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Feds step up efforts to combat prescription drug abuse
Shelley DuBois, 7:14 p.m. CDT September 9, 2014

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The federal Drug Enforcement Administration is making it easier for people to get rid of excess prescription drugs.

This is an incremental, but important, step toward alleviating the country’s staggering problem with abuse of controlled substances, particularly opioids.

The issue hits particularly hard in Tennessee, which is one of the worst states in terms of painkiller abuse, with the second-highest prescription rate of opioid pain relievers in the country. More than 1,000 Tennesseans die each year from overdoses, the agency said.

Under the new rules which take effect next month, the agency provides guidance about how certain organizations, including distributors, treatment programs and pharmacies can regularly collect unwanted narcotics. It also informs people how to safely and legally return the medication. Previously, people had to dispose of the drugs themselves or hand them over to a law enforcement official.

The DEA will also promote the National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day on Sept. 27. Tennessee will participate, according to a statement from the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. There are more than 100 permanent take-back boxes in the state.

This take-back agenda addresses an important problem: People really do have excess pain pills in their houses, and those get diverted. “More than three out of four people who misuse prescription painkillers use drugs prescribed to someone else,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC says that nationwide, more than 12 million people reported using prescription painkillers for nonmedical reasons in 2010.

“Hopefully this program will be helpful — the proof will be in the pudding,” said Dr. Newton Allen, an internist with Saint Thomas Health and a physician leader for the Tennessee Medical Association. “It is a huge problem and multifaceted in how we’ve gotten to here. And it’s going to take a multipronged strategy to get us out of the predicament we’re in as a society.”

One factor that contributed to the problem, Allen said, was the increased emphasis on keeping patients pain-free, which gained traction in the medical community in the late ’90s. “That was just drilled in our heads — to make sure the patient is without pain,” he said.

“No one debates that this is an unintended consequence of a well-intentioned emphasis on the alleviation of pain,” Allen said, “but the unintended consequence is scary.”

Besides take-back programs, a large part of the solution will be education, according to Sheila Nickell, the program manager for alcohol and drug addiction services at Centerstone. “I think as patients, we need to take a little bit more responsibility for our own health,” she said. “We must ask, ‘What are the side effects? What are the addictive qualities of this?’ ”

Nickell also says that the medical community must explore alternative forms of pain management like physical therapy and lifestyle changes, including avoiding substances that exacerbate inflammation, such as sugar and alcohol. “I think the more we do that, the better we’re all going to be.”





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