Tagged: prescription pill abuse

A national pharmaceutical company is helping train Kentucky law enforcement on how to address prescription pill abuse in their communities.

Purdue Pharma helps produce some of the prescriptions often abused in Kentucky, including OxyCotin.

But company executives say that for the last few years, Purdue Pharma has been helping to train law enforcement officials on how to help crack down on illegal prescribing and abuse.

As part of a free training seminar, Purdue officials are once again in Kentucky helping health care officials and law enforcement address potential pill abuse.

John Gilbride, a law enforcement liaison for Purdue, says the company has frequently held the seminars in the state.

A bill addressing problems with last year's prescription pill mill bill has cleared the Kentucky House Judiciary Committee.

House Speaker Greg Stumbo is sponsoring the bill, which reduces some tough regulations that followed the pill mill bill. The legislation, House Bill 217, requires hospitals and long term care facilities to still pull KASPER reports, but lessens other regulations on them. The Kentucky All Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting System (KASPER) tracks controlled substance prescriptions dispensed within the state.

Stumbo told lawmakers that the bill would help codify easier regulations that were recently published and that the effort to crackdown on prescription pill abuse was effective.

"But you have a reason to be proud if you supported that bill because it's working. It's working from Pikeville to Paducah," he says.

Pressure is building on Kentucky lawmakers to refine "pill mill" legislation.

Since it was enacted last year some physicians, pharmacists and other health care providers have complained its provisions are overly cumbersome. But Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy Director Van Ingram says almost two-thirds of abusers don't get medications from doctors. He says they often steal medications from homes.

Still, Ingram believes the state's crackdown on prescription drug abuse through the pill mill law is working. He says it's prompted almost all pain clinics in the Commonwealth to shut down, leaving only eight now applying to meet the new regulatory process.