“The moral test of a government is how it treats those who are at the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadow of life, the sick and the needy, and the handicapped.” – Hubert Humphrey
passionate pachyderms
Pharmacist Steve steve@steveariens.com 502.938.2414
A viral video making the rounds this morning shows two cashiers who viewers assume are on some form of prescription opiates.
The video shows two middle-aged women, who appear to be sleeping, standing up behind the counter at a convenience store. They remain motionless until a customer greets them with a pointed, “Hello?”
What follows is two arduous minutes ringing up six dollars worth of snacks. The cashiers are both slow and sluggish. Their words are slurred and their eyes are glazed over. The one that’s not ringing up products struggles just to stay awake.
The video is titled, “America’s Opioid Epidemic,” and the caption reads: “Really got to wonder why the powers that be think this type of stuff is okay and marijuana is not…”
The top comments all share a similar sentiment: “Don’t do drugs, kids,” one user wrote.
The rising trend of opioid abuse in America has been a hot button issue for a while now, as the problem has slowly risen to prominence. Prescription pain killers are being over-prescribed or wrongly prescribed across the country, and the pills are acting as a gateway to heroin addiction.
The opioid epidemic was one of the key elements to President Donald Trump’s platform, and he’s promised to find a solution while he’s in office. At the end of last month, the president officially declared the situation a public health emergency.
When my phone rings, I don’t always know who is calling… sometimes it someone wanting to sell me an extended warranty on a car that I sold 2.5 yrs ago.. sometimes wants to lower the interest rate on my credit cards… which has no on going balances..
Other times it is from a chronic pain pt “in crisis” from being discharged/abandoned by their long time prescriber, this time it was her oncologist .
Today it was the latter… a senior female that suffers from a disease that causes nephropathy in her legs. She has been taking for years about 300mg MME/day and she was presented a prescription for a “10 days supply” and was told that the Hospital that employs this prescriber no longer wanted their employees to treat chronic pain and that they would give her a referral to a pain specialist.
Often pain specialists are 30-60-90 days out to get an appt and many will not give a new pt any opiates on the first visit.
This pt’s oncologist was just one of several in this “hospital owned cancer clinic” and an estimated 50-75 other pts from this practice were also going to get the same “kicked out the door treatment”.
Apparently this hospital had created a ACOhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accountable_care_organizationwhich basically meant that the hospital was the “insurer” and the provider of health care services for this mid-western city/county… and this poor woman’s health insurance was with the same hospital complex that was telling its employed prescribers to stop prescribing opiates for pain.
This pt already is dealing with HYPERTENSION.. one can just imagine when she goes into cold turkey withdrawal within the next two weeks.. what is going to happen to her BLOOD PRESSURE… since a hypertensive crisis is not untypical with a person being in cold turkey withdrawal and often what follows is a “brain bleed” – stroke and sometimes DEATH.
What is going to be the FINAL TALLY of all the pts of this hospital/insurance system that are going to be thrown into cold turkey withdrawal ? How many are going to suffer a stroke and no longer able to ambulate or even communicate… or worse yet DIE FROM THE STROKE… Or perhaps, those that can’t tolerate their increased pain and take the final action to eliminate their pain FOR GOOD.. and commit SUICIDE ?
Could whatever people within this hospital corporation that were behind this “medical decision” to force their employed prescribers to abruptly discontinue opiate prescribing… be guilty of assisting suicide, involuntary manslaughter, pt/senior abuse, civil rights violations of the Americans with Disability Act and Civil Rights Act.. for starters.
Tears streamed down Claudia Jendron’s face this year as her doctor patted her hand and told her, after eight years of failed pain treatments for her spinal fusion-gone-wrong, “This is going to work, Claudia.” She was talking about medical marijuana.
For “eight years of hell,” Jendron tried opioids, epidural shots and acupuncture in the hopes that she’d be able to sit down or go to her grandchildren’s birthday parties without having to leave and lie down. None of it worked. At one point, she considered checking into an assisted living facility to receive morphine before she tried medical marijuana.
Then, early this year, the 66-year-old upstate New Yorker got a prescription for medical marijuana to help what she called “excruciating pain.” To Jendron’s surprise, her doctor was right about the weed. Two days after starting a tincture (a liquid cannabis extract dropped under the tongue), her crushing pain subsided to something manageable.
“I can lean over and hug my grandkids without screaming anymore,” she said. “I went to a commitment ceremony in the park the other day, and I lasted all day long without any pain…It’s just, it’s amazing.”
