Herbert signs prescription drug abuse prevention bills

SALT LAKE CITY — Nine bills that target Utah's biggest drug problem — prescription misuse and abuse — were ceremoniously signed into law last week by Gov. Gary Herbert, who noted that overdose deaths in Utah still outnumber automobile fatalities.

That makes prescription drug deaths the No. 1 cause of injury deaths in Utah, according to figures released Wednesday by the state health department. In 2009, 310 Utahns died of non-illicit drug overdoses, up from the 277 in 2008.

That means since 2000, Utah is showing a 400 percent increase in prescription drug deaths. An infamous 2006 study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showed that Utah had the highest rate in the country for nonmedical use of prescription pain relievers.

The bills are a new chapter in Utah's "get tougher" approach to drug misuse and abuse. Until now, laws have focused mostly on street drugs and generally ignored a problem that is, as Herbert put it, "a major problem here in Utah everybody's aware of but we haven't been as forthright as we should have been. We're doing something about it now."

The bills impose hundreds of changes designed to reduce the exploitation of prescription drugs by reducing availability for abuse, increase the awareness of risk to include the physical and psychological harmful and legal sanctions, and decrease tolerance of the non-medical use of pharmaceutical drugs. They added the muscle relaxer Soma to the state's controlled substances list, make the selling of fake versions of illegal drugs no different than selling the real thing and sets up a network for disposing expired prescriptions pills that normally sit unused.

A recent public call to turn in expired or unused prescriptions in Utah County netted 800 pounds of pills in one weekend.

The bills don't address demand, which public safety, public health officials and addiction treatment counselors say is higher than ever.

Prescription drug misuse and abuse is now competing with street drugs, and is the fourth-highest rate of use behind alcohol, methamphetamine, marijuana, said Salt Lake Police Chief Chris Burbank.

The most important aspect of the legislation is to raise awareness and change the public mindset regarding prescription drugs — they are powerful, dangerous and addictive substances and should be handled with utmost care, he added.

The health department noted that nearly all the deaths — 89.3 percent — were caused by pain killers such as oxycodone or methadone.

Reducing the number of overdoses and deaths will take a sustained, joint effort by physicians, pharmacists, health care providers, patients, lawmakers and state agencies, said Dr. David Sundwall, health department director, noting that he can think of fewer more urgent public health problems in Utah.

It needs to be, said state epidemiologist Dr. Robert Rolfs, because it's a problem with a lot complex contributing factors, and continuing to ignore it is not going to make it go away.

For more information, go to www.useonlyasdirected.org.

e-mail: jthalman@desnews.com