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Prescription drug abuse a crisis in St. Lawrence County, state report says

Posted 1/11/12

A report from state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says that opiate-related drug treatment admissions in St. Lawrence County are up by as much as 170 percent over four years. The report says the …

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Prescription drug abuse a crisis in St. Lawrence County, state report says

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A report from state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says that opiate-related drug treatment admissions in St. Lawrence County are up by as much as 170 percent over four years.

The report says the sharp rise in cases amounts to a crisis in the North Country and across the state.

Schneiderman says he has written a legislative proposal to combat drug addiction not just in the North Country but in every part of the state.

The bill would develop a database to track prescriptions for controlled substances and allow tracking of people who either “doctor shop” looking for more pills or who forge prescriptions.

Schneiderman cites broad support for his plan among law enforcement officials, health care experts, and lawmakers.

“The prescription drug abuse crisis in the North Country and across New York has reached epidemic proportions,” Schneiderman said. He said the growing problem “demands a better solution for both our health care providers and law enforcement officials to track the flow of potentially dangerous substances. Inaction is not an option.”

The report says that crisis admissions to drug treatment involving certain opiates in St. Lawrence County increased from 105 in 2007 to 281 in 2010, a rise of 170 percent.

In Franklin County, the crisis admissions rate rose more than 100 percent, and in Clinton County it rose 40 percent.

Non-crisis admissions to drug treatment involving opiates as the primary drug of abuse more than tripled in the county, rising from 137 in 2007 to 424 in 2010.

In Franklin County, the rate nearly quadrupled; in Clinton County, it doubled.

The controlled substances covered in the study included non-Rx methadone, oxycodone, buprenorphine, and other synthetic opiates such as fentanyl, hydrocodone, and codeine, among others.

According to the New York State Department of Health Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, from 2008 to 2010, hydrocodone was the most commonly prescribed controlled prescription drug, followed by oxycodone. In St. Lawrence County, prescriptions for hydrocodone increased 32 percent, and for oxycodone increased 32 percent, from 2008 to 2010.

Statewide, the number of prescriptions for all narcotic painkillers has increased by six million, from 16.6 million in 2007 to nearly 22.5 million in 2010.

Statewide, prescriptions for hydrocodone have increased 16.7 percent, while those for oxycodone have increased 82 percent.

The report suggests that there is a lack of communication between practitioners, which increases the likelihood of over-prescribing and dangerous drug interaction, and that access to an ever-increasing supply of prescription narcotics, through legal or illegal means, has grown four-fold in the past decade.

New York’s current prescription monitoring program requires pharmacists to report controlled substances they dispense at least once every 45 days. There is no tracking of prescriptions written and there is no mechanism for pharmacists to ensure that a prescription presented is valid.

Scheiderman’s proposal, called “I-STOP,” would enable doctors and pharmacists to provide prescription pain medications, and other controlled substances, to patients who truly need them, while at the same time arming them with data to identify patterns of abuse by patients, doctors and pharmacists, detect potentially dangerous drug interactions, help those who suffer from addiction, and prevent potential addiction.

The I-STOP legislation, as proposed, requires the Department of Health to establish and maintain an online, real-time controlled substance reporting system to track the prescription and dispensing of controlled substances. It would also require practitioners to review a patient's controlled substance prescription history on the system prior to prescribing, and requires prescriptions for such controlled substances to be entered in the system at the time the prescription is issued. It also says pharmacists must review data to confirm that the prescription a person presents to the pharmacist is legitimate, and they must report filling such a prescription..

Schneiderman says that such enhancements of the state’s prescription drug monitoring program will help patient care by providing a doctor with a patient's accurate and up-to-date controlled substance prescription history; eliminate the problem of stolen and forged prescriptions being used to obtain controlled substances from pharmacies; crack down on illegal “doc-shopping,” the practice of visiting several different doctors and pharmacies for prescription drugs; facilitate prosecutions of crooked doctors; and achieve significant savings for public and private health insurance programs.