New York is one of 29 states (plus the District of Columbia) that have legalized medical marijuana––a trend that 94 percent of Americans support, according to an August Quinnipiac poll. But on December 8, all of that could begin to change.
Congress has until that day to decide whether to include the Rohrabacher-Farr Act (also known as Rohrabacher-Blumenauer) in a bill that will fund the government through the next fiscal year. Right now, that law, made up of just 85 words, blocks the Department of Justice from using any money to prosecute medical marijuana in states where it’s legal.
The text of the Rohrabacher-Farr (also known as Rohrabacher-Blumenauer) Act, which blocked the U.S. Department of Justice from spending any money to prosecute medical marijuana in states where it’s legal. H.R. 2029 – Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016
In May, Attorney General Jeff Sessions pushed back against the bill when he sent a strongly worded letter to Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress, asking them to oppose protections for legal weed and allow him to prosecute medical marijuana.
“I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime,” Sessions wrote in his letter.
The bill’s 2014 passage, with 170 Democrats and 49 Republicans in favor, was the first time Congress passed legislation that protected medical marijuana users and businesses. It meant that an attorney general could no longer send Drug Enforcement Administration agents (or use other government resources) to bust medical marijuana in states where it was legal.
It was in line with the Obama administration’s 2013 “Cole Memo,” in which Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the Justice Department would refrain from prosecuting medical marijuana businesses and users in states where it was legal, and that it would prioritize more serious marijuana offenses, like drug cartels and sales to minors. The policy marked a change for the Obama administration, where medical marijuana busts were once rampant.
With his letter, Sessions pushed Congress to end these protections. In a statement on Friday, Sessions announced that the Justice Department would halt the practice of guidance memos, and review Obama administration guidance memos on legal pot to see if they went too far.
Sessions is known for being one of the nation’s toughest critics of legal pot. He once said the KKK was “OK until I found out they smoked pot.”
More recently, he said at a speech in March in Richmond, “I am astonished to hear people suggest that we can solve our heroin crisis by legalizing marijuana—so people can trade one life-wrecking dependency for another that’s only slightly less awful.”
In the early decades of his career, denouncing marijuana was an unprovocative viewpoint. In the days of DARE and abstinence-only drug education, marijuana was the bogeyman at the gateway to much more dangerous drugs. But despite new research praising medical pot and the skyrocketing approval ratings for the drug, Sessions has only budged ever so slightly in that view.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions testifies before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on oversight of the Justice Department on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., November 14, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
He nodded last week and said, “I think that’s correct” when Representative Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat, said cannabis was not as dangerous as heroin. Sessions said he’d consider thorough analyses of medical marijuana, but that he was not optimistic.
“He’s old fashioned and very conservative,” said Philip Heymann, a Harvard Law School professor and former Justice Department official for the Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton administrations.. “Literally seven years ago, maybe eight years ago, marijuana was thought to be a very dangerous drug. Why would he focus on this issue? Because he’s seven years out of date.”
Even the attorney general who set the precedent for federal prosecution of legalized marijuana says Sessions would be remiss to put many resources, amid all of the country’s larger problems, into prosecuting medical marijuana.
“To prosecute an act that is otherwise lawful under state law, one could make the argument [that] as a matter of policy, we’ve got other priorities we ought to be spending our resources on,” Alberto Gonzales, the attorney general for President George W. Bush, told Newsweek. “With respect to everything else going on in the U.S., this is pretty low priority.”
In theory, without Rohrabacher-Farr in his way, Sessions could send DEA agents into a medical marijuana dispensary or producer in any state to bust it. Experts say, if he did this, he’d likely prosecute a distributor or a producer with other violations, like tax or licensing mistakes, in addition to its violation of the CSA.
“They can scream all they like that they haven’t violated state laws, but they violated federal law,” said Heymann.
Ilya Shapiro, a constitutional studies fellow at conservative think tank CATO institute and the editor of its Supreme Court Review, said law enforcement would likely first prosecute those in gross violation of federal laws before the average pot smoker––”the same way police go after rapists and murderers before they go after jaywalkers.”
The Justice Department declined requests for comment on its medical marijuana agenda or on the aftermath of a Rohrabacher-Farr expiration. Representatives Sam Farr (D-Calif.) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) introduced and passed the bill in 2014, after years of failed attempts, as part of the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Bill for fiscal year 2015. It has been renewed twice since then, until House Republican leadership blocked a vote on it in September.
Under the bill, none of the funds appropriated by Congress to the D.O.J. can be used “to prevent [states] from implementing their own laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.” Congress has to vote on it every year.
