To crack down on Florida’s prescription drug black market, regulators have limited supplies and made opioids difficult to obtain. But patients with painful medical conditions are suffering from the crackdown too, often left without the drugs they need.
For years, Florida’s relaxed regulations on prescription drugs
turned the state into a black market for synthetic opioids, which
caused 16,625 deaths and 420,000 emergency department visits in
2010. The Sunshine State was home to 90 of the country’s 100 top
pharmacies buying oxycodone in 2010, which often made their way
into the hands of prescription drug dealers.
To combat prescription drug abuse, the state has tightened drug
regulations, limiting the supply of pain medication that
pharmacies and drug distributors are allowed to have in their
inventory and making it more difficult for patients to obtain
them.
Meredith Diaz, a 35-year-old mother who suffers from lupus, told
Bloomberg News that she has trouble obtaining OxyContin,
roxycodone and Xanax, which her doctors regularly prescribe to
help control her pain and anxiety. The Tampa resident has
herniated discs in her back, a knee that will soon need to be
replaced and clinical anxiety. She fears the day that her drug
supply will be cut off and said her life is much more difficult
without her medicine.
“Regulation is fine, but truly making the pharmacists not able
to get the medication can’t be the answer,” Diaz said.
“There shouldn’t be this apprehension about how I’m going to
get my medicine.”
Colleen Sullivan, a 29-year-old muscular dystrophy patient, said
she lives in Marathon — a small town in the Florida Keys that
only has a few pharmacies. When these drug suppliers run out of
the medicine she needs, she is forced to travel across the state
to find a pharmacy that will fill her prescription. Pharmacies
refuse to tell her over the phone whether or not they have a
supply on hand.
Paul Doering, a professor emeritus at the University of Florida
College of Pharmacy, told Bloomberg that pharmacists often judge
patients based on their appearances, which affects whether or not
they will fill their prescriptions.
Federal officials first began cracking down on the black market
in 2009. Since then, 59 Florida doctors have been charged for
illegally prescribing painkillers, and a joint federal and state
task force has made 2,150 arrests related to prescription drug
sales.
In June, Walgreen Co., the nation’s largest pharmacy operator,
paid the Drug Enforcement Agency an $80 million settlement to
resolves charges that it failed to control its sales of narcotic
painkillers. As a result of its efforts, the amount of oxycodone
sold in the state of Florida decreased by 97 percent from 2009 to
2010. Deaths related to oxycodone decreased by more than 17
percent, and the number of “doctor shoppers” has decreased by 58
percent since authorities began cracking down on “pill mills” in
2011, AP reported in June.
Although the regulations are effectively curbing prescription
drug abuse, they are also taking a toll on the well-being of
patients with painful medical conditions and valid prescriptions.
“It’s a very unhappy existence, but as a mother of three kids
you don’t want to look unhappy,” Diaz said. “So you put on
a façade. If I don’t have that medicine my life gets even
harder.”
Republished from: RT