- 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.
"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.
