TAMPA - Professionals fighting a rapid increase in prescription drug deaths hope they have new ammunition in a drug monitoring bill signed into law this week.
Within 18 months, doctors, pharmacists and law enforcement will have access to a centralized database listing the names of patients getting narcotic prescriptions filled in Florida. Gov. Charlie Crist signed the bill into law Thursday.
State Sen. Mike Fasano, the bill's author, told more than 100 professionals attending a drug abuse summit in Tampa on Friday that Florida joins 38 other states with the monitoring program, which aims to stop "doc shoppers," people who get narcotic prescriptions such as oxycodone from multiple physicians at once.
The system will prevent Floridians and people from out of state from using pain management clinics to get drugs to sell on the streets, Fasano said.
"I hope and pray Florida will no longer be looked on as a pill mill," he said.
In the first half of 2008, oxycodone was responsible for 423 deaths in Florida, including 214 in Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties, Florida Department of Law Enforcement records show. The statewide number is a 19 percent increase over the same period a year ago.
Detectives at Friday's Prescription Drug Abuse Summit said a doc shopper can turn a $1 oxycodone pill from the pharmacy into $10 on the streets of Tampa. Those same pills fetch a price three to five times that in Florida's Panhandle or in Kentucky, said summit organizer Sharon Kelley, chief operating officer of Tampa's Associates in Emergency Medical Education.
"It's one of those problems nobody knows exists until your eyes are opened to it," said Jeff Shearer, a member of the Drug Enforcement Administrations' tactical diversion squad in Tampa.
First introduced seven years ago, the bill met with concern that a database would compromise patient confidentiality. Fasano said few will have access to the database, such as doctors and pharmacists. Law enforcement investigators will be able to look for trends and suspected abusers and dealers.
"We want to make it very clear, it's not going to be open to the public," he said.
