Docs lobby feds on prescription drug abuse

Medical experts say there are several ways the federal government can combat an epidemic of prescription drug abuse and misuse, which now kills more people in the United States than cocaine and heroin combined.

About 125 pain-management specialists from throughout the country have converged on Washington for a day of congressional lobbying.

The American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians and the North American Neuromodulation Society are asking lawmakers to pass four bills to help doctors better prescribe prescription narcotics and prevent people from getting hooked. Provisions include:

Requiring practitioners to get special narcotic drug training.

Expanding the use of electronic prescribing technology to make it easier to track excessive dispensing of the drugs.

Increasing federal oversight of prescription narcotics.

Pressing doctors to make sure they have exhausted all other options before prescribing such drugs.

"The key thing is the judicious use of controlled substances because there is always an addiction liability with these medications," said Dr. Samuel Thampi, a pain management specialist who practices in Long Island and Brooklyn.

Almost 30,000 people in the United States died last year from overdoses of prescription medications. Doctors say about half those cases involved painkillers.

By comparison, 7,000 people died from cocaine and heroin overdoses in 2009, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Thampi, who returned home late Monday from the two-day session, said there are ways to prevent addiction to painkillers while not denying patients who need the drugs.

Dr. David Kloth, a past president of the interventional pain physicians, said many primary care doctors don't have enough training in pharmacology.

"We don't want to prevent these doctors from prescribing these medications, we just want to make sure they are doing it the right way," Kloth said.

The measures are also supported by the pharmaceutical industry, which has taken steps to make prescription painkillers less marketable as street drugs. Last year, Purdue Pharma reformulated OxyContin to prevent the medication from being crushed, a preference of drug abusers.

Kloth said 80 percent of the world's opioid medications are consumed in the United States. They include morphine, oxycodone, codeine, fentanyl and hydrocodone.