ST. LOUIS – Both St. Louis City and County passed ordinances Tuesday officially instituting a prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) in the region. They become the first city and county to adopt such measures in the state.
St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger, St. Louis Department of Health Director Melba Moore and others attended a signing ceremony at the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse headquarters Tuesday morning.
“Prescription drug abuse is one of the fastest growing drug problems in the United States and has been classified as an epidemic by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” Slay said in his written statement. “The CDC calls monitoring programs, like the one we are establishing today, an effective tool to combat the nation’s opioid abuse epidemic by monitoring painkiller prescriptions and tracking patients who overuse or abuse those drugs.”
#PDMP is now law in #STL City and County. pic.twitter.com/acyG3qj1wZ
— Maggie Crane (@newsformaggie) May 31, 2016
Rep. Holly Rehder was invited to speak at the event, and said she was “ecstatic” that Slay, Stenger and other city and county officials were looking forwards
“That’s over a million people that will be under a PDMP,” Rehder said.
Rehder, R-Sikeston, has led the charge to institute a PDMP at the state level, but her efforts have been stymied the past few years primarily by Sen. Rob Schaaf, R-St. Joseph. Schaaf believes such plans inflict too much of a privacy violation on citizens.
Missouri is the only state in the union without a PDMP for prescription opiates. Those opiates, like oxycodone, also known as OxyContin, and hydrocodone can lead to addiction. If addicts can no longer access those medications, they may move towards other opiates like heroin to get their fix. PDMPs are designed to prevent people from becoming addicted in the first place and to punish pill shoppers, who sometimes fill prescriptions for the same drug in multiple pharmacies, by monitoring who buys what prescriptions from which pharmacists. Most states with a PDMP have a board of pharmacy or a health department oversee and administer the plans.
Rehder believes that St. Louis signing off on such a measure could influence other municipalities and counties within the state to implement similar plans.
“It breathes new life into the PDMP argument,” Rehder said. “It will show Missouri is going to have PDMP. Dr. Schaaf is not going to be able to stop that. We don’t need some new idea that has never been proven successful.”
She says a handful, like St. Charles County and Kansas City have already expressed their interest, as have some of the counties in Southeast Missouri. Border regions could likely move the fastest on instituting PDMP plans because pill shoppers often cross the border to Missouri where regulations are less strict.
Many refer to Missouri as a “pill mill” because it lacks a PDMP and therefore provides easy supply for addicts and drug dealers.
Updated – 3:11 p.m. May 31, 2016: Added statements from Mayor Slay
