CURBING PILL ABUSE

Gov. Charlie Crist isn't a philosopher, but by signing an imperfect bill
last week, he adhered to the view of the French thinker Voltaire: The
perfect is the enemy of the good.

Senate Bill 462 is intended to create a statewide, electronic database
to enable doctors, pharmacists and even some law enforcement
authorities to track the dispensing of high-powered, addictive
painkillers, tranquilizers and other drugs. Proponents of the bill
include the Florida Medical Association, the Florida Pharmacy
Association, many pain-management physicians and a passionate group of
survivors whose loved ones died from prescription drug abuse.

The consensus view of the bill among supporters is reflected by Dr.
Rafael Miguel, director of the pain medicine program at the University
of South Florida: "It's not perfect," he told The Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

But the bill, he said, is "a major step in the right direction and
will help reduce the ready availability and amounts of prescription
controlled substances on the streets and in our schools...not to
mention reducing the eight deaths per day" related to
prescription-drug abuse.

Some of the requirements of SB 462 fall short. For example, it allows
up to a 15-day delay in reporting and only monitors the dispensing,
not the prescribing, of the drugs in question. Furthermore, consistent
reviews of the database are not mandatory.

Despite its shortcomings, SB 462 represents overdue progress. Florida
has been one of only a dozen states without an electronic database for
monitoring narcotics and tranquilizers that are frequently abused or
sold on the black market.

In Florida, medical examiners find that about 3,000 deaths per year
are attributable to the overuse of prescription drugs.

A functional database, other states have found, is crucial for
effective oversight of commonly abused drugs that are supposed to be
prudently prescribed and highly regulated at all points in the health
care system. Patient rights and security must be protected, but the
evidence shows that individual and public safety are clearly at risk
in the absence of modern oversight.

Senate Bill 462 gives the state Department of Health until Dec. 1,
2010, to implement an electronic database. That deadline gives the
department and the Legislature time to identify and fix shortcomings
in the legislation.

Florida waited too long to tackle this problem, which is part
public-health crisis, part public-safety emergency. This imperfect new
law is a good first step.