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from the that-is-why-they-are-called-controlled-substances dept.
Several Missouri counties have taken opioid matters into their own hands:
Fed up that Missouri is the only state that doesn't track the prescription and sale of opioids, some of its biggest cities and counties have created their own monitoring system to help combat the increasingly popular and highly addictive drugs.
Forty-nine states have established prescription drug monitoring programs, or PDMPs, which require pharmacies to report controlled substances dispensed to an electronic database. Advocates say monitoring helps stop "pill shopping" by people who seek multiple prescriptions from several doctors, either to feed their own addictions or to re-sell the drugs. They also can flag physicians who might be overprescribing such drugs. Although the Missouri Legislature had considered adopting a drug monitoring program several times, it has always opted against doing so, largely over privacy concerns, including the potential for health records to be hacked.
Leaders of St. Louis County, the city of St. Louis, Jackson County, St. Charles County and a few non-urban counties have banded together to start their own monitoring program, which is scheduled to go online next month. Though the consortium includes only a small percentage of Missouri's 115 counties, it covers nearly 2.5 million of the state's 6 million residents.
[...] There were more than 33,000 deaths related to heroin or prescription opioids in the U.S. in 2015, including 1,066 in Missouri, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which considers it a public health crisis. The CDC says prescription drug monitoring programs have succeeded at their goals: Florida had more than 50 percent fewer oxycodone overdose deaths in 2012 after its program began and New York State saw a 75 percent drop in patients visiting multiple prescribers for the same drug in 2013, a year after its program was established.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Thursday March 09 2017, @03:17PM (4 children)
How many more people ended up screaming in unrelenting pain? How many killed themselves to escape it? How many doctors have been sanctioned for prescribing to those people in an attempt to give them some quality of life? How many people who unfortunately got addicted to medically necessary pain killers ended up falling down the rabbit hole after being cut off rather than receiving appropriate medical treatment for their condition?
This comes up especially when we have non-doctors at the DEA and other law enforcement deciding what constitutes "over prescribing". They don't seem to understand that some specialties will naturally prescribe more pain killers simply because the conditions they treat tend to be much more painful.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Spamalope on Thursday March 09 2017, @07:17PM (3 children)
Exactly! When I went to my PCP for increasingly severe joint and muscle pain along with ulcers and stabbing abdominal pain my PCP said there is nothing wrong and refused to even treat the pain. I was reported as drug seeking and the city ran an asset forfeiture drug sting on me instead. Apparently if your credit check shows assets that to take you get attention - and they figured I really was in enough pain to be desperate enough. (the pain makes me sleep deprived and that + pain makes me clinically depressed - not a druggie so the sting didn't work - I guess I'm lucky they didn't just plant drugs)
I got into a great ortho guy within a few weeks who found substantial tendon and ligament damage in my knees, where the PCP said I was fine. We couldn't find an explanation though, and it was years later before I found an MD who'd help me unravel the problem. (my immune system stays on overdrive, and damages me while like that - still don't know why)
Those looking to make pain management a crime can go straight to hell.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09 2017, @09:47PM (1 child)
Those looking to make pain management a crime can go straight to hell.
Swing by a methadone clinic for a few weeks and you will say differently. A scant few were there for medical reasons. The vast majority are recreational. They are the ones who make it hard for you.
As for your doctor many are just not that good. Sure they have the shiny diploma and are called DR MD. But many have no idea what they are really doing. Finding a good doctor who recognizes what is really wrong takes a lot of time. My mom ended up with a collapsed lung because a doctor screwed up. Did he swing by to check it out? Not at all he went golfing he was late hence the screw up in the first place. I have dozens of stories like that with doctors. We all do. Finding good doctors takes time unfortunately and there are a good number of sub par ones out there.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday March 10 2017, @12:00AM
No change in opinion here. Recreational users are going to use unless the rest of their lives change and they get competent medical help kicking their habit. Making it harder to get clean drugs won't make them not do drugs, it'll just make them use crappier and more dangerous unregulated drugs.
Of those 50% less deaths due to oxy, how many died of dirty street drugs instead? I note law enforcement doesn't care to comment on that. Note the sleight of hand where they lump heroine deaths in to come up with the scary 33K figure, but pull heroine back out when they talk about the percent (not actual numbers) reduction in deaths from oxy.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10 2017, @07:35AM
Yeah, you druggie!
! When I went to my PCP for increasingly severe joint
Angel Dust? For joint pain? Typical complaints of a tweaker! You are an addict! No wonder they put you on the list! Did they also put you on the sex offender list, and the poor credit risk list? You "found" a MD who agreed with your self-diagnosis? Well, lucky you. And you want us to pay for you and your new boyfriend's Caribbean holiday? I hope TrumpNoCare cuts you off and you die, although not necessarily in a fire.