PRESCRIPTION DEBATE STALLS OXYCONTIN BILL

Some Say Measure Would Hinder Access To Mail-Order Drugs

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- A new battle over mail-order prescriptions has
stymied the legislation fostered by the state task force that Gov.
Paul Patton created to tackle the problem of widespread abuse of the
painkiller OxyContin.

The OxyContin measure, House Bill 371, would require pharmacies to
verify the identity of people when they present prescriptions, pick
up drugs for others or have them delivered at home.

At the behest of Senate President David Williams, the Senate
Judiciary Committee added a provision requiring any prescription
filled to a Kentucky address to be filled by a pharmacist licensed in
Kentucky.

The change was potentially a huge victory for Kentucky pharmacists,
who have been on the losing side of several lobbying battles in the
legislative session that is nearing an end.

But Friday, Republican Sen. Albert Robinson of London publicly warned
Williams and other leaders of the Senate's 20-18 GOP majority that
the new version could fail on a Senate roll-call vote, which he said
he would request. The leaders sent the bill back to committee.

The committee chairman, Sen. Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, said he
does not plan to have another committee meeting ''unless directed
otherwise'' by his leaders.

Opponents of the Senate substitute say it could stop the delivery of
mailorder drugs in Kentucky, and make moot a bill that Patton signed
yesterday to allow people in the state health plan to get maintenance
prescriptions by mail.

''The Senate substitute, we think, would make it difficult to have
mail order for anybody,'' said Judith Gambill, president of the
Kentucky Education Association, a leading lobby for the mail-order
measure, House Bill 369.

The sponsor of the OxyContin bill, Rep. Robin Webb, D-Grayson, said
she would not have ''embraced the concept'' of the Senate version if
she thought it would be an obstacle to mail delivery of prescriptions.

She said some out-of-state controls are needed because mail-order
prescriptions ''are going to be left on doorsteps and in mailboxes,''
but all that is needed is one Kentucky-licensed pharmacist at
companies that send drugs into Kentucky.

She said that license would cost each company $200 to obtain and $270
a year to keep, and ''I didn't think that would kill mail order.''

Sen. Julie Denton, R-Lyndon, filed a floor amendment to the bill that
appears to embody Webb's concept. It would require that mail-order
drugs sent to Kentucky be dispensed ''under the control of'' a
Kentucky-licensed pharmacist.

At last Friday's caucus of Senate Republicans, Denton's amendment
encountered resistance, Robinson issued his warning, and President
Pro Tem Dick Roeding, a retired pharmacist from Fort Mitchell,
suggested that the OxyContin bill wasn't all that important.

Roeding said that the biggest problem drugs in Kentucky are
acetaminophen and codeine, and that the legislature ''needs to make
sure'' that outof-state pharmacists have to follow the same rules as
Kentucky's.

Webb's bill was aimed at widespread abuse of OxyContin in Eastern
Kentucky, where the painkiller has been blamed for at least 59
deaths. State police said in January that 880 people had been
arrested on more than 1,100 charges related to abuse of the
painkiller since early last year.

Webb, who served on the OxyContin task force, said pharmacists who
served on it went along with her bill, but ''all of a sudden their
hired lobbyists get here and they're not willing to do any more than
the mail-order companies do, which to me is unconscionable when we
had three pharmacists on the task force.''

Bob Barnett, executive director of the Kentucky Pharmacists
Association, said the group favored a stronger bill, ''and we still
would. If the bill goes down it's because of the opposition from the
KEA and the mail-order people.''

Throwing Webb's adjective back at her, Barnett said, ''It's
unconscionable, in our view, to have that unlevel a playing field.
We're agreeing to put a whole lot of burden on our folks, but it
ought to be on all those involved.''

Webb also pointed a finger at the manufacturer of OxyContin, Purdue
Pharma LP of Stamford, Conn.

''I know Purdue Pharma is somewhere in the background on this thing
because they threatened to kill this thing early in the session and
they've still got lobbyists here,'' she said.

James ''Jitter'' Allen of Frankfort, a contract lobbyist for Purdue
Pharma, said, ''We don't have any problem with that bill.''

Sean Cutter of Lexington, a contract lobbyist for Merck & Co., a drug
maker that has a large mail-order business, said the company did not
want to comment on the bill and negotiations to revive it.

Williams said yesterday that he wasn't directly involved in current
negotiations on the bill but thought a compromise could still be
found. ''There is some movement to try to do something on it that
will accomplish what we need to accomplish,'' he said.

Stivers said he feels sorry for Webb, because ''a good cause got
caught up in a lot of other things.''