KEEPING TABS ON DRUGS

If carefully administered, Tennessee's new controlled substance registry
could prove to be a valuable tool to fight drug abuse.

Beginning last week, every prescription written in Tennessee for certain
drugs - most of them painkillers and all of them ripe for abuse - is
recorded in a database. Access to the database will be tightly controlled.
The law creates a committee to check the database for unusual usage
patterns, such as one individual getting prescriptions for the same drug
filled at numerous pharmacies. When potential problems become apparent, the
committee is authorized to inform the appropriate medical authorities and
under some circumstances, to law enforcers.

The impetus for the new law was Tennessee's unusually high number of
prescriptions for the synthetic narcotic hydrocodone, which is marketed
under different brand names. Pharmacists had no way to know if customers
were becoming addicted to the drug themselves or were reselling it on the
streets illegally. But the volume of prescriptions for this drug convinced
the Tennessee Pharmacists Association that some tracking mechanism was
warranted.

This was carefully crafted legislation, designed to try to help people with
prescription drug addictions. It is now the state's duty to assure that the
implementation is as careful as the crafting of the bill.

It is none of the state's business what legal drugs are prescribed to its
citizens. It is certainly no business of the employers of those citizens.
But if individuals are getting prescriptions from more than one doctor for
their own use, it could well be a health-care issue that requires a
physician's intervention. And if they are getting multiple prescriptions in
order to resell the drugs illegally, it becomes an issue for law
enforcement.

Drug addiction, whether it begins with prescription drugs or street drugs,
tears families apart and wastes lives. Tennessee can't afford to miss an
opportunity to detect prescription drug abuse. As long as the new registry
doesn't overreach, it can be a real asset.