New Law Could Help Against Prescription Drug Abuse

6/6/2012 (Updated 7:15:14 PM)

Legislators hope a new law in New York State will take a big bite out of prescription drug abuse.

The state's new I-Stop law will create a "real time" prescription monitoring registry, so that doctors and pharmacists will know immediately which patients have new prescriptions.

This is to fight "doctor shopping" or patients going to multiple doctors complaining of the same symptoms in hopes of getting a prescription written.

"Clearly there are too many pills getting out in the system. There are people who get prescriptions written that are just too large when they have an injury. They lie around in the medicine cabinet. 70 percent of the kids in the state report that their main source of prescription drugs are medicine cabinets of their family and friends," said Eric Schneiderman New York State Attorney General.

"Everything gets reported on the 15th of every month.  So New York State probably has a bunch of prescriptions backed up of potential abusers, whereas now it's all going to be simultaneous," said Alexander Campos of Lourdes Hospital Pharmacy.

The state's current prescription database is updated every 45 days.

Schneiderman feels the I-Stop bill will pass the legislature in the next couple of weeks and that the new database should be up and running next spring.

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