Dec 13, 2003 By: John Kennedy Orlando Sentinel (FL)

Reeling under a staggering number of deaths caused by prescription-drug abuse, Florida officials said Friday that they are forming a multiagency task force to spearhead attempts to combat the rising problem.

“It’s phenomenal,” said Jim McDonough, director of Gov. Jeb Bush’s Office of Drug Control. “I can’t imagine any other area, accident, disease or even the murder rate where we’re seeing these kinds of numbers.”

Attorney General Charlie Crist and a half-dozen high-ranking members of Bush’s administration met Friday to outline plans for the task force. They said the panel will recommend ways to tackle Medicaid fraud, to shut down a black market of prescription drugs, to end addicts’ “doctor shopping” for powerful painkillers and to clamp down on Internet sales of pharmaceuticals.

The task force was inspired in part by investigative reports in two newspapers, officials said.

The Orlando Sentinel reported in October that deaths in Florida from oxycodone, the key ingredient in OxyContin, are topping those from heroin. Florida medical examiners reported 573 deaths caused by oxycodone in 2001 and 2002.

Separately, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel has reported that state regulators largely failed to curb runaway Medicaid prescription costs for pain-relief patches, sleeping pills, tranquilizers and other highly abused drugs. The paper found that less than 3 percent of the state’s medical professionals issued the vast majority of these prescriptions, many of which are abused by patients or find their way onto the streets.

February session in Orlando

The task force’s creation comes a week after a congressional panel announced that it would begin hearings to investigate the growing national epidemic of OxyContin abuse after the Orlando Sentinel series. The first session is scheduled for Orlando on Feb. 9.

A top priority for the state panel will be getting lawmakers to create a new prescription-tracking database, financed partly by Purdue Pharma, the Connecticut-based maker of OxyContin, a powerful, narcotic pain reliever.

Purdue Pharma agreed to pay $2 million to develop the software after a yearlong state probe into the company’s marketing of the drug, which has been linked to nationwide reports of abuse, addiction and overdose deaths.

“Lives are being lost,” Attorney General Charlie Crist said. “We have to do what we can to make sure this new era of drug dealing discontinues.”

McDonough also said that time is essential. In Florida, the number of deaths caused by prescription drugs continues to climb rapidly.

In the first six months of this year, state medical examiners reported, nearly five Floridians a day are dying because of prescription-drug abuse.

“The damage done is extreme,” McDonough said. State Senate President Jim King, R-Jacksonville, also has formed the Senate Subcommittee on Medicaid Prescription Drug Over-Prescribing. On Friday, the panel’s chairman, Sen. Burt Saunders, R-Naples, hailed the addition of the task force.

“Everyone is in total agreement that this is a critical situation that has to be addressed immediately,” Saunders said.

The focus on prescription-drug abuse also has been heightened by an ongoing investigation in Florida into the actions of conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh, who admitted in early October that he was addicted to painkillers.

Limbaugh stepped forward a week after media reports surfaced that his former housekeeper and her husband had supplied him with OxyContin and other powerful prescription drugs.

Authorities are looking into whether Limbaugh violated Florida’s “doctor-shopping” law by getting multiple physicians to write him overlapping narcotic-drug prescriptions and failing to tell them about one another.

Bush also has a personal stake in the issue. His 26-year-old daughter, Noelle, earlier this year completed a 16-month program through an Orange County drug court. She was arrested last year at a Tallahassee pharmacy after posing as a doctor to call in a phony prescription for Xanax, an antianxiety medication.

Members to meet monthly

The task-force members, many of whom are still to be named, will meet monthly to evaluate the status of legislative and industry attempts to stem the tide of prescription abuse and fraud. They also will monitor criminal investigations.

Leaders will include Crist, McDonough, Health Department Secretary John Agwunobi, Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Rhonda Medows and Florida Department of Law Enforcement Executive Director Guy Tunnell.

The database that lawmakers hope to create next spring is envisioned as a powerful tool for getting a handle on patients who go from doctor to doctor getting painkilling prescriptions filled. They are often aided by medical professionals and pharmacists who, in turn, also profit.

Jim Heins, a spokesman for Purdue Pharma, said his company supports creating the database, which would link Florida’s 17,000 pharmacies and track frequently abused narcotics. Federal officials have said 15 other states have similar programs in place.

Other legislation already proposed in Florida would increase penalties against doctors who prescribe drugs over the Internet without ever seeing patients, a violation now considered “below the standard of care.”

The task force also is expected to reach out to the Florida Medical Association and Florida Pharmacy Association to demand that their members increase training and education for prescription fraud and abuse, allowing legitimate professionals to more readily identify problems.

Sandra Mortham of the Florida Medical Association acknowledged her organization is traditionally wary of state government proposals affecting the profession.

But she said that because only a small number of Florida doctors are thought to be causing the bulk of prescription fraud, most health-care providers would support efforts targeting those offenders.

“Most of our doctors would say, ‘Crack down on those violating the law,’ ” Mortham said.

Still, Saunders, the Senate committee chairman, said a delicate balance must be maintained when imposing more reporting, educational and quality-control standards on doctors and pharmacists.

“Right now, in concept, everyone is in agreement that we have a problem that is in need of a solution,” Saunders said. http://www.myflorida.com/myflorida/government /governorinitiatives/drugcontrol/pills.html