Tallahassee's Pill Mills

ttached a stinging editorial published in yesterday's Miami Herald and my response in the form of a letter to the editor.

Yours
Bernd


The Miami Herald
Posted on Fri, Dec. 03, 2010
Tallahassee's pill mills


Lawmakers don't usually side with pill traffickers. But that's what the Florida Legislature unwittingly did during its brief, vengeance-fueled special session last month.

In the lust to override lame-duck Gov. Charlie Crist's vetoes on a handful of bills, the overwhelmingly Republican Legislature passed a law that requires legislative approval for any new government rules that cost more than $1 million over five years.

The law was touted as a measure to help stop the government from imposing excessive restrictions on business. All well and good. But it turns out the measure had a nasty side effect: It also halted the imposition of new regulations on the state's pill mills, which help feed an illegal pill pipeline.

How embarrassing. And predictable.

Lawmakers ignored warnings

Pill mills cause real suffering for addicts and their families, but lawmakers were more interested in the politics of punishing Gov. Crist for leaving the Republican Party than they were on studying what's good for the state and its residents. They ignored warning bells and rushed to pass a new law without understanding its implications.

Two years ago, lawmakers vowed to get serious about regulating pill mills -- after a Miami Herald series of articles spotlighted South Florida as the pill-mill capital of the United States. Doctors at these pain clinics, many in Broward County, served dual roles as pain and addiction specialists. The black market for painkillers in Florida flourished, spawning an epidemic of overdose deaths in Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, Tennessee and other states.

The new regulations, which were set to kick in Nov. 28, would have helped to curb some aspects of the abuse, specifying basic standards for pain clinics and surprise inspections each year, among other provisions.

Victims of the pain pill business counted the legislation a victory. And then lawmakers got the bright idea to override Gov. Crist's veto of the rule-making bill.

In his veto, Gov. Crist warned that nearly every rule would have to wait for the Legislature's approval under the new law, a mind-boggling thought given the number of rules that government can propagate. As of right now, there are roughly 600 proposed rules that have yet to take effect. No one knows how many of them now will require final legislative approval.

One, for sure: pill mill regulation.

Little opposition

There were a few voices of dissent amid the cry to override Gov. Crist's veto. Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, voted against the rule-making bill, saying it needed more study. Mr. Fasano was also the sponsor of the pill mill legislation.

Re-imposing the regulations may be delayed until the 2011 legislative session in the spring. The state Board of Medicine will discuss the regulations at its December meeting in Orlando.

For now, until lawmakers fix this unintended consequence of their own haste, the pill pushers win.


© 2010 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miamiherald.com


Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/03/v-print/1954918/tallahassees-pill-mills.html#ixzz176r4uQ3s


An editorial in today's Miami Herald entitled “Tallahassee's pill mills” correctly points out how the Republican dominated legislature voted to delay the implementation of tough new pain clinic regulations. Subsequently, the unscrupulous clinic operators and drug dealers in white coats, wrongly called “doctors,” can continue to churn out prescriptions for powerful painkiller. The legislators seem to be more concerned with ideological correctness and purity than the somber facts detailed in a recent report from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement released June 30th 2010 indicating that an average of seven Floridians per day die from prescription drug overdose! It appears that our legislators seem to live in another universe than most of us have to live in. In their world reality has to be adapted to fit political theory. In their world government regulation can only do harm and never do good. In their world pain clinics are successful businesses contributing to the overall economy and more regulations will drive them away from our state. They seem to forget that the regulations were carefully crafted by Democrats and Republicans to PROTECT our citizens from those unscrupulous businesses, which contribute to the DEATH of seven Floridians a day!! Now, the proposed rules must be submitted to the Legislature by Feb. 4 to qualify for consideration. Those that don't make it would have to wait until the 2012 legislative session. I am not only outraged by this political checkmate but also deeply concerned about its adverse impact on public health. This issue is too important to allow politicians to gamble away the lives of Florida’s citizen. We need to return to pragmatism and sound reasoning to address and resolve the problem of prescription drug abuse in Florida. Ideological grandstanding will only worsen the situation. We do not have much time left and the clock is ticking.



Bernd Wollschlaeger,MD,FAAFP,FASAM

Board certified Family Physicians & Addiction Specialist

16899 NE 15th Avenue, North Miami Beach,FL 33162 Phone: (305) 940-8717

E-mail: info@miamihealth.com

Member of the Prescription Drug Monitoring Implementation and Oversight Task Force