2 ACTIONS MAY HELP STATE IN DRUG FIGHT

Panel OKs Fix In Law; Congress Offers Funds

The General Assembly passed a bill last year establishing criminal
background checks on doctors who apply for Kentucky medical licenses, but
the checks haven't begun because the wording did not comply with the
requirements of federal law.

Yesterday, the Senate Licensing, Occupations and Administrative Regulations
Committee unanimously approved Senate Bill 195 to fix the language.

The committee's action is one of two developments in the past week that
could help Kentucky better combat prescriptiondrug abuse, which is
prevalent in Eastern Kentucky and along the state's borders.

Last Thursday, Congress passed an appropriations bill that includes $15.5
million to help states create or upgrade prescription-drug monitoring
programs and to assist law enforcement and pay for drugtreatment and
- -education programs in Eastern and Southern Kentucky.

The Courier-Journal reported last fall that the absence of background
checks by the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure had enabled Dr. Fortune
Williams to be licensed in 1996 despite a 1987 drug arrest in California.

Williams didn't disclose the arrest on his license application, as he was
required to do, and the board didn't discover it until 2001, when he was
investigated for alleged excessive prescribing of painkillers.

Williams has since been indicted by a Lewis County grand jury -- one of
five doctors who practiced in a South Shore, Ky., clinic to be indicted on
charges that they illegally prescribed narcotics for thousands of addicts
since 1996.

SB 195, sponsored by Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, would
authorize the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure to require fingerprint
background checks by the Kentucky State Police and FBI of all new license
applicants and of other doctors when there is "good cause shown," such as
when the board is investigating a physician.

"This bill gives the medical profession the tools it needs to properly
police itself for the protection of the public," Williams said.

Mike Rodman, assistant executive director of the medical licensure board,
said the FBI wouldn't give the board access to its National Crime
Information Center database because the language in the original bill was
too vague. The new bill's wording has been cleared by both the FBI and the
state police, he said.

David Beyer, a spokesman for the FBI in Louisville, said federal law
requires specific language before the agency can comply with state legislation.

The $24 cost of each background check would be paid by the applicant.

Medical boards in 13 other states are authorized or required to perform
criminal background checks, according to the Federation of State Medical
Boards, which has recommended that every state perform checks on license
applicants.

Congress last week approved spending $7.5 million in the current fiscal
year for grants to help states monitor prescription-drug abuse.

That is $2.5 million less than the amount sought by U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, a
Republican who represents Kentucky's 5th District, to continue a program
that helps states start or upgrade monitoring systems to stop "doctor
shoppers" -- addicts who visit multiple doctors to get prescriptions for
narcotics. But it's almost four times the $2 million that the program
received in 2002, its first year.

Seventeen states, including Kentucky, have programs that monitor
controlled-substance prescriptions, and four others are expected to start
them this year. Rogers' office said in a statement that the new money
should be enough for most of the other 29 states to launch programs.

Rogers, a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, has said that the
grant program, which he created and is named for him, should make it harder
for abusers in Kentucky to avoid detection by having prescriptions filled
at out-of-state pharmacies, a problem The Courier-Journal reported on last
year. Kentucky's program, which began in 1999, gathers information on sales
of all controlled substances at pharmacies in the state, but not from those
in other states.

Five of the state's seven neighbors do not monitor sales of narcotics,
though three of them -- Ohio, West Virginia and Virginia -- were among nine
states awarded grants last year from the Hal Rogers Prescription Drug
Monitoring Program. Kentucky was awarded $240,000 for a pilot program in
Harlan and Perry counties that will enable immediate reporting of pharmacy
sales. Kentucky's program now lags about a month behind in collecting such
data.

Indiana and Illinois have monitoring programs, but they track sales of only
the most addictive controlled substances, and they make the information
available only to law enforcement, not to physicians and pharmacists, as
Kentucky does. Nor do the states routinely share their information.

Leslie Cupp, Rogers' spokeswoman, said he will meet soon with the Justice
Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the National Alliance
on Model State Drug Laws, a congressionally funded, nonprofit organization,
to complete work on a bill that would set minimum requirements for states'
prescriptiondrug monitoring programs.

The legislation would require states to monitor the sales of all controlled
substances and ensure that states have the technical capability to swap
data about abusers.

The congressional appropriations bill passed last week also included $8
million for Eastern and Southern Kentucky to create regional drug task
forces for drug interdiction, confiscation and undercover operations;
establish drug-treatment programs; and expand drug-awareness and -education
programs, Rogers' office said.

Cupp said the money is intended to deal with all drug abuse in the region.
"Obviously, a large part of that is prescription-drug abuse," she said.

Staff writer Deborah Yetter contributed to this story.