Prescription Drug Abuse

A Florida doctor has sued CVS for not filling his prescriptions, the Orlando Sentinel reports. Late last year, the company sent letters to a small number of doctors in Florida telling them it would no longer fill prescriptions they wrote for oxycodone and other Schedule II narcotic drugs.

The pipeline of prescription painkillers from Florida to Kentucky has started to close off, the attorneys general of both states announced this week. They attributed the slowdown in illegal pill trafficking to new rules and programs in Florida, coupled with increased enforcement in both states.

Two Florida health care organizations have announced a new plan to treat patients coming to the emergency room seeking pain relief. They say the plan aims to reduce prescription drug abuse.

Prescription drug abuse has no socio-economic barriers. But it does come with a huge human cost, says Karen Kelly of Kentucky's Operation UNITE.

Oxycodone prescriptions jumped 82 percent in New York State from 2007 to 2010, The New York Times reports.

Four drug companies are developing a more powerful version of the painkiller hydrocodone. One group dedicated to fighting prescription drug abuse is concerned this new drug has a large potential for abuse.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it will tell Medicare prescription drug plans to withhold payment when they detect signs of suspicious activity related to narcotics and painkillers. The move is aimed at reducing Medicare fraud, Reuters reports.

A new government program aims to protect young children from accidental drug overdoses. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the “Up and Away and Out of Sight” program, to teach parents how to keep medications out of the hands of young children.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is launching a task force to fight the growing prescription drug abuse epidemic in the city, after officials identified 21 pharmacies that account for about one-fourth of the city’s oxycodone Medicaid reimbursements.

Treatment admissions for prescription drug abuse rose 430 percent from 1999 to 2009, according to a new government report.

The Appalachian Regional Commission, a regional economic development agency, is taking a key role in the National Rx Drug Abuse Summit in April. The summit will take place in Florida, which has been called the center of the nation’s prescription drug abuse epidemic.

Florida’s Department of Health is recommending that the state share information from its new database that tracks prescription pain medicine with other states.

CVS has sent letters to some physicians in Florida informing them the pharmacy chain will not fill prescriptions they write for oxycodone and other Schedule II narcotic drugs, Reuters reports.

College administrators say they are concerned about an increase in prescription stimulant abuse among students, The Washington Post reports.

The American Medical Association’s policy-making body has called on the organization to promote doctor training on the correct use of controlled substances, in an effort to reduce prescription drug abuse.

California’s prescription drug monitoring database may become useless if proposed budget cuts go through, according to the Associated Press.

The number of newborn babies exposed to prescription painkillers is on the rise, USA Today reports.

OxyContin is being smuggled into the United States from Canada, because the Canadian version of the drug is easier to abuse, according to The Globe and Mail.

Some pain experts say doctors not adequately educated about opioids are contributing to the problem of prescription drug abuse by overprescribing the drugs.

Painkillers are more difficult to obtain in Britain compared with the United States, according to the Associated Press.

The first large-scale study of treatment for addiction to prescription opioids finds the drug Suboxone (buprenorphine plus naloxone) can be an effective therapy. The study found adding intensive counseling for opioid dependence was not helpful, however.

An estimated 188.5 tons of unwanted or expired prescription medications were collected around the country on the third National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day on October 29, the Drug Enforcement Administration announced.

For every person who died of a prescription painkiller overdose in 1999, nearly four died in 2008. We are in the midst of an epidemic, says Grant Baldwin of the CDC.

A growing number of people are ending up in the emergency room after abusing the muscle relaxant carisoprodol. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration says the number of such ER visits doubled, from 15,830 in 2004 to 31,763 in 2009.

The number of Americans who died from overdoses of prescription painkillers more than tripled in the past decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More people now die from painkillers than from heroin and cocaine combined.