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Pay attention to chronic pain treatment proposal

FLORIDA TODAY

Criminal use of opioid painkillers such as oxycodone is a serious problem and it's on the rise in Brevard County, where 57 deaths related to the opiate-based medication were reported in 2002.

However, because of arrests stemming from theft of such drugs, a climate of fear surrounds legitimate use of the substances.

Many American doctors now hesitate or refuse to prescribe needed medications for patients suffering from chronic pain, and that's unacceptable.

Obviously, doctors who knowingly funnel prescriptions for illicit use should lose licenses or face criminal charges. But procedures to allow honest doctors to prescribe painkillers without fear of unjust consequences must be established.

And controls to keep physicians and pharmacists from being hoodwinked by pseudo-patients who shop around for multiple prescriptions must also be put in place.

An effort to do that in Florida failed in 1994 when the Legislature created a Pain Management Commission whose recommendations were largely ignored, says Dr. Lawrence Gorfine, president of the Florida Society of Anesthesiologists.

Gorfine now backs national legislation to aid the estimated 86 million Americans who face the prospect of undertreatment for devastating pain every year, and we concur.

Without prescription painkillers those individuals, whose numbers will grow as baby boomers age, are sentenced to needless agony.

Society pays a heavy toll for undertreated pain as well -- over $100 billion per year in medical costs and lost wages and workdays, according to the National Institute of Health.

The National Pain Care Policy Act, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., would, among other things, create research centers on pain management and establish protocols for pain care.

To address prescription theft or misuse, the act calls for a national database that physicians and pharmacists could access to make certain they aren't being duped by drug criminals posing as patients.

While such a database will help alleviate doctor's fears about prescribing needed drugs, it also raises privacy concerns. Pain sufferers should not be subjected to exposure or humiliation because of their conditions.

That issue must be thoroughly examined and resolved before the passage of any legislation.

Brevard and Florida's congressional delegations should speed that effort by being front row center at a Washington hearing on the National Pain Care Policy Act planned for September.