Industry News

• March 7, 2011
  Two suspected pill mills closed, about 75 arrests in prescription drug arrests
  

  About 75 people were arrested and two suspected pill mills in Central Florida were closed as part of a multi-county, multi-agency operation aimed at battling the region’s prescription drug-abuse problems.

  
  
  
  
• March 4, 2011
  An hour with the Drug Czar
  

  The Editorial Board’s meeting with Gil Kerlikowske turned into a big deal. Kerlikowske, the former police chief here in Seattle, is now director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. In other words, he’s the “Drug Czar” — a title he made fun of in our meeting when he responded to a question by saying, “If I knew the answer, I’d be more than a czar. I’d be king.”

  
  
  
  
• March 2, 2011
  Prescription drug deaths soar in Georgia
  

  Tom Bour used to steal painkiller injections from patients at his nursing job at Athens Regional Medical Center. Then, he’d sneak into a bathroom to shoot them up, all the while trying to hide his debilitating addiction to narcotics. But 13 years ago, Bour learned that drugs or alcohol really weren’t his problem.

  
  
  
  
• March 2, 2011
  Bill would address prescription drug abuse problem
  

  The Media Network of Central Ohio, including The Advocate, has for well more than a year studied, analyzed and reported on an epidemic problem in our communities — the prescription drug abuse crises. Partially as a result of their extensive coverage, I have become more familiar with the alarming abuse of this situation and its tragic impact on families. This is why I am pleased to be one of 13 co-sponsors of HB 93, a bill written by two of my colleagues — Rep. David Burke, a pharmacist, and Rep. Terry Johnson, a physician.

  
  
  
  
• March 2, 2011
  The ‘Oxy-Express’: Florida’s Drug Abuse Epidemic
  

  Florida is the epicenter of a prescription drug abuse epidemic. Each day in communities from Jacksonville to Fort Lauderdale, thousands of doses of powerful narcotics like oxycodone are dispensed in pain clinics — storefront operations also called “pill mills.”