Pubdate: Sat, 13 Jul 2013
Source: New Jersey Herald (NJ)
Copyright: 2013, The New Jersey Herald
Contact:  http://www.njherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2162
Author: Jessica Masulli Reyes

STATE LAWMAKERS TACKLING DRUG CRISIS

Local officials, prompted by a state report last week and a New 
Jersey Herald three-part series last month, have begun drafting and 
supporting legislation that puts them on the forefront of the fight 
against prescription drug and heroin abuse.

State Assembly members Alison Littell McHose and Parker Space, as 
well as state Sen. Steven Oroho, are supporting several pieces of 
pending legislation that would include improving the state's 
Prescription Monitoring Program, toughening penalties for burglaries 
and changing the way certain drugs are measured.

"We can't let this get any worse than it already is," spokesman Louis 
Crescitelli said. "Senator Oroho, Assemblyman Space and Assemblywoman 
McHose are taking this very seriously and, it appears, so is the rest 
of the Legislature."

The report from the State Commission of Investigation, released on 
Wednesday, offered a harsh look at how "the so-called war on drugs" 
has changed significantly since it was launched four decades ago. It 
says that the state is awash in pill mills benefitting organized 
crime, crooked doctors who are nothing more than drug dealers, and a 
new generation of addicts who have turned to stealing to support a 
prescription drug and eventually heroin habit.

"What once was a menacing background narrative centered narrowly 
around subculture-based substances like opium, morphine and heroin 
has exploded into a mainstream horror story whose first chapter often 
begins with pill bottles in the average household medicine cabinet," 
the report says.

But the local legislators hope that by changing and updating key 
laws, the state can address these issues on all fronts -- from the 
doctors' offices to law enforcement and prosecution to recovery for addicts.

In the Statehouse

The state's report offered several recommendations for places where legislators

could begin to combat the drug epidemic. Recommendations included 
toughening the standards on doctors, imposing more severe criminal 
and financial penalties for prescription drug diversion, and creating 
a statewide task force.

It also recommended making mandatory the optional Prescription 
Monitoring Program, which is a statewide database where doctors and 
pharmacists can input patient prescription information, as well as 
inputting information daily rather than the current standard of every 15 days.

Oroho, Space and McHose were already a step ahead on supporting 
legislation that addresses some of these recommendations since the 
New Jersey Herald series called "Overprescribed" dealt with many of 
the same issues last month. The three are now looking at what 
additional legislation may need to be drafted or if current pending 
legislation should be reworked to better address what the report recommended.

"This investigation (report), as we go through the legislation for 
the Prescription Monitoring Program, will be helpful for us with 
that," Oroho said. "This is a huge problem."

Pieces of the legislation that the Assembly and Senate will be voting 
on to combat the drug epidemic include:

- - Assembly Bill A4151 and Senate Bill S2781 -- McHose and Space are 
co-sponsoring the Assembly bill that would allow certain drug dealing 
offenses to be graded by units rather than weight. Some drugs like 
LSD and methamphetamines are not sold by weight and are difficult to 
measure by weight, so this legislation would give prosecutors the 
option of basing charges on the number of units, such as a pill, 
tablet, capsule or packet.

- - Assembly Bill A4220 and Senate Bill S2926 -- McHose and Space are 
co-sponsoring the Assembly bill and Oroho is sponsoring the Senate 
bill that would improve the Prescription Monitoring Program, as was 
recommended in the state's report, by seeking to get more 
participation from doctors. The bill would allow doctors to designate 
an employee from their practice to access the database and would 
require the state Division of Consumer Affairs, which oversees the 
program, to notify law enforcement if there is potential misuse of 
prescription drugs.

This bill would also make it possible for New Jersey's database to 
share and receive information from out-of-state programs so that a 
person cannot cross the border unnoticed to fill prescriptions.

- - Senate Bill S2762 -- Local legislators are not at this point 
co-sponsors or sponsors for this bill, which would establish a 
controlled dangerous substance law enforcement coordinating task 
force, similar to what was proposed in the report.

- - Several Senate and Assembly bills would upgrade the penalties for 
burglary or home invasions. While not directly drug related, these 
bills seek to address one aspect of the problem since often these 
crimes stem from drug abuse.

- - Assembly Bill A3756 -- Co-sponsored by McHose and Space, this bill, 
recently passed by the Assembly, requires that information about 
availability of services from substance abuse treatment facilitations 
be posted on county and Division of Health, Human Services and Senior 
Citizens websites.

After the series

Aside from legislation being proposed, the New Jersey Herald's series 
also received a widespread response. The series focused on two 
individuals -- Ryan, a recovering prescription drug and heroin addict 
who was two years sober in the state Drug Court program, and Lisa 
Marie, a mother of three children who died from an overdose.

Lisa Marie, 34, was found dead in her bed two days before Christmas 
from a combination of Xanax, oxycodone, oxymorphone, Flexeril, 
Cymbalta, caffeine and Benadryl. Leading up to her death, she was 
prescribed 140 prescriptions for thousands of pills from 68 different 
doctors and physician assistants over a 10-month period. Only twice 
did a pharmacy flag her name.

Lisa Marie's sister-in-law Lee Hamilton said that after Lisa Marie's 
story was printed, the state Division of Consumer Affairs and Office 
of the Attorney General contacted her, expressing interest in looking 
into Lisa Marie's medical and prescription records.

Readers also came forward with their own stories that portrayed both 
the joy of long-term recovery and the pain of overdose deaths.

Karen Reed, of Sandyston, is one reader who contacted the Herald 
after the series ran. She shared the story of her son, TJ, who died 
from a mix of Xanax and methadone in 2010 at the age of 21.

According to Reed, her oldest son died in 2003 in an accident, which 
left TJ struggling to come to terms with the loss as a teenager.

"I think TJ had struggled a lot more than I realized with his 
brother's death, even though I did take him to speak to psychiatrists 
and psychologists and so forth," she said.

As a teenager, TJ smoked marijuana and drank, but his mother said he 
eventually turned to pills. "I knew he was hanging with the wrong 
crowds," she said.

TJ sought help in outpatient programs in his late teens, and Reed 
said she thought he was "doing quite well." He was working and was 
part of an iron workers union.

But, at some point, TJ must have slipped back into his old ways.

One night he returned from a friend's house late, after his mother 
had gone to bed. In the morning, he was dead in his bed. At first, 
his family thought he had died from smoking K2 spice, a synthetic 
marijuana that has since been made illegal, while having asthma. But 
the family learned after a medical examination that TJ had been on 
Xanax, which was prescribed to him in a mild dosage, and methadone, 
which he had obtained illegally.

Reed thought that the person who sold the pills to TJ, as was made 
clear through a series of text messages from that night, would be 
arrested and charged, but she said nothing ever came of it since the 
person had not intended to kill TJ.

"I was pretty upset that nothing was done about it," she said.

Reed, who now has lost both of her children, said that she remembers 
TJ as a affectionate, kind person. She hopes parents will look deeply 
at their children's behavior, group of friends and life to know if 
they are doing drugs.

"He would give anything to anyone ... but he had been taken advantage 
of for his kind heart," Reed said.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom