By Regan McCarthy
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wfsu/local-wfsu-976861.mp3
Tallahssee, FL – The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Department of Health and the Attorney General joined forces to eradicate illicit prescription pills, quarantining drugs from the 24 pain management clinics in the state with the highest drug ordering rate. Regan McCarthy reports .
That's the sound made by one bottle of pills. Earlier this week Florida officials collected more than 105-thousand pills. But right now they're under lock and key in Florida Department of Law Enforcement Facilities. Keith Kameg is the spokesman for the FDLE.
"Pills that are in quarantine are being stored at Florida Department of Law Enforcement offices across the state in secure storage being treated as if they were evidence. They're not just on a table on a desk somewhere."
FDLE officials collected thousands of pills, mostly in South Florida, from pain management clinics following the enactment of a law that changes the way prescription medications can be prescribed. For example, as of July 1 most pain management clinics are no longer allowed to distribute pain medications. Instead physicians at the clinics are required to write prescriptions that will be filled in pharmacies. Starting Aug. 2 medicines left in those clinics will be considered contraband. Clinics targeted Tuesday were those with records showing they'd ordered the highest number of drugs. Kameg says that doesn't mean those clinics weren't functioning within the law although he did mention officers there were prepared to make arrests.
"We felt going into that day that there should be no arrests, but at the same time, this industry, not saying anybody that day had any issues, but in this industry, we've seen a lot of criminal activity related to the possession and use of pills. I want to be very clear, we didn't think we'd have any that day, but at the same time you can't be na ve enough to not think there could be some criminal issues that could come out.
Clinics involved in the police effort were given the option of handing over the prescription medicines they had or asking that their drugs be quarantined on the premises something a clinic might consider if it planned to return or ask for special permission to continue dispensing the drugs.
"Then we would have been in a position where we would have stationed police officers at that location for as many days as it took. Could be upwards of 30 days. We were hoping no one would take that option"
No one did. Kameg says the idea of having a police officer in the lobby while they're conducting business for the next month didn't seem appealing to most clinic officials. FDLE officers will hold the medicines they've collected until they receive a court order to destroy them in what Kameg describes as a very exact process.
"You just can't blanketly go to a judge and say hey will you sign this because we've got a lot of things that need to be destroyed.' When you go to a judge if you say there are 15 pills that have to be destroyed you have to account for the 15 pills. So everything that was taken, down in some cases to half dosages, were catalogued in. Some of the locations took up to four hours to count pills. One location had so many pills we had to contract with a pharmacy to use their pill counter."
Kameg says often incinerators such as those found at crematoriums will be used to destroy the drugs. The law also changes the way pain killer prescriptions are written. Under the new law, doctors will have to use copy-proof pads. But not all doctors have those pads yet, meaning some people with a legitimate need for a prescription have been turned away at the pharmacy. In response the Secretary of Florida's Department of Health Doctor Frank Farmer has ordered a temporary suspension of that part of the rule. Farmer says prescription drug abuse has become an epidemic.
"98 of the top 100 dispenser of oxicodone reside here in the state of Florida. We have become a destination for people who travel from Kentucky, Tennessee who come down here to Florida, who come down to get inappropriate amounts of pain medicine. They're not being examined as a legitimate physician would do."
Farmer says seven Floridians die every day from a prescription drug overdose and a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds the number of overdoses has more than doubled in the past six years. Farmer says changing prescription drug laws will help to reduce death, alter the state's reputation and legitimize doctors who are practicing good medicine.
"The vast majority of physicians who work in pain clinics are legitimate physicians who do an appropriate thing for their patients. We have a few, a minority who've had an unusually large impact who do things that's clearly inappropriate. You don't prescribe 1,000 pills of oxicodone to a patient that you don't examine, that you do no test on, that you essentially have done no evaluation on."
Farmer says he'd like see the physicians involved in illicit prescribing practices lose their licenses. Kameg says the FDLE has already received several calls from clinics hoping to dispose of their medicines by August 2. Clinics also have the option of returning unopened packages to wholesalers for a full refund.