Nicholas Vita, the CEO of Columbia Care, a medical marijuana healthcare company with dispensaries across the country, said Sessions “clearly has a bias.” His company owns five dispensaries in New York –– including the one in Rochester, where Jendron gets her weed. But, Vita said, “The toothpaste can’t be put back in the tube.” With such high support across the country, a full reversal seems extremely unlikely.
Inside Columbia Care, a medical marijuana dispensary in Manhattan. Newsweek/Melina Delkic
Columbia Care’s Manhattan dispensary looks more like the lobby of a luxury hotel than a place to get weed, but with much more security. Its marijuana is mostly stored in a thick and ominous-looking steel safe, an extra-cautious precaution to make sure the dispensary complies with DEA standards. It comes in three, carefully measured formats –– capsules, a tincture (liquid cannabis extract) that patients take with a dropper, and a vape pen.
A pharmacist at the Manhattan branch of Columbia Care, a medical marijuana dispensary chain, holds a vape pen. Newsweek/Melina Delkic
Vita said public perception on dispensaries like Columbia’s has changed rapidly.
“Five years ago, no one even talked to us,” Vita said. “I couldn’t even tell my mom and dad what I do for a living.” Today, he says leading research institutions reach out to him to partner on studies.
Despite the turnaround, strong dissenting voices remain.
Kevin Sabet, president of the nonprofit Smart Approaches to Marijuana, an anti-marijuana legalization group led by former Representative Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), said legal weed was not as harmless as the recent hype has made it out to be. “A lot of people are being peddled this by an industry that wants to make money, like any other industry,” he said. “I have a really hard time with the very small handful of studies out. They’re just not something that the scientific community agrees upon.”
Studies are indeed limited, because marijuana is a Schedule I drug, making it hard to get DEA funding for that research. A recent study in Colorado found a reversal of opioid deaths following recreational legalization. Two August studies found, however, that evidence of its efficacy in chronic pain or PTSD treatment was lacking. While far from a consensus, its patients seem hopeful.
For patients like Jendron, the proof is in lived experience.
Chronic pain “manipulates your life,” she said. “I’m smiling because I don’t hurt anymore.”
A Veterans Affair initiative to curb addiction by cutting back on opioid prescriptions is backfiring, according to some Tennessee veterans.
East Tennessee Marine veteran Robert Rose Jr. has filed a $350 million lawsuit that names several employees of the Mountain Home Veterans’ Affairs Medical Canter and U.S. Rep. Phil Roe, R-TN.
Rose said he has chronic pain in his back, spine and legs as a result of severe injuries while in the service.
He said he has been tormented since last November, when he was forced off pain medication.
According to the VA, more than 221,000 veterans have been weaned off opioids since fall of 2013.
Rose said the veterans who are not addicted, and have severe pain are being neglected.
“It is a death sentence for people like me who has documented issues from the Marine Corps all the way back to 1985. They just said, no more,” Rose said.
Rose said he isn’t the only one. He said he has spoken with more than 100 other veterans with similar concerns.
A spokesperson with the VA told News 4 this month that when a decision is made to wean a veteran off opioids, every individual situation is taken in to account.
Thirty-six people in the United States have died after using kratom, a largely unregulated drug sold in shops around Denver, according to the federal government. A young man in Boulder may be among them.
Jay Knaus, 25, died in his room this year after ingesting what his sister believes was a typical dose of the substance. The Boulder coroner directly linked his death to kratom’s active component. And his sister wants action.
“How many deaths are there going to be before you do anything about it?” asked Julie Knaus.
The death is one of the reasons that the city of Denver has placed new restrictions on the drug, which also is the subject of a new federal warning.
In response, city officials will require labels saying that the product is not for human consumption. They’ll also move to shut down kratom bars that serve the drug on site.
However, the city won’t use its power to ban the sale of the product.
“What we’re seeing is products being sold without any information about dosage. In some cases, very little labeling at all. It really leaves a lot of safety concerns,” said Danica Lee, director of public health inspections for the city.
Jay Knaus was a student at Metro State University.
“Jay was a very healthy, athletic, popular guy. Everyone loved him,” said Julie, his twin sister.
A family member discovered Jay unresponsive in bed at the family home in Longmont this February. They had no idea what was wrong with him, Knaus said, and they wouldn’t have an explanation for six more weeks.
“I was looking in trash cans, all over his room, anything for an answer. We all had no idea how and why,” she said.
