State: Prescription Drug Abuse Health Threat

BOSTON -- When she was in her 20s, Lauren Nugent had surgery after surgery. She was prescribed painkillers each time. But when her doctor told her she was better and could stop taking Vicodin and Percocet, Nugent said she couldn't.

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"At one point, I was up to 25 pills a day," said Nugent.

She described herself as a hard-core addict.

"If I didn't take that pill at that time every day, my body couldn't handle it. I was at a doctor's office at least every 48 hours. I probably went to four doctors a week."

Lauren is what public health officials call a "doctor shopper," an addict who gets painkiller prescriptions from multiple doctors. The state calls the practice a public health threat that rivals street drugs like heroin.

According to state records, the practice soared by 170 percent between 1996 and 2007.

"Any place where there's a pharmacy or a medical facility, there is a potential for abuse," said Lt. Tom Shannon, commander of the Massachusetts prescription drug diversion unit.

Team Five Investigates went inside state police headquarters, where the diversion unit is based.

"The most abused prescription drugs are OxyContin, Oxycodone, Percocet and Vicodin," said Shannon. "We get calls everyday from the major hospitals, and physicians and pharmacies. The caseloads have gone up considerably."

The demand for narcotics is fueling for-profit drug rings in the cities and suburbs. State police told Team Five Investigates that one OxyContin ring left a trail from Hopkinton to Boston. Another suburban drug ring involving 20,000 OxyContin pills is still under investigation.

"They hit as many pharmacies as they could to obtain fraudulently obtained prescriptions," said Shannon.

Detectives showed Team 5 Investigates prescription pads that were stolen from a doctor's office, and a legitimate prescription seized by troopers that was computer generated and then reproduced.

The state Department of Public Health runs a system that monitors prescription drugs. But only they have direct access to the data base.

"The regulations don't permit us to push the data to practitioners,” said Paul Dreyer, who oversees the prescription monitoring program. They flag suspicious activity and report it to authorities.

"I'd like to see it centralized," said Shannon. "It would be a system where law enforcement and health care providers can tap into a central computer."

But Dreyer said too much access is ill-advised. "We need to be mindful of privacy, that's very important," he said.

The Department of Public Health is proposing that doctors be mailed notification when one of their patients is suspected of shopping around. That way, they said, the doctors can help get them into treatment. Right now, too many addicts fall through the cracks. Of the thousands involved in illegal prescription drug activity, last year the state reported only about 100 suspicious cases to law enforcement.

Nugent, drug-free for four years, is in a treatment program. She takes Suboxone, a drug that stops her craving for the painkillers she was once addicted to. She said the treatment made her feel normal again and helped her get her life back on track. She believes doctor shoppers will only be successful when doctors have direct access to the state tracking data base.

"That way everyone sees exactly what you are getting when you are getting it, and who is prescribing it," she said.