PILL BILL NEEDS TEETH

I think I understand why some Georgia lawmakers are reluctant to crack
down on sleazy doctors and pill pushers who are making fortunes by
addicting people to dangerous narcotics.

They don't talk to the right people.

Otherwise, State Sen. Buddy Carter, a Pooler pharmacist, wouldn't have
to push watered-down legislation, out of political necessity, to
create a statewide computer database that would track prescriptions of
oxycodone, Vicodin, Percocet and other addictive painkillers.

Consider his bill that recently cleared the Senate and is now awaiting
action in the House. It includes this limp-noodle language -- immunity
for all doctors and pharmacists who didn't check the database but had
a patient or customer who got popped on the street for peddling $30
pain pills or died of a drug overdose.

Thus participation is voluntary. Sleazoids get a free pass. Whoop-dee
and do.

Actually, Georgia is one of a few states with nothing in place to
combat prescription drug abuse. So this bill -- Carter's third stab at
something useful -- is better than nothing.

But lawmakers operate inside a bubble. If you want to find what's
happening on the street, you don't look under the Gold Dome in Atlanta.

Instead, you talk to law enforcement agents who work drug cases every
day in this part of Georgia. If you do, here are a few disturbing
things you will learn:

. The street-level price for oxycodone, one of the most widely abused
and lethal drugs in this area, is $1 per milligram. Thus a 30-mg pill
sells for $30 each. That's $900 net for a month's supply of 30 pills,
or around 10 times the amount paid at the cash register (there's more
profit if it's covered by insurance). Can anyong say ka-ching?

. This is a white man's crime. It's non-violent, too, assuming you
overlook the drug overdose cases at Memorial Health. The crack trade
is mostly controlled by violent, mostly black thugs. Perhaps if there
were more shootings among sleazy doctors and pill peddlers, lawmakers
would be more willing to crack down.

. Some pharmacies run out of painkillers early in the day. They tell
customers to come early, especially those driving up from Florida
where "pain management" mills have flourished under that state's lax
oversight. Incredibly, Florida Gov. Rick Scott opposes a database to
track prescriptions, claiming it represents an invasion of privacy.
Pray that Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal doesn't suffer a similar lapse of
sanity.

. Illegal prescriptions are generally not filled at places like
Walgreens or CVS. Why? They already have computer databases and employ
pharmacists who are paid by the hour, not by the volume.

. "This is the new crack epidemic. We're having to readjust our
manpower accordingly." Those aren't my words. That's what a drug agent
told me.

Let's hope the Georgia Legislature readjusts this bill accordingly by
giving it some teeth.