There is news about prescription drugs being abused with the dealers of the prescription drugs being from the dealers own doctors. This has become a problem because the state of Missouri does not have a prescription drug database, so doctors do not know if a patient has already been prescribed a drug.

The patients have found a way around this and get the same prescription from different doctors and then sell their drugs to substance abusers. These prescription crimes are usually found and uncovered when the dealer is caught in the act.

“In the past decade, opioid abuse in Missouri has increased by about 300 percent.” It is hard to prove the intent of the distribution of the drug, but if the dealer puts the pills in a different type of package, it is considered illegal distribution.

“Mark McClendon, director of the SEMO Drug Task Force, said doctor shopping — the process of seeing multiple doctors for prescriptions — remains the most common way people acquire the drugs.” Patients are able to go to 15 or more different doctors to get their prescription medication and sell it on the streets.

Missouri has been trying for years to pass a prescription drug monitoring program and having a database would help eliminate this prescription drug abuse that has become a pandemic to the state because of how easy it is to get the drugs.

How to Stop the Problem

The doctors of Missouri are doing their own citizen policing to help the state spread problem of substance abuse. Some are even trying to establish their own protocols. New patients of the Regional Brain and Spine Center’s Pain Management Program are required to give a CT scan or MRI and then they will go through a diagnostics process.

Other doctors are prescribing pain medication as a last resort and when they do prescribe the pills, the patients have to come in the office on a regular basis to show they have the right amount and there are not more missing pills than there should be.

“Rehder said law-enforcement groups and medical professionals are on board with creating a tracking system, and the primary obstacle to a Prescription Drug Monitoring Program in Missouri is Schaaf and his supporters.

In 2012, Schaaf filibustered to kill a similar bill, and Rehder said she believes he was instrumental in the Senate tacking on a $6 million cost that killed a more recent iteration.”

Shcaaf does not want the bill because he believes it violates the freedom of the individual patient despite the large amount of drug abusers now residing in the state of Missouri.

The legislation for the bill starts the first week of January. The database can be created with $500,000 in federal grant and will be run through the state department of Health and Human Services.