By Shari Caudill

High-profile celebrity deaths as a result of prescription medication-related overdoses have brought addictions and misuse to the forefront in the news media. Couple that with doctors who are caught over-dispensing powerful medications and you have an epidemic of panic and overreaction.

Many communities have launched efforts to close every pain management clinic in their proximity, several health departments have declared a “public health emergency,” and addiction facilities fear being overrun.

However, officials are not looking at the big picture of the problem. The “pill mills” prescribe Oxycontin and other strong prescriptions while other facilities do not. The only reason drug-abusers are using the pain clinics is that the drugs are legal. When this is removed, they will return to much more serious drugs such as Meth and Heroin.

Libertarian Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas takes a stand for the people in real pain. “Unfortunately, patients often must consume very large amounts of opioids to obtain long-term relief. Some prescriptions may be for hundreds of pills and last only a month. A prescription this large may appear suspicious. However, zealous prosecutors show no interest in learning the basic facts of pain management,” stated Paul, “But according to many pain-management specialists, it is medically necessary in many cases to prescribe a large number of pills to effectively treat chronic pain.”

The only people being hurt by this crackdown are the poor who are in legitimate pain. Larger pain management facilities will not treat these people and family physicians in Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia will not prescribe narcotic pain relievers for any reason – even for known, proven conditions. Furthermore, the larger facilities are more expensive as they incorporate other modes of therapy that require a lot of time in treatment that will not work for chronic diseases.

Undeterred by facts, petitions with more than 1,200 signatures have been circulated to have all pain management clinics in Scioto County, Ohio (located in southern Ohio) closed immediately and started a Facebook group entitled: “Fix the Scioto County Problem of Drug Abuse, Misuse, and Overdose.”

Dr. Alvin Jackson, Director of the Ohio Department of Health, stated there are 72 deaths every day in the United States as a result of accidental drug poisoning, four of which are in Ohio.

Specifically under attack in Scioto County, are the clinics that “take only cash, will not accept credit cards and have no local affiliation with local hospitals.”

According to WebMD, there are three pain management facilities that meet the desired criteria located more than 25 miles away. Two of them are in different states.

Dr. Aaron Adams, Scioto County Health Commissioner stated that both the County and the City of Portsmouth Health Departments have declared a statement emergency.

“We rate number two in the state of Ohio for unintentional prescription overdose deaths. We rank three fold the state average for Hepatitis C. Ninety percent of what’s going on in our courts with the prosecutor’s office is prescription drug related,” said Dr. Adams.
Ohio’s Governor, Ted Strickland, is a native of Scioto County and has become involved in the situation.

“This is a special problem in Appalachia, it’s a special problem in my home county. It makes me sick to think about what’s happening here,” stated Governor Strickland in a recent meeting.

The governor stated that he does recognize there is a legitimate need for pain treatment by “ethical, highly-trained physicians.” However, the governor calls the pain clinics in existence, “death merchants.”

The governor signed an executive order establishing an Ohio Prescription Drug Abuse Task Force on April 2, 2010, that “expands what the state can do to combat the prescription drug abuse problem facing the state.”

Other agencies report the prescription drug problem travels from Florida into the Appalachians. In south Florida nearly nine million Oxycodone pills were prescribed by 50 doctors over a six-month period.

Statistics like this prompted the Florida legislature to enact SB462, an electronic prescription drug-monitoring program. It was signed by Governor Charlie Crist on June 18, 2009.

Perhaps it would be a better use of taxpayer money to simply monitor facilities prescribing Oxycontin closer and raise the bar on the conditions for which it can be used.

Leave the remainder of the facilities that are providing legitimate care alone.

Disclosure: The author of this article suffers from an incurable disease known as Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome/Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. The McGill Pain Scale rates the pain of people with this disease higher than that of people with cancer.

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