PRESCRIPTION FOR ABUSE

Florida's medical examiners recently released another report that
shows another annual increase in the number of prescription-drug
overdose deaths.

The report concluded that prescription medicines caused more deaths in
2008 than illicit drugs - again.

The medical examiners also reported sharp increases in deaths caused
by prescription tranquilizers and painkillers, such as Oxycodone and
hydrocodone.

The results of the year-end report weren't surprising. Since the
middle of last year, physicians, pharmacists and law enforcement
officials have warned that a near-epidemic of deadly
prescription-medicine abuse was continuing. In 2005, the Medical
Examiners Commission began reporting the drugs discovered in bodies
subject to autopsies. The percentage of decedents with at least one
drug in their bodies has increased each year - to 53 percent last year.

"The vast majority" (4,924) of the 8,556 drug-related deaths studied
last year by the state's medical examiners involved the presence of
more than one drug, according to the 2008 report. The presence of at
least one prescription drug caused the death of 2,184 people last
year, in the opinion of medical examiners.

To put the scale of those numbers in perspective, consider: There were
2,983 deaths on Florida's roads last year; 1,169 of those fatalities
were alcohol-related.

Prescription drugs caused more deaths than alcohol-related crashes in
Florida.

In addition to reporting the drugs found during autopsies, the medical
examiners determine how many deaths are directly caused by drugs. The
drugs found most frequently in decedents were alcohol (4,070 cases),
sedatives classified as benzodiazepines (3,229), cocaine (1,791) and
oxycodone (1,574).

Of particular concern: Death-related occurrences of both
benzodiazepines and oxycodone were up by more than 20 percent in 2008
compared with 2007.

The drugs that caused the most deaths in Florida: oxycodone (941),
benzodiazepines (929), methadone (693), cocaine (648), alcohol (489),
morphine (300), hydrocodone (270).

Painkillers and sedatives are essential to countless patients, so any
efforts to control their prescription, sale and use must be carefully
calibrated. Ideally, a broad coalition of doctors, pharmacists,
regulators and law enforcement officials would create model monitoring
programs. Unfortunately, the participants in the entire system lag
behind the trends.

This year, the Legislature finally passed a law, the lead sponsor of
which was state Rep. Kurt Kelly, R-Ocala, that calls for creating an
electronic database to monitor the prescription and sale of certain
painkillers and tranquilizers. The database should help investigators
track the worst offenders once it is operational next year, but even
proponents of the law concede it was watered down.

Other initiatives are likely to be necessary because the personal and
societal problems associated with the misuse of prescription drugs
aren't getting better.