combined.

"Those are not numbers to be proud of," said Hickman, who agreed with
suggestions at the meeting that a law should be enacted requiring owners of
pain clinics to be doctors specializing in pain management.

"I think it would go a long way to solving the problems," Hickman said.

Officials said that during the pain clinic moratorium in St. Bernard and
other parishes, they are trying to revise zoning laws to make it more
difficult for the clinics to open.

The clinics dispense prescription drugs that help patients manage pain.
Government officials across the metro area blame unscrupulous pain clinics
for a spike in prescription drug abuse and overdoses. At such unscrupulous
clinics, officials say, physicians sometimes see hundreds of patients a day
for one-to three-minute visits before prescribing addictive narcotics, said
Charles R. Fleetwood, chief investigator for investigations and enforcement
with the Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners.

The state Pharmacy Board is working with a task force of state health and
law enforcement officials to create a database of prescriptions for
narcotic painkillers to track down doctors who overprescribe and patients
who "doctor shop" by visiting several clinics for multiple prescriptions,
said Capt. Pete Tufaro of the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's Office. Tufaro,
who spoke at Thursday's meeting, is assisting the task force.

Texas and Arkansas and 18 other states already have such systems, and
Mississippi's is scheduled to go online May 1.

The state has applied for a federal Department of Justice grant to finance
the initial phase of the program, but it is not expected to go online until
2007, said Brenda Lands, with the state Department of Health and Hospitals,
who serves on that task force and attended Thursday's meeting in Chalmette.

Officials at the meeting asked if the state also could require pharmacists
to check the photo ID of any customer seeking to fill a prescription for a
narcotic. That would help prevent people from using prescriptions written
under false names, they said.