When it finally arrived, an autopsy from the Boulder County Coroner’s Office listed the cause of death as accidental “mitragynine intoxication.” Mitragynine is a key active compound in kratom. Knaus’ body contained a “lethal level” of the substance, the autopsy reported.
“It was definitely a product we weren’t even aware he was taking,” Knaus said.
Jay Knaus also was found to have suffered pulmonary edema — fluid in the lungs — and that he had inhaled vomit, all related to mitragynine poisoning, according to the autopsy. The toxicology report found no other substances besides caffeine and drugs that are commonly used in medical treatment and rescue attempts, such as naloxone.
The family had to look at Jay Knaus’ bank statements for hints at what had happened.
“We believe he started the spring of 2016, but then he stopped because he had side effects like itchy skin, hair loss, irritability. We didn’t know this was the product,” said Julie Knaus, who works as a physical therapist aide in California.
While many people use kratom as an alternative to heroin and other opiates, Jay Knaus had no history with those drugs, according to his sister. She believes he was attracted to kratom because he saw it as a health product.
“It was mostly marketed as a health supplement. It’s marketed as a good source of extra energy — helps you focus,” Knaus said.
Kratom is derived from a tropical tree leaf. Its fans liken it to coffee, and it’s informally used to treat chronic pain and to replace other substances, especially opiate painkillers or heroin. A typical cup might cost $1.50 to $3.
Some users say that it saved their lives from hard drugs, and they point to the prevalence of alcohol-related deaths.
Bank records reviewed by the family show that Jay Knaus stopped buying it in the summer of 2016. He apparently started again late in January, making three purchases in the last week of his life. The purchases were of moderate size, his sister said.
His last purchase came from a Denver business, Julie Knaus said, but she declined to name the business.
The death reflects broader concerns.
In a statement issued last week, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb warned that the administration was “aware of reports of 36 deaths associated with the use of kratom-containing products.” It’s unclear whether that figure includes Jay Knaus.
Chris McCurdy, a professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Florida and leading expert on kratom, told Denverite that it’s “a total ‘buyer beware’ marketplace at this point.”
The drug has been used in Thailand and Malaysia “for centuries with no related deaths” reported, he wrote in an email. “However, in the USA this has obviously been a different story.”
A lack of regulation of dietary supplements is part of the problem, he continued. “This, unfortunately, means that it is impossible to tell what one is purchasing when they believe they are purchasing kratom,” he wrote.
It’s particularly concerning that kratom may be mixed with other substances, McCurdy added. A study found kratom-related deaths tended to involve other drugs too.
The Knaus family has consulted with medical experts who said that the level of mitragynine in Jay’s body was not atypical for kratom use, according to Julie Knaus.
What will Denver do next?
Denver’s new rule will require a label on each kratom package in large font, reading:
“This product is not intended for human consumption. Consuming kratom products may pose a risk, including death, to consumers and has addictive potential. Increased risk of injury or death may be posed by consuming with alcohol and other drugs.”
The city briefly went further than that, issuing a total ban on sales last fall. At the time, Denver was responding to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which had proposed a ban and suggested that kratom was an “imminent hazard” to public health.
However, the DEA reversed course. It withdrew its proposal to make the substance illegal and called for more research. One researcher said the change was “shocking.” And Denver followed suit, withdrawing its ban in October 2016.
Julie Knaus says that a different government decision could have saved her brother’s life. “I know if it was scheduled in September 2016 as a drug, he would not have died,” she said. Now, she wants Denver and other governments to go further. Instead of warnings, she wants a ban.
“Putting a label on every single package — I think that’s a step in the right direction,” she said. But she wants it to be restricted as a prescribed medicine, she said.
Lee, the Denver health official, said that instituting a total ban would be a difficult legal move, especially as higher levels of government haven’t banned the sale of the product either.
“At this point in time, we don’t feel it’s appropriate to implement a complete ban, given the fact that there are other uses (of kratom) and the state health department isn’t taking any action,” Lee said.
A local ban “would be using broad authority, and we would definitely have to make sure we’re taking a defensible position. This is what we feel comfortable with at this time.”
Confirming the subjective nature of that number, in a paper published by Forensic Science International, dated December 2014 and titled “An Accidental Poisoning with Mitragyna” it is stated, “ Toxicity of mitragynine in humans is poorly defined, and no toxic or lethal ranges have been established. Kronstrand et al. [7] found mitragynine levels in nine cases that varied between 0.02 and 0.18 μg/g. Holler et al.[14] and Neerman et al. [15] found mitragynine concentrations of 0.39 mg/L and 0.60 mg/L in post-mortem blood samples”.
