Governor Crist Signs Pill Mill Bill
Florida's new law is designed to curb black market sales of illegal prescription drugs in pain clinics and requires doctors and pharmacists to track prescriptions in a state database.

August 02, 2009 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Governor Crist Signs Pill Mill Bill

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Gov. Charlie Crist signed legislation in June, designed to curb black market sales of illegal prescription drugs in South Florida pain clinics.

The new law requires doctors and pharmacists to track prescriptions in a state database. This would allow health care providers, police and prosecutors to detect so-called doctor shopping, where patients go from one doctor to another to get prescriptions filled for powerful pharmaceuticals.

The problem has its roots in pain clinics in Palm and Broward counties; as many as 100 in Broward alone. Doctors at the clinics write prescriptions for lucrative drugs, such as oxycodone, to addicts and drug traffickers with falsified medical records. According to law enforcement, the cash-only prescriptions are often filled on the spot and then transported to Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee and states along the eastern seaboard.

There are reports that more than a dozen of these unregulated clinics have opened in South Florida since the state legislature passed the prescription bill -- referred to as the Pill Mill Bill -- in late April.

Federal data indicates that in the last six months of 2008, Broward County pain clinic doctors wrote prescriptions for more than one million doses per month of oxycodone, an opiate used medically to treat moderate to severe pain.

Authorities say an 80 mg dose of oxycodone purchased for $4.50 in a clinic can be sold on the street for about $80; a profit margin that has traffickers and addicts alike flocking to South Florida.

Critics say the database system will do little to curb doctor shopping. The clinics have 14 days to log a prescription into the database, giving abusers time to make the rounds of doctors involved in the racket. Buyers will also use fake identification to hide multiple purchases and beat the system, according to critics. Finally, the majority of persons who do abuse the system are addicts not distributors.

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