Purdue Pharma has offered to fund a Florida database for tracking pain drug prescriptions. State officials, however, appear skeptical of the $1 million proposal.
Florida is the only state to which the OxyContin maker has extended such an offer, although it's been lobbying for the prescription-monitoring database idea in other states as well. The system would track pain-pill and controlled-substance prescriptions to help law enforcement find drug dealers and addicts making purchases from multiple sources. Nearly three dozen states operate such systems.
The Sunshine State harbors "rogue pain clinics supplying millions of narcotic pills to dealers and addicts across the South," reports the Sun Sentinel. Yet Gov. Rick Scott and some legislators want to kill the idea because they say it lacks long-term funding and represents a threat to medical privacy.
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