DRUG BILL TARGETS 'DOC SHOPPERS'

TAMPA - Professionals fighting a rapid increase in prescription drug
deaths hope they have new ammunition in a drug monitoring bill signed
into law this week.

Within 18 months, doctors, pharmacists and law enforcement will have
access to a centralized database listing the names of patients getting
narcotic prescriptions filled in Florida. Gov. Charlie Crist signed the
bill into law Thursday.

State Sen. Mike Fasano, the bill's author, told more than 100
professionals attending a drug abuse summit in Tampa on Friday that
Florida joins 38 other states with the monitoring program, which aims to
stop "doc shoppers," people who get narcotic prescriptions such as
oxycodone from multiple physicians at once.

The system will prevent Floridians and people from out of state from
using pain management clinics to get drugs to sell on the streets,
Fasano said.

"I hope and pray Florida will no longer be looked on as a pill mill," he
said.

In the first half of 2008, oxycodone was responsible for 423 deaths in
Florida, including 214 in Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties,
Florida Department of Law Enforcement records show. The statewide number
is a 19 percent increase over the same period a year ago.

Detectives at Friday's Prescription Drug Abuse Summit said a doc shopper
can turn a $1 oxycodone pill from the pharmacy into $10 on the streets
of Tampa. Those same pills fetch a price three to five times that in
Florida's Panhandle or in Kentucky, said summit organizer Sharon Kelley,
chief operating officer of Tampa's Associates in Emergency Medical
Education.

"It's one of those problems nobody knows exists until your eyes are
opened to it," said Jeff Shearer, a member of the Drug Enforcement
Administrations' tactical diversion squad in Tampa.

First introduced seven years ago, the bill met with concern that a
database would compromise patient confidentiality. Fasano said few will
have access to the database, such as doctors and pharmacists. Law
enforcement investigators will be able to look for trends and suspected
abusers and dealers.

"We want to make it very clear, it's not going to be open to the
public," he said.