I have been posting on this blog, now in my SIXTH YEAR… Hardly a week that doesn’t go by that I get at least one notice that someone has added me to a NEW FACE BOOK PAGE CONCERNING CHRONIC PAIN.
Just how many THOUSAND(s) for Face Book Pages do we need that are focused on those in the chronic pain community and it’s issues ?
Does the old saying “United we stand… divided we fall ” … seem to apply here.
IMO, there is simply a SINGLE ISSUE that effects all of those in the chronic pain community – you are either getting adequate pain management or you are being denied adequate pain management… There are numerous players involved prescribers, pharmacists, insurance companies and various governmental agencies.
There are a number of sub-issues, but helping getting optimized pain management for all chronic pain pts.. those other issues should go away or become basically non-issues.
It is estimated that there is about 230 million eligible voters and in the typical Presidential election… 106 million will fail to vote and more will fail to vote in “off-year” elections.
Generally speaking, 98% of politicians – especially Congress – will get reelected no matter what they do – or don’t do – when they are in office.
Congress and state legislatures generally function on a seniority basis… those who have been around the longest, get to pretty much control what bills get passed or even what bills even get to be voted on by the entire body.
Everyone should be able to register to vote BY MAIL and vote BY MAIL.. there is no reason for failing to vote… If you don’t know who to vote for… vote for the person challenges the current person holding the office. Especially those who have been “in power” for decades.
The other issue is that all of these thousands of Face Book Pages either need to consolidate or their members consolidate around a SINGLE FACE BOOK PAGE… so that everyone can get a better picture of what is going on for/against those in the chronic pain community.. A clearer picture – unlike the above puzzle…
You can contact the media and politicians, but the DEA and other agencies have at least a couple of dozen decades lead in putting out anti-opiate propaganda pieces…
We also don’t know how many “behind closed door meetings” that upper level DEA agents have with members of Congress and members of city/county/state of law enforcement that can have “informal -off the record -meetings” with bureaucrats/legislators.
The chronic pain community doesn’t need a SINGLE SPOKESPERSON… but.. they do need a SINGLE MESSAGE… Until that happens, the chronic pain community will look like the above puzzle … no clear picture/message because a lot of pieces are missing.
The Snowden effect continued to roll today, with fresh revelations detailing how the pervasive surveillance of the National Security Agency (NSA) is in fact linked to domestic criminal prosecution. The idea, and the defense, that NSA activity only impacts non-United States citizens and terrorists, is now utterly specious.
The NSA is one of the member agencies of a DEA unit called the Special Operations Division (SOD). The SOD, according to Reuters who broke the story, is at work “funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help” start, and win criminal investigations of United States citizens.
Therefore, there is a direct connection between the NSA and its surveillance efforts and regular criminal prosecution in the country.
The Washington Post read the Reuters piece as an indication the NSA is leaking phone record information to the DEA, through the SOD, but we’re not convinced that it’s a proper reading of the source. However, the SOD does operate the ‘DICE’ database, which the DEA told Reuters has around 1 billion records, both telephonic and digital. The majority, but not all, are sourced by the DEA itself.
What’s most surprising about today’s revelations is the process by which the DEA covers the tracks of its information. Using “parallel construction,” where information came from is hidden. Reuters tells a story in which a judge was told that a tip kicked off the investigation at hand. However, after pressing, it was admitted that the data had in fact been first captured by the NSA, and distributed by the SOD.
By creating new pasts for received data, the DEA can avoid potentially awkward questions about the legality of its evidence.
And the data that the NSA collects could be very useful to the DEA. The NSA, for example, collects metadata on every phone call placed in the United States. It is not clear what the NSA shares, or how often. However, it’s the fact that NSA data is being handed to the DEA through the secret SOD that is troubling prima facie.
This is not the last time that we will have a conversation similar to this one. According to the New York Times, other agencies inside the Federal government are clamoring for the information that the NSA has collected, and continues to collect.
Oversight?
It has also recently been reported that members of Congress are being denied access to information about the NSA’s activities, both by having requests ignored, or simply denied. Glenn Greenwald has primary source information, letters sent by members of Congress asking for specific information.
Others have reported similar issues in more pedestrian fashion, including Rep. Justin Amash, who tweeted that access to certain information was provided for a mere three hours, and that many Representatives missed the chance, and that those who did see the document in question were not allowed to discuss it with those that did not.
