To halt prescription drug abuse, the nation’s fast-growing drug problem, Congress must require special training for doctors and other health care workers before they are allowed to prescribe powerful drugs such as OxyContin, White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske said Tuesday.

The President administration’s Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention Plan calls on Congress to amend the Controlled Substances Act with a new requirement:
That health care practitioners learn appropriate uses for opioid medicines and how to screen patients for drug abuse before they can get a Drug Enforcement Administration license to prescribe controlled substances.
Opioids, such as hydrocodone, are synthetic drugs that mimic the effects of opium and can be used to treat severe pain The DEA, Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services endorsed the plan.
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When prescription drugs are abused, “they can be just as dangerous as street drugs,” DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart said. “I do believe you’ll see great interest from members of Congress.”
Rep. Mary Bono Mack, a California Republican, held a hearing April 14 on prescription drug abuse and has introduced legislation to tighten FDA classifications for the use of opioids.
She is reviewing testimony from the hearing to determine whether to propose additional legislation, spokesman Cort Bush said.
Prescription drug abuse is “an alarming public health crisis” that is “suffocating our society,” HHS Assistant Secretary Howard Koh said. “I’m here to pledge the full power of HHS behind the plan.”
The FDA told drug manufacturers Tuesday to create educational materials about their opioid painkillers. Independent medical educators will use the materials to teach doctors how to properly prescribe them, the FDA said.
Extended-release and long-acting opioids, including Oxy-Contin and 11 other painkillers, are widely misprescribed, misused and abused, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said.
American Medical Association President Cecil Wilson said his organization supports the intent of the drug abuse prevention plan but is concerned “that a key element of this strategy that relies on industry to develop educational materials and initiatives to train prescribers could in the future become a mandatory part of the DEA registration process for prescribing controlled substances.”
Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, also says he wants every state to adopt prescription drug monitoring programs, which allow a prescriber to tap into a database to see whether a patient has several narcotic prescriptions.
Thirty-five states have such databases now. The federal government cannot require states to create them but offers grants to encourage state participation.
(Source: usatoday.com)