Pubdate: Sun, 20 Feb 2011 Source: Sarasota Herald-Tribune (FL) Copyright: 2011 Sarasota Herald-Tribune Contact: http://www.heraldtribune.com/sendletter Website: http://www.heraldtribune.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/398 Author: Halle Stockton FROM OTHER STATES, PILL MILL BILL HAS SUPPORT With eight Floridians dying daily because of prescription drug abuse, it was expected that Gov. Rick Scott's decision to pull the plug on the pill-monitoring program would draw criticism in the state. But the decision is also drawing the ire of state lawmakers from as far away as Kentucky and West Virginia. Florida is the largest of 12 states without a system to track prescription narcotics, and the state's hundreds of storefront pain clinics attract drug dealers and addicts from around the Southeast. "It's a real black eye for us," said Ruth Lyerly, co-founder of Families Against Addictive Drug Abuse and a Manatee County mother who lost her son to a prescription drug overdose. "Florida was always known for beaches, fishing and vacationing. Now we're known for pill mills and Oxycontin." A veteran Kentucky congressman who represents a region ravaged by prescription drug abuse has bluntly asked Gov. Scott to back off repealing a prescription pill-monitoring law. U.S. Rep. Harold Rogers wrote his fellow Republican that Kentuckians and Floridians alike are dying from prescription-drug overdoses, and said "now is not the time to back down from this life or death challenge." Kentucky already operates prescription-monitoring programs to try to prevent abuse. Scott, a former hospital company CEO who took office this year, has signaled he wants to repeal Florida's prescription drug-tracking law, which has not been implemented yet. Scott spokesman Brian Burgess said late Friday that the governor is concerned that federal funding that is supposed to be available is not in place. "We have a lot of concern about how this is going to be paid for," he said, noting that the program would cost about $500,000 a year to run. Beyond cost, he said, Scott has concern about the government tracking citizens' personal use of prescription drugs. Lyerly and FAADA co-founder Cindy Harney are attempting to meet with Scott in the next week to plead their case that this is a state issue because of its economic impact on the health system and law enforcement agencies trying to stop the abuse. "We see what it is doing to the community from our children to our elderly," Lyerly said. "My hope is that maybe he just lacks some of the facts and doesn't see the entire picture of what it's doing to the state of Florida." Lyerly and Harney also recently participated in a Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America conference, where members from 5,000 anti-drug coalitions in the nation were "counting on Florida" to implement the program. "There was just an outcry and they were very upset when they learned it might not happen," Lyerly said. In his letter, Rogers told Scott that canceling the Florida program "is equal to firing firefighters while your house is ablaze; it neither makes sense nor addresses an urgent crisis." He urged Scott to "go to work" implementing Florida's drug-monitoring program. Florida lawmakers did not provide money for the system, but instead directed the governor's drug control office to raise private contributions. Scott disbanded the drug office in one of his first actions after becoming governor. Rogers, who is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, represents an Appalachian district that has been hard hit by the drug scourge, including prescription-pill abuse. Rogers was the driving force behind Operation UNITE, a federal initiative that included undercover narcotics investigations and addiction treatment in the region. His letter said the abuse of pills causes heartache in his district, and is the result of "the illicit diversion of prescription narcotics from Florida to Appalachia Kentucky, and frankly, along the entire eastern seaboard." The most recent report from the Florida Medical Examiners Commission found that prescription drugs contributed to 2,488 deaths in 2009, up 14 percent from 2008. Dr. Rafael Miguel, a Sarasota pain medication specialist and professor at the University of South Florida College of Medicine, now estimates 8.6 Floridian deaths every day are prescription drug-related. Local governments enacted bans on new pain clinics but those moratoriums were only meant to last until a pill monitoring program came online. The Associated Press contributed to this report. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake