Combating Prescription Drug Abuse Epidemic

Floor Speech

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the prescription drug abuse epidemic sweeping my State and the Nation. The rampant abuse and trafficking of prescription drugs represents a major threat to public health and to law enforcement. In recent years, more Ohioans have died from prescription drug overdoses than car accidents--legal prescription drug overdoses, obtained illegally in many cases.

In 2008, statistics show oxycodone and other prescription drugs--namely morphine-based drugs, such as Oxycontin and Percocet--caused more overdoses in Ohio that year than heroin and cocaine combined. Simply put, prescription drug abuse is one of the fastest growing drug problems in the Nation, resulting in ever increasing rates of robberies and other attendant crimes.

Yesterday, I was in the Cleveland suburb of Fairview Park at Ohliger Drugs. That store has been a target in the last couple of years. I spoke with Tom Ohliger, the fourth generation owner of this drugstore, and he described being held up at gunpoint on more than one occasion.

There is a new report showing drug users and addicts are now targeting seniors for help getting pain killers to feed their addiction. There is also a rise in the outright theft and stealing of these drugs. We are seeing over and over on newscasts and in newspapers across the State stories of addicts and criminals targeting pharmacies to obtain pain killers and prescription drugs.

Last month, in Parma--another Cleveland suburb--a man claiming to have a weapon made off with more than $14,000 worth of prescription pain killers before he was apprehended by the police.

That is why I worked with Senator Schumer and others on the Strengthening and Focusing Enforcement to Deter Organized Stealing and Enhance Safety--SAFE DOSES--Act. The bill would use Federal antiracketeering laws to arm law enforcement with the tools to stop and prosecute pharmaceutical theft and robberies.

Last year, as we toughened penalties for theft, we also cracked down on the fraud and trafficking of prescription drugs. It also, of course, dealt with the human side of counseling, in education, to help people break that addiction.

Also last year, I convened a first-of-its-kind roundtable in southern Ohio, where the problem has been most acute in my State, with Federal and local law enforcement, community activists, elected officials, and members of the medical community. They raised a concern with criminal manipulation of Ohio's Medicaid Program, which spends upward of $800 million on prescription medicines.

While most prescription pain medicines are used as prescribed--after surgery, after some kind of accident, often in the case of people with intense pain from some kind of acute illness--criminals too often have defrauded the Medicaid system and fleeced Ohioans and America's taxpayers by acquiring multiple prescriptions and filling them at multiple pharmacies. That is why I introduced legislation to require all States to establish Medicaid ``lock-in'' programs to crack down on the use of Medicaid cards to obtain and illegally sell these prescription drugs.

This bill would prevent drug abusers from acquiring excess legal prescription drugs, though they are not doing it legally--which they may abuse or illegally resell--by barring them from visiting multiple doctors and pharmacies.

It means high-risk prescription drug users would be placed in the program and they would only get Medicaid assistance when they are limited to one physician and one pharmacy. States would also identify prescription drugs that are dispensed under Medicaid and represent a high risk of overutilization. Nearly 20 States have adopted similar programs.

South Carolina's Medicaid lock-in program targeted high-use beneficiaries and resulted in a 43-percent decrease in the total number of proscribed prescription pain medications.

Consider Scioto County, on the Ohio River. In this Ohio river town, prescription drugs cause 9 of every 10 fatal drug overdoses. In nearly two-thirds of those cases, the individuals involved did not have prescriptions, indicating they obtained the drugs illegally.

Recently, the Government Accountability Office audited the Medicaid Program in the 5 largest States and found 65,000 cases in which Medicaid beneficiaries visited 6 or more doctors and up to 46 different pharmacies to acquire prescriptions. This same report found some 1,800 prescriptions written for dead patients and 1,200 prescriptions ``written'' by dead physicians. The numbers are staggering.

In southeast Ohio it has been particularly tragic. Old factory towns and rural communities have become havens for prescription drug abuse. Across the country, communities are struggling to find ways to respond and develop strategies to reduce the diversion and abuse of prescription drugs.

Out of the often sad stories, there are successes. Last month, I was in Portsmouth, in Scioto County, which I mentioned earlier, at the Second Chance Counseling Center. It has received critical Federal resources--not a lot of dollars but critical dollars--for a job retraining program for those recovering from abuse. The center is about second chances, combating the epidemic with the focus on recovery and rehabilitation--helping Ohioans with the resources they need to be the productive citizens they want to be.

This past July I was at the Amethyst Family Treatment Residence in Columbus, with the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske. We talked about the administration's comprehensive prescription drug strategy and ways FDA can crack down on the abuse. The staff at the residence--such as health professionals, law enforcement officials, and community activists--described the stories of victims and families they represent. I met with many of those people who were going through these programs and are getting their lives back in order.

Prescription drug abuse and crime is nonpartisan. It is an issue of life and death in too many parts of our Nation, and especially in my State. I wish to share three brief letters describing how this is a human tragedy above all else. It is a law enforcement issue, it is a counseling of substance abuse issue, and it is an education issue, but fundamentally it is a human tragedy, with the addiction people have experienced coupled with the crime that is often committed and compounded with the defrauding of taxpayers.

Let me read three stories from letters that were sent to me from my State. The first is from a rural county, one from sort of a medium-sized county, and one from a large urban county.

David from Union County writes:

Our son David was a college graduate, 42 years old, a father, and a husband for 18 years. He abused prescription drugs because of a motorcycle accident 10 years earlier. He was a 3 year clean drug addict because of all the support he was given by so many caring individuals. He was pursuing his master's degree with a 4.0 average, but in spite of all of this, he passed away last May due to an accidental overdose of oxycotin. We need to protect family members from the heartbreak [and] pain that we are suffering because our son made a bad mistake.

Amy, from Stark County, the Canton area, writes:

In our extended family, we have a close family member who has become addicted to prescription drugs. The problem has become so bad for our individual family member that she has sought illegally obtained prescription drugs from dealers from two counties away. I always believed that drug abuse was something committed by rebellious, high-risk teenagers and young adults. But prescription drug abuse is something that can happen with much older adults who would ``know better.''

And then Tara from Lucas County--the Toledo area.

Through my previous job as the director of an anti-drug coalition, I personally witnessed many families fall apart because of prescription drug abuse. I will never forget the day I visited my dear friend at the hospital because her 16 year old son had overdosed on oxycontin. The average citizen needs to be educated about proper disposal of their drugs, and parents need to be made aware of this issue. Better policing and controls around the transportation and distribution of prescription drugs is definitely a key step; however, we can all raise the importance over educating ourselves, our schools, and our children about how to keep this issue from persisting.

As I said, it is about law enforcement, it is about drug treatment, and it is about education. It is about all these things to end these human tragedies that cost taxpayer dollars, that inflict criminal activity on innocent pharmacists and others, and that create so much tragedy for so many of my State's families and so many American families.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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