Pain Clinics Run Rampan

There is a serious problem in our community that is just now being brought to the forefront – Pain Clinics. Recently, the Florida Legislature began seeking to enact reforms to help curb the illegal pain pill trafficking in South Florida through these so called pain clinics. The problem has become even more severe in the county in which we reside, Broward County as recently reported in the Miami Herald. According to police and health officials, Broward County has become the nation's chief supplier of black-market prescription narcotics. This trend is fueled by a cottage industry of storefront pain clinics that has swollen from an estimated 60 to 150 clinics in the past year alone, just in our area.

Remarkably, just 50 South Florida doctors dispensed nearly nine million pills of the dangerous painkiller oxycodone in a six-month span last year, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. One source says that, “Oxycodone is in a group of drugs called narcotic pain relievers. It is similar to morphine. Oxycodone is used to treat moderate to severe pain. The extended-release form of this medication is for around-the-clock treatment of pain”.

Narcotics investigators say these clinics are feeding an epidemic of overdose deaths from Florida to Appalachia. The crisis finally prompted the Florida Legislature out of inertia to move forward on efforts to monitor and prevent prescription-pill abuse.

The Florida legislature is currently attempting to pass a number of laws that would limit the business of unnecessary and dangerous prescription of these narcotics. The Florida Senate on Friday passed a bill that would create a database to track narcotics prescriptions filled by doctors and pharmacists -- a tool to detect possible ''doctor shopping'' by drug addicts who seek pills from several doctors.

But even if these reforms become law, many pain clinics will still operate with less oversight than many other healthcare providers. For example, the Senate bill does not require criminal background checks for clinic owners or key personnel, which state law requires for workers at most other health care facilities.

Pain medications should only be prescribed and administered by qualified physicians and healthcare providers. Every patient should be given detailed explanations as to the potential side effects of these medications and the addictive behavior they can induce. In the absence of proper warnings, patients who don’t know better, can become addicted in short order. The results of such addictions are often disastrous.