Monday, November 14, 2011

Prescription drugs must always get into their intended, appropriate hands

A recent Vancouver Columbian article ("New rules could leave chronic pain patients in a world of hurt") throws into stark relief the highly important balance that needs to be struck between:
  • Helping chronic pain-sufferers get medications they need; and
  • Halting prescription drugs from getting into the wrong hands.
State Rep. Jim Moeller knows that "prescription-drug abuse is a public-health emergency, exploding on us here in the Pacific Northwest." Moeller prime-sponsored a measure (House Bill 2876) in the 2010 Legislature that required health-care boards and commissions to adopt rules regarding pain-management, including rules covering the prescribing of opioids.
An addictions-treatment counselor for more than a quarter of a century, Moeller said he’s seen a big upswing in opiate addictions. Indeed, a recent regional crackdown on the illegal distribution of pain medications included the investigation of a Vancouver clinic.

"Although fewer and fewer people are using illegal, fundamentally bad stuff such as meth, heroin and cocaine,” Moeller said, “more and more folks are abusing ostensibly legal medications such as oxycodone and oxycontin.
"Our society has a moral responsibility - and health-care professionals have an ethical responsibility - to recognize the very real pain that many patients are suffering,” Moeller stated. “But let's also respect the fact that we cannot always help people simply by giving them pills."
The 2008 National Survey on Drug Use and Health said that well over four and a half million people that year used a variety of prescription medicines nonmedically for the very first time. Our state of Washington is in fact a national leader in death by opioid. We're at or near the top in two awful national rankings: prescription-drug abuse and opiate deaths.

Apture