In the battle against soaring prescription drug addiction and abuse and deaths from prescription narcotics like OxyContin, Vicodin and methadone, our only front line of defense is the army of prescribing doctors. Monitoring how patients are doing and spotting any problems before it’s too late is an enormous, life-and-death responsibility. No one knows better than physicians how quickly and easily someone can become addicted to narcotics and need
drug rehab, or fall prey to a fatal overdose or drug combination.
Yet doctors were apparently among the supporters of new, relaxed prescribing regulations for such Schedule II drugs by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Instead of having to see prescription narcotic and amphetamine type drug patients once a month before writing a new prescription, doctors can now prescribe 90 days worth of narcotics, leaving the patient unwatched for up to three months. The patient can only fill the prescriptions once a month, because they’re dated that way. But he or she doesn’t have to visit the doctor for three full months.
It’s a matter of public record that most prescription drug patients taking legitimate prescriptions who wind up addicted and in drug rehab were taken completely by surprise to find themselves dependent on their prescription. They took their meds exactly as prescribed, and then they couldn’t get off them without going to drug detox or spending several months in drug rehab fighting for their lives.
Where was the prescribing doctor through all this? And what was the DEA doing? Did the DEA cave in to special interest groups with this new ruling? And why are doctors not catching all the potential victims, even with monthly visits?
On one hand, so many people are becoming addicted to and/or dying from prescription narcotic painkillers that the DEA is calling it an epidemic of national concern, creating millions of potential addicts needing drug rehab and thousands of fatalities. Meanwhile, millions of kids who are being laced every day with amphetamines like Ritalin and Adderall, also Schedule II drugs, are statistically more likely to become addicted to illicit and deadly street drugs like cocaine.
So how can the DEA decide that checking in on such patients every three months is just as good as once a month?
The logic just doesn’t add up.
Dangerous and addictive prescription narcotic painkillers like OxyContin, Vicodin and methadone are causing more deaths than cocaine and heroin combined. According to the CDC, the number of unintentional prescription drug poisoning deaths increased from 12,186 in 1999 to 20,950 in 2004. Schedule II narcotic drugs contributed to 3,849 poisoning deaths in 2004, and other opioid prescription drugs were implicated in another 5,242.
Thousands of Schedule II drug patients - patients who saw their doctors every month - are already struggling to regain normal lives through a
drug rehab program, or worse, dying because of unexpected drug complications. It’s time that the DEA and other responsible agencies, but especially patients and their prescribing physicians, sit up and give this new ruling another long, hard look. Even one death, or one drug rehab, are alike unnecessary and entirely preventable.
