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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: 1) by JimmyCrackCorn on Friday March 10 2017, @02:34AM (1 child)
Opioids do not heal you. In fact, opioids have been shown to delay and/or inhibit normal skin wound healing. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2808085/)
Doctors are portrayed as "do no harm". Prescribing opioids only does harm to the user. I do think there is a use for opioids in an emergency and surgical situation.
Opioids have killed too many people. Doctors prescribing opioids have created this deadly epidemic.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday March 13 2017, @07:36PM
Opioids do not heal you.
No, but they can allow people who are in massive amounts of pain to live somewhat normal lives. To make it extremely difficult for such people to get the drugs just because some people are abusing them is highly unjust; that doesn't sound very free or brave at all.
Doctors are portrayed as "do no harm".
Forcing someone to suffer would be doing harm. For some people, opioids are the only thing that really helps.
Doctors prescribing opioids have created this deadly epidemic.
As usual, these "epidemics" are largely overblown and they make people have emotional kneejerk reactions, and good solutions to them are rarely proposed. 'Let's ramp up the failed drug war!' is not a good solution, no matter how much of an emotional moron you are. Society has survived countless so-called epidemics in the past and it'll survive this one. Maybe if we put more money into drug rehabilitation we could help reduce some of the harm the drug abusers do to themselves, but it seems like you would rather be cruel instead.