Pubdate: Sat, 09 Apr 2005
Source: Times-Picayune, The (LA)
Copyright: 2005 The Times-Picayune
Contact:  http://www.nola.com/t-p/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/848
Author: Charlie Chapple
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?232 (Chronic Pain)

NEW PAIN CLINICS IN TAMMANY ON HOLD

Moratorium Set As Strategy Is Weighed

The St. Tammany Parish Council, at the urging of local law enforcement
officials, has imposed an emergency ban on issuing permits for pain
management clinics.

The moratorium "will give us a break" while authorities come up with a
plan to combat what critics say is an underground industry that
recklessly distributes prescription drugs, Capt. David Hall of the
Sheriff's Office said Thursday night as the council adopted the ban
for the parish's unincorporated areas.

The 30-day ban prohibits all parish departments and agencies from
issuing building, occupancy or occupational permits "for any pain
management center or clinic whose primary focus or concentration is
the prescribing and/or dispensing of pain medication."

The council also introduced an ordinance to extend the ban for another
six months. The extension is expected to be adopted at the council's
May 5 meeting, council members said.

The action is similar to measures taken last month by the Slidell City
Council and the St. Bernard Parish Council.

Hall, who heads the narcotics division of the Sheriff's Office, said
pain clinics "are nothing more than pill mills" that dish out
prescription pain killers and tranquilizers to anyone with the cash to
buy them. "Carloads of people show up with cash to buy pills," Hall
said. The result has been a dramatic increase in overdoses and deaths
from prescription painkillers, Hall said. According to St. Tammany
Parish Coroner Peter Galvan, the number of overdose deaths from
prescription medicines in the parish nearly doubled from 29 in 2001 to
56 last year. Prescription pills also are sometimes sold by their
purchasers on the street for huge profits, Hall said. "They're taking
$240 of pills and turning it into $1,400," he said.

Hall said the parish's No. 1 drug problem had been crack cocaine. But
during the last quarter of the 2004, local narcotics agents seized
more in prescription medicines than crack cocaine, he said.

He said local authorities "are in the process of taking several
actions" to fight the problem. Hall couldn't divulge details, but he
said the ban will help authorities keep the problem from proliferating
as they prepare to take those actions.
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