Prescription drug abuse in on the rise nationwide, and Missouri is increasingly becoming a supplier of illicit pharmaceuticals.
Missouri is the only state that does not have a prescription drug monitoring program.
Scott Collier is the DEA’s Diversion Program Manager in St. Louis. Collier says monitoring systems allow physicians to see if an individual has gone to multiple doctors within the past few days seeking the same prescription.
“You know in those instances, that arms that physicians with some great information,” Collier said. “Not so that they can call the cops, but so they can deal with this individual who obviously has an addiction and get that person into treatment, thereby solving the problem before law enforcement has to get involved.”
And pill mills are popping up in Missouri. Collier says these physician-run clinics have one goal: To write prescriptions for these drugs.
“We had an undercover operative in a clinic here locally who entered the clinic. The physician asked him, ‘What’s your blood pressure?’ And our agent said, ‘Why, I don’t really know.’ And the doctor just looked at him and said, ‘Oh, you look like you’re 120 over 80.’ So clearly there is no medicine being practiced here,” Collier said.
John Gary is the executive director of the Gibson Recovery Center in Cape Girardeau. He says more and more of his patients are addicted to prescription drugs.
“The last time we did some stats, which was probably about 6 months ago, we had 90 percent of our admissions, probably, identified as prescription drug abuse was their primary drug of choice,” Gary said. “That’s from vicodin, oxycodone, you name it.”
There are more chronic abusers of prescription drugs in the United States than there are abusers of cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and LCD combined. Prescription pharmaceuticals are the second most prevalent drug after marijuana.
A bill to establish a drug monitoring program in Missouri died last May after it was filibustered in the Senate.
