FROM OTHER STATES, PILL MILL BILL HAS SUPPORT

With eight Floridians dying daily because of prescription drug abuse,
it was expected that Gov. Rick Scott's decision to pull the plug on
the pill-monitoring program would draw criticism in the state.

But the decision is also drawing the ire of state lawmakers from as
far away as Kentucky and West Virginia.

Florida is the largest of 12 states without a system to track
prescription narcotics, and the state's hundreds of storefront pain
clinics attract drug dealers and addicts from around the Southeast.

"It's a real black eye for us," said Ruth Lyerly, co-founder of
Families Against Addictive Drug Abuse and a Manatee County mother who
lost her son to a prescription drug overdose. "Florida was always
known for beaches, fishing and vacationing. Now we're known for pill
mills and Oxycontin."

A veteran Kentucky congressman who represents a region ravaged by
prescription drug abuse has bluntly asked Gov. Scott to back off
repealing a prescription pill-monitoring law.

U.S. Rep. Harold Rogers wrote his fellow Republican that Kentuckians
and Floridians alike are dying from prescription-drug overdoses, and
said "now is not the time to back down from this life or death challenge."

Kentucky already operates prescription-monitoring programs to try to
prevent abuse.

Scott, a former hospital company CEO who took office this year, has
signaled he wants to repeal Florida's prescription drug-tracking law,
which has not been implemented yet.

Scott spokesman Brian Burgess said late Friday that the governor is
concerned that federal funding that is supposed to be available is not
in place.

"We have a lot of concern about how this is going to be paid for," he
said, noting that the program would cost about $500,000 a year to run.
Beyond cost, he said, Scott has concern about the government tracking
citizens' personal use of prescription drugs.

Lyerly and FAADA co-founder Cindy Harney are attempting to meet with
Scott in the next week to plead their case that this is a state issue
because of its economic impact on the health system and law
enforcement agencies trying to stop the abuse.

"We see what it is doing to the community from our children to our
elderly," Lyerly said. "My hope is that maybe he just lacks some of
the facts and doesn't see the entire picture of what it's doing to the
state of Florida."

Lyerly and Harney also recently participated in a Community Anti-Drug
Coalitions of America conference, where members from 5,000 anti-drug
coalitions in the nation were "counting on Florida" to implement the
program.

"There was just an outcry and they were very upset when they learned
it might not happen," Lyerly said.

In his letter, Rogers told Scott that canceling the Florida program
"is equal to firing firefighters while your house is ablaze; it
neither makes sense nor addresses an urgent crisis."

He urged Scott to "go to work" implementing Florida's drug-monitoring
program. Florida lawmakers did not provide money for the system, but
instead directed the governor's drug control office to raise private
contributions. Scott disbanded the drug office in one of his first
actions after becoming governor.

Rogers, who is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee,
represents an Appalachian district that has been hard hit by the drug
scourge, including prescription-pill abuse. Rogers was the driving
force behind Operation UNITE, a federal initiative that included
undercover narcotics investigations and addiction treatment in the
region.

His letter said the abuse of pills causes heartache in his district,
and is the result of "the illicit diversion of prescription narcotics
from Florida to Appalachia Kentucky, and frankly, along the entire
eastern seaboard."

The most recent report from the Florida Medical Examiners Commission
found that prescription drugs contributed to 2,488 deaths in 2009, up
14 percent from 2008.

Dr. Rafael Miguel, a Sarasota pain medication specialist and professor
at the University of South Florida College of Medicine, now estimates
8.6 Floridian deaths every day are prescription drug-related.

Local governments enacted bans on new pain clinics but those
moratoriums were only meant to last until a pill monitoring program
came online.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.