PILL MILLS BE GONE

A New Prescription-Drug Monitoring Law Is Overdue

Finally, the state will regulate pill mills that have operated in
South Florida with virtually no oversight, which allowed a black
market of prescription pain-killers to flourish, selling to dealers as
far away as Massachusetts.

The new prescription-monitoring law, signed by Gov. Charlie Crist last
week, closes loopholes that had exempted from state inspections those
pain clinics that don't take insurance.

Incredibly, such clinics, which have proliferated over the past few
years, were able to avoid background checks of their owners and
employees -- even though such scrutiny is required at legitimate
health clinics that take insurance.

For seven years lawmakers in Tallahassee resisted regulation, arguing
it would be an assault on patient privacy. But as The Miami Herald's
Scott Hiaasen reported in a series of articles this year, as many as
100 pain clinics have popped up in Broward County alone.

Last month, federal prosecutors handed down a racketeering indictment
alleging members of the Bonanno organized crime familly were using
pain clinics to sell drugs.

In effect, the lack of regulation was an invitation to drug dealers to
come from all over the United States to stock up.

The abuses were so flagrant that some clinics even offered gas coupons
so that drug dealers and addicts could hop in a car and come on down.
Narcotics rings in West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and
Massachusetts were buying oxycodone and other painkillers and
anti-anxiety drugs in Broward.

This racket has serious consequences. The rise in prescription-drug
abuse now causes more deaths than cocaine, according to the Florida
Medical Examiners Commission.

Under the new law, doctors and pharmacists will be required to record
patient prescription information in a state-controlled database. This
way, doctors can detect if patients are going from one doctor to the
next in search of pills -- to feed a habit or for resale. Regulators
and police also would be able to check the database in certain
situations. Pain clinics will face annual inspections.

The challenge now is money. The Legislature passed the law without
providing $4 million for the new database and regulators. It expects a
federal grant to come through.

Florida cannot let this good law get sidetracked by inadequate
funding.