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Pain Clinics and Painkiller Addiction

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With painkiller abuse on the rise across the United States, sources of painkillers are being subjected to increasing scrutiny. South Florida, in particular, has a high concentration of pain management clinics, and these clinics are being branded by some authorities and concerned citizens as unscrupulous pill dealers.

Approximately 130 pain management centers currently operate in South Florida’s Palm Beach and Broward counties, vending painkillers to residents. Approximately 70 of these have opened since 2008. Of these 70 clinics, 48 are investor-owned rather than doctor-owned. This trend of pain-management-as-business-investment worries local doctors and legislators because current Florida law does not give regulators the power to sufficiently monitor and discipline investor-owned clinics.

Florida doctors are lobbying for newer, more stringent regulations to increase oversight of these investor-run clinics. Efforts to introduce similar legislation have failed for the last seven years, but authorities believe that skyrocketing rates of painkiller addiction and fatal overdoses may increase the chances that the law will be changed this year.

Although some customers of the South Florida pain clinics are bona fide pain sufferers, many fear that the centers’ marketing tactics and loose standards may be facilitating painkiller addiction. The marketing promotions utilized by some clinics seem inappropriately aggressive and focused on recruiting and maintaining as many regular customers as possible.

According to a story published on Sun-Sentinel.com, South Florida’s online newspaper, one clinic pays patients $25 for bringing in a new customer to buy narcotic pills, while other clinics lure patients with $25 gasoline cards, two-for-one pill specials and half-price days.

Recent data show that all of the nation’s 50 top-selling “oxy” clinics are located in Florida. Of these, 33 of them are in Broward County, where clinics sold 6.6 million oxy (oxycodone, brand name “OxyContin”) pills in the second half of last year. Clinics in Palm Beach County sold 1.8 million oxy pills during the same period.

Local law enforcement authorities have observed clients of the clinics driving from center to center, sometimes collecting hundreds of pills in one day. Some of the clinics even hire special “dispensing doctors” so that they can write prescriptions and dispense narcotics all in one location – a strategy designed to boost sales and profits. One Broward County drug-treatment physician recalled seeing a detox patient who was getting 700 oxys a month – a lethal dose.

Experts say that the explosion of unscrupulous pain clinics is significantly contributing to a rise in prescription drug overdoses. According to police, more than 4,000 Floridians died from prescription drug overdoses last year. This figure equals about 11 deaths per day and represents an increase of 20 percent over the year before. Police also report that addicts often resort to crime to feed their habits when more civilized methods fail. They commit burglaries, robberies and other crimes, and they provoke anger among clinic neighbors with disruptive and reckless behavior.

Florida is one of 12 states that do not have systems in place to track prescriptions. Of the remaining states, 32 have developed systems to ensure that patients cannot “doctor shop” (i.e., go from doctor to doctor and pharmacy to pharmacy obtaining multiple prescriptions for the same medications), and six more states will launch tracking systems in the near future.


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