OXY ABUSE: THE ROLE OF A REGISTRY

If nobody lied to their physicians about their prescription drug use,
Ontario wouldn't need a provincial pharmaceutical registry. But people
do and Ontario does.

Prescriptions of OxyContin, an opiate-based painkiller popularly known
as hillbilly heroin, have skyrocketed in recent years and unfortunate
addicts are willing to do just about anything to satisfy their fix.

One local woman recently pleaded guilty to a massive double-doctoring
scheme in which 15 physicians prescribed her close to 3,000 oxy pills.
Her painful and increasingly common story illustrates the frailties of
the existing system and the ease with which addicts can obtain the
drug.

The woman simply went from doctor to doctor, catch as catch can,
obtaining prescriptions for the drug without informing the doctors, as
required by law, she had been prescribed the drug elsewhere in the
past 30 days. Physicians, faced with a patient in pain and others
queued up in their waiting rooms, simply filled the prescription and
moved on to their next case.

The current system depends on a patient's honour but once that patient
has become an addict, honour ceases to be part of the equation.
Addicts can't be trusted. They will say or do whatever they can to
feed the beast and a system must be established that takes this
unfortunate reality into account.

The Canadian Pharmacy Association has urged Ottawa to establish a
national registry to track the distribution of prescription drugs but
such a proposal fails to recognize the province's constitutional
jurisdiction in health care. A better plan would be for each province
and territory to mimic British Columbia and Alberta and establish
registries within their own borders.

Ontario should be in the vanguard and portions of the new health-care
premium should be earmarked for a pharmaceutical registry. The
establishment of such a program would be relatively inexpensive
considering the good it would accomplish and the lives it would save.
And it would save lives. In the past five years, 250 deaths in Ontario
were related "in part or solely" to the opiate oxycodone found in
OxyContin and its sister drugs.

Before physicians write a prescription for OxyContin or its addictive
cousins, a simple search of the registry could inform them if the
patient has recently obtained a prescription.

Such a system would help curb double-doctoring and, more importantly,
it would help physicians identify and treat addictions in their
infancy rather than in their more difficult, latent stages. It would
also enable pharmacists to read the prescriptions on computer
monitors, eliminating the mistakes that sometimes result from
physicians' illegible writing.

Unless something is done to control the distribution of OxyContin, the
drug will continue to be abused and it will continue to cause pain
instead of relieving it.