Curbing Abuse of Prescription Drugs

This article was originally published in Parade, on Sunday, Oct. 4, 2009.

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis

More than 15 million Americans abused prescription drugs such as OxyContin, Ritalin, and Valium last year, and thousands died from overdoses. “Drug poisoning has become the second leading cause of death from unintentional injury, exceeded only by motor-vehicle crashes,” said Dr. Leonard Paulozzi, a medical epidemiologist with the Injury Center at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

But while the deaths are accidental, the behavior that causes them is not: Many people who are addicted to painkillers engage in “doctor-shopping,” convincing multiple physicians to write them prescriptions. A CDC study in West Virginia found that 21% of people who died from prescription-drug overdoses had seen five or more different health-care providers for controlled substances in the prior year. Most states have drug-tracking databases aimed at preventing such abuse, but many are in need of improvement.

Currently, in some states, it can take as long as two weeks before a new prescription shows up in a database, according to Sherry Green, CEO of the National Alliance for Model State Drug Laws. Last month, the federal government distributed $2 million for states to upgrade their databases in a program to test whether access to prescription data can reduce drug abuse. “The ultimate goal would be to give doctors real-time, online access to prescribing data,” said Robert Lubran of the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which is overseeing the program.