California
surprisingly fared better than many states in relation to overdose deaths and
it came in with the 15th lowest drug-overdose mortality rate in
America. Approximately 10.6 per 100,000
people suffered fatal overdoses in 2010, according to the “Prescription Drug
Abuse: Strategies to Stop the Epidemic,” which was released by the nonprofit
group Trust for America’s Health. While most states received a score of 6 or
less, California scored an 8 on a scale of 10, for “promising indicators,” on
strategies to curb prescription drug abuse.
According
to Billie Weiss, the associate director of the Southern California Injury and
Violence Research Prevention Program at UCLA, “We’ve been working at it, but we
can do better. We can be using our
pharmacy prescribing database to really keep better track of physicians who are
overprescribing…We have drug shoppers who go to a bunch of physicians and get
prescriptions; using that prescribing database would really help identify some
of those folks.”
While
California has an active prescription drug monitoring database called
C.U.R.E.S, for certain types of controlled substances, it does not make it mandatory
for physicians to report every patient’s information. As of 2014, approximately 33 other states,
including; Alaska, Florida, Kansas, Minnesota, New Jersey, South Dakota,
Oregon, Wisconsin, Washington, New Hampshire, Delaware, Virginia, Texas, Illinois,
Ohio, North Carolina, Vermont, Maine, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina,
Tennessee, Iowa, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and others have
implemented prescription drug monitoring programs.
California
has been given points for many indicators, including having a “doctor shopping
law” and a “good Samaritan law.” The
“doctor shopping law” prohibits people from withholding information about prior
prescriptions from their health care professionals, while the “good Samaritan
law” provides someone with immunity or lessening of a sentence for those who
seek help from themselves or someone else experiencing a drug overdose.
Nationally,
overdose deaths involving prescription medications, specifically painkillers,
have quadrupled since 1999, and now outnumber those deaths from cocaine and
heroin combined.
Prescription
drug abuse and misuse have reached epidemic proportions and it warrants a
strong public health response.
California Governor Jerry Brown recently signed two new bills into law
aimed at curbing prescription drug abuse.
The first one is SB 670 and it gives the state medical board the
authority to inspect and copy medical records of a deceased patient without a
court order or the consent of the next of kin.
The second bill SB 809, increases practitioners licensing fees in order
to fund an overhaul of the C.U.R.E.S system database, which some doctors now
consider too difficult to use.
We at
the California Addiction Network applaud the recent laws passed to aid in
protecting people from death by drug overdose. However, we are also realistic
in that we know there are countless numbers of people who are in need of help
and we invite them to call us today, because the longer you play around with
drugs the worse your life will become.
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