Pubdate: Thu, 27 Jan 2011 Source: Southwest Daily News (Sulphur, LA) Contact: 2011 GateHouse Media, Inc. Website: http://www.sulphurdailynews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/5234 Author: Vickie Peoples, Southwest Daily News PROPOSED STATUTE CONTINUES WAR ON DRUGS Sulphur, La. -- Calcasieu Parish District Attorney John DeRosier and law enforcement have made great strides in stopping the illegal prescription drug trafficking from Texas to Louisiana. They are working in conjunction with Texas law enforcement and officials to stop doctor shopping and illegal drug sales. DeRosier spoke to the Sulphur Rotary Club Wednesday about working with Texas to solve the drug problem together. "Millions of pills were coming into Southwest Louisiana from Southeast Texas. There were people from all over the parish who, on occasion, would load up a van of people and go to Texas and go to three or four pain management clinics and come back with 10,000 pills at one time. The Texas legislature started meeting about two weeks ago. It will be finished with its session by mid-May of this year. "Since they only meet every two years, we don't get the opportunity to pass good legislation in Texas very often. One thing that did in fact pass the last session two years ago was a prescription pain management clinic regulatory act. Prior to that time, anybody could go to Texas and open up a pain management clinic," said DeRosier. In 2006, there were 68 deaths in Calcasieu Parish from overdose of prescription medication. The number dropped to 65 in 2007. It went down to 32 in 2008. In 2009, it dropped to 25. "I think that's in large part due to the efforts of all of our law enforcement agencies in implementing all of the drug laws that we have and fighting these people coming back in. We hope to bring the death ratio to zero." There has been a law against doctor shopping in Louisiana for two years and it is considered a felony. Unfortunately, doctor shopping has returned in Texas because of a delay in the legislature. "The doctor shopping legislation never made it to a vote in Texas two years ago simply because the legislature didn't do anything but fight over voter I.D. for the last five days. Several things are going to happen this year in the Texas legislature. One, we're going to get doctor shopping. Two, we're going to have a prescription monitoring program." There is already a prescription monitoring program (PMP) in place in Louisiana. This keeps a record in Baton Rouge of how many prescriptions an individual tries to fill at different pharmacies. "We have a list of every prescription that an individual fills since the PMP program went into effect two years ago." Louisiana and Texas officials have been networking to fight the drug problem together. "We have a task force that includes the head of the Texas board of pharmacy, representative from the Attorney General's office, the governor's office, the Medical Society of Texas, Houston PD narcotics, everybody on board looking at these issues. We're joining our prescription monitoring programs by way of a mutual hub." "Louisiana is not the source of the prescription medication problem. We are on the demand side of the equation. We're not the supply side." According to DeRosier, once they passed legislation against cannabanoids, the perpetrators came up with something else. Now bath salts, which are synthetic amphetamines, are being manufactured in Louisiana. "The problem is still significant but we're getting there. We have made some significant inroads in that arena so now people have come up with something else." "Now we have a new statute which will cover, to the best that all the scientists and chemists that we've talked to, anything you could possibly spray into something and either snort it or inhale it. We're going to pass that [statute] this legislative session. Theoretically, that should put us a couple of steps ahead of the bad guys." - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake