BILL ADDS DRUG-MONITORING FUNDS

U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers' Program Helps States Curb Widespread Abuse of
Prescription Medications.

A U.S. House appropriations bill introduced last week includes $10
million to help states monitor prescription drug abuse - enough money
for most states to set up monitoring programs, according to Kentucky
Congressman Hal Rogers' office.

The proposed amount is five times what was appropriated in the 2002
fiscal year, when Rogers created the state assistance program, which
bears his name.

Nine states, including Kentucky, were awarded grants in the first
round to create or enhance programs to snag socalled "doctor
shoppers," addicts who visit multiple doctors to get prescriptions
for narcotics. That brings to 21 the number of states with monitoring
programs.

"State prescription monitoring programs have had a positive effect in
curbing the abuse of controlled pharmaceuticals by clamping down on
'doctor shopping,'" Rogers, a Republican from Somerset and a senior
member of the Appropriations Committee, said in a statement. "These
monitoring programs are essential to fighting crime and this funding
will give us a major boost in the war on drugs."

Dr. Laxmaiah Manchikanti, a Paducah physician who is president of the
American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians, said he is
delighted by the proposed funding increase for the Harold Rogers
Prescription Drug Monitoring Program.

"What he's doing is wonderful," Manchikanti said of
Rogers.

But he said the program doesn't go far enough, since it will lead to a
piecemeal system that still makes it difficult for states to share
data and for physicians in border areas to identify doctor shoppers.

Manchikanti's group is backing legislation, which is to be
reintroduced this year by Republican Kentucky Rep. Ed Whitfield, to
create a national database to track controlled substance
prescriptions.

Manchikanti said state databases, such as the Kentucky All Schedule
Prescription Electronic Reporting (KASPER) system, can't track addicts
who cross state lines to visit doctors and pharmacies.

He said he received a call from an Illinois doctor a few days ago
saying he had been prescribing the painkiller hydrocodone for four
years to a patient now seeing Manchikanti.

"I was not aware of it," Manchikanti said, adding that he had run
the patient's name through the KASPER system and he had come up clean.

The Courier-Journal reported last year that despite the KASPER system,
prescription drug abuse was prevalent along Kentucky's borders,
because five of the state's seven neighbors do not monitor narcotic
sales. And the two states that do -- Indiana and Illinois -- track
sales of only the most addictive, Schedule 2 controlled substances,
and they make the information available only to law enforcement, not
to doctors or pharmacists, as Kentucky does.

Rogers opposes a national monitoring system, saying that it would be
too complicated and expensive and that states should be able to design
their own systems.

The $10 million for the Rogers program has been included in the House
Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations bill for the 2003 fiscal year.

Along with other spending measures for the current year that have
still not passed, the measure is expected to be considered over the
next several months by a committee of House and Senate members. The
conference committee will produce an omnibus bill that would be voted
on by the full House and Senate.