Activity 6

Oxycontin Express

The main source of the illicit prescription drug pipeline is in Florida, especially South Florida (Broward County) where there are doctors who are licensed and basically writing prescriptions for money. It is incredibly saddening that these "Pain Clinics" are continually writing drug addicts prescriptions for ridiculous amounts of narcotics. Basically, as described in the documentary, some of these "Pain Clinics" are established by non physicians and bring in (most of the time retired) licensed doctors to come and write prescriptions. These clinics do not accept insurance and simply sell narcotics to addicts for cash only. In my opinion, this whole operation is not only unethical but also sketchy and unlawful.
Until recently there was no database that tracks these pain drugs in Florida, allowing addicts to go from doctor to doctor and get more and more pain pills because there is no way of seeing if they have been prescribed pain pills already. The doctors at these pain clinics in Florida will write prescriptions to addicts, and due to the demand for these narcotics, addicts come from all over the pipeline stretching from Ft. Lauderdale to Appalachia in Kentucky.
This is insane to think that Kentucky leads the nation in narcotic overdoses and it is all coming from Florida, especially these Broward County "Clinics". When watching this documentary I was just so shocked that this issue hasn't erupted into a nationwide effort banning these clinics in Florida that are supplying addicts and dealers all the way in Kentucky with drugs!
Policies need to be made in an effort to close these clinics in Broward Country and throughout Florida. There is no reason why "Pain Clinics" that are basically legal drug pushers should even exist. The DEA and nationwide efforts need to be enforced to stop the pipeline of these narcotics.
While watching the documentary I asked myself: what is spending taxpayers money to dispatch and arrest small time users for the possession of these narcotics about to stop? Probably nothing because the people that are spending a couple of years in prison are simply users that were selling to support their own habit and are not the source of the large scale narcotic distribution leading to many overdoses. Instead of going after small time users, in my opinion law enforcement needs to crack down on the real source of this "Pipeline" and that would mean monitoring and regulating these "Pain Clinics". One policy I would suggest being enacted immediately to begin the fight against this issue would be to create a database that tracks these pain pills in Florida that REQUIRES the doctors to check this database and enter in prescriptions IMMEDIATELY after being prescribed. That way, if a licensed physician is still prescribing narcotics to someone who has already been prescribed them from elsewhere, law enforcement can punish the physicians who are supplying these addicts with more drugs for the money and begin shutting down these "Pain Clinics".
In class we have not talked about prescription pills too much yet, but the demand for prescription narcotics like Xanax and does not surprise me after I did a past assignment on the "Xanax epidemic" which has become one of the most abused and addictive drugs among teenagers entering treatment centers currently. 
All in all, this concept of legal drug suppliers in forms of licensed physicians completely shocked and scared me. These are physicians who took an oath to help people but instead have used that license to in fact hurt people and cause much more harm then good. The documentary was extremely eye opening and disheartening. It's truly unbelievable that these terrible and immoral "Pain Clinics" have affected so many people across state lines.


That's all I got for now!

Tootles~~