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Variety in the Heartland |
Lawmakers Tackle Drug Problems
02/03/12 MRC/AP
Oxycontin and other powerful painkillers would be limited to 30-day allotments under a Kentucky proposal aimed at cracking down on prescription drug abuse in Kentucky where more people are dying from overdoses than car crashes.
House Speaker Greg Stumbo filed a bill Thursday that would initiate a series of changes, including stepped-up monitoring of the prescription practices of Kentucky doctors.
Stumbo's proposal also calls for the state's prescription monitoring program, known as KASPER, to be placed under the jurisdiction of the attorney general, the state's top law enforcement officer. The monitoring program is currently administered by the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, a social services agency. The change would give law enforcement and prosecutors quick access to key information that could identify unscrupulous physicians.
Doctors charged with overprescribing painkillers would be barred from writing prescription unless they were cleared of wrongdoing. Physicians found guilty would immediately be stripped of their licenses.
Not allowing doctors to provide more than a 30-day supply is intended to limit the availability of the most widely abused painkillers.
Attorney General Jack Conway, who helped to draft Stumbo's legislation, has been traveling the state warning people about the dangers lurking in their families' medicine cabinets.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy considers abuse of prescription pills the fastest growing drug problem in the United States. By some counts, prescription drug overdoses are claiming an average of 82 lives a month.
All of Kentucky's political leaders have been pressing for ways to curb the state's prescription drug problem.
Kentucky's prescription pill woes skyrocketed in 2000 when addicts discovered OxyContin. Police blamed the drug for hundreds of deaths.
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