There is work afoot, as you might have expected, to keep information regarding the NSA’s activities out of the public eye. To some extent that is perfectly reasonable, given that such agencies are clandestine by nature. When Congress, tasked with oversight of American intelligence operations, is lied to, denied information, and then provided only select facts for limited periods of time, something is wrong.
And, given that the NSA is slipping the DEA information about domestic phone calls, we’ve never needed more stern hands on the NSA’s wheel.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an advisory regarding serious adverse events linked to the medical food Limbrel (flavocoxid; Primus).
Limbrel is indicated for the dietary management of the metabolic processes associated with osteoarthritis, and is available in 250mg and 500mg strength capsules. The capsules contain two types of flavonoids called bicalin (from Scutellaria baicalensis) and catechin (from Acacia catechu); both dosages contain zinc.
A total of 194 adverse events have been reported regarding Limbrel, and an association between its use and the reported adverse events was determined in 30 of those cases.
Specifically, there have been reports of two serious and potentially life-threatening medical conditions among these adverse events: drug-induced livery injury and hypersensitivity pneumonitis. Symptoms of drug-induced liver injury can include jaundice, nausea, fatigue, and gastrointestinal discomfort. Symptoms of hypersensitivity pneumonitis can include fever, chills, headache, cough, chronic bronchitis, shortness of breath or trouble breathing, weight loss, and fatigue.
While the FDA is reviewing the formula and manufacturing process for Limbrel, clinicians and consumers are recommended not to use the product. Consumers should immediately discontinue use and report any of the aforementioned symptoms if they occur. Healthcare professionals should advise their patients to immediately stop taking Limbrel and report any symptoms related to the product to MedWatch.
For more information call (480) 483-1410 or visit FDA.gov.
INDIANAPOLIS — After passing 15 bills last session in an attempt to stem the opioid crisis, the Indiana General Assembly will fine-tune some of those during the upcoming short session.
Among prescription reform efforts, pharmacists would be required to dispense prescription drugs in lockable bottles.
“These are vials that opioids will leave the pharmacy and have a pin number … where you put the vial in the medicine cabinet, you know no one can get into it,” said state Sen. Jim Merritt, R-Indianapolis.
Randy Hutchens, executive vice president of the Indiana Pharmacists Association, said the association did not yet have a position on Merritt’s proposals.
But in a statement, Hutchens said, “Our Indiana Pharmacists Alliance is supporting the fight against the opioid crisis in Indiana. We support pharmacists serving as a primary resource as a medication expert to counsel patients about their medications and reduce opioid misuse; drug take back programs; and prescription drug monitoring.”
Both Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, and Senate President Pro Tem David Long, R-Fort Wayne, said this week that the opioid crisis would be one of the two top legislative issues facing the 2018 session. The other issue is workforce development, they said.
The Indiana Department of Health says the three most commonly prescribed drugs that are abused include opioids, depressants and stimulants. Opioid pain relievers, including hydrocodone and oxycodone, contributed to 274 of the 1,236 drug overdose deaths in 2015 in Indiana.
Heroin overdoses, however, saw 40 percent increase in 2015 compared to 2014, a rise that the department attributed to heroin’s relatively cheap price and easier accessibility.
Merritt said he also planned to introduce legislation requiring pharmacies to initiate prescription take-back programs, as well as legislation requiring all licensees for controlled substances be registered in INSPECT, the state’s prescription monitoring program.
Some physicians have said that their rural offices do not have reliable access to the internet and, subsequently, to the INSPECT system.
Merritt said his legislation would only require registration and not mandate use of the system (INSPECT).
Donnelly bill increases shared data
A bill to address opioid abuse by veterans was signed into law this week by President Donald Trump.
The bipartisan bill was introduced by U.S. Sens. Joe Donnelly, D-Indiana, and Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota.
The Veterans Administration Data Accountability Act, Donnelly said, will enable the VA to share data with Indiana’s prescription drug monitoring program, INSPECT.
The VA is currently sharing prescription data only on veterans, not their dependents or others treated by VA providers, due to technical issues related to the VA’s health records system. As a result, a significant amount of VA prescription data is not being shared with the state’s prescription drug monitoring program, Donnelly said.
Apparently Senator Merritt has never heard of a hammer.
While a lockable bottle might prevent someone from taking a few tablets out of the bottle in a friend’s/relative’s medicine cabinet… they will just TAKE THE ENTIRE BOTTLE.
And to require all prescribers to register to the state’s PMP system ( INSPECT).. BUT DON’T HAVE TO USE IT.
