Comments about ‘Utah Legislature: Committee OKs doctor notification bill’

First of all this bill is useless and meaningless. To make such notifications a person driving on drugs has to be convicted of a DUI.

As of yet, I have never seen or heard of anyone being convicted of this DUI offense in Utah. And there are no records of any convictions. The only conviction drug drivers get convicted of is reckless driving or a much lesser crime. Even after they test positive for drug use while driving. So this bill is wasting the time of legislators in debating the issue.

The best way of monitoring and controlling doctor shopping for drugs is a shared network of pharmacy information. Doctors can't share information and they know very little about the drugs they prescribe so they leave it up to the pharmacy's to explain the drugs. With shared pharmacy information it could also prevent drug interaction that patients are unaware of.

A person goes to a clinic and must see numerous doctors and get numerous prescriptions for each doctors theory of care and none of them ever inform patients about each drugs or drug interactions.

I am a little surprised to see that the above commentator responded to this article because that would have required reading the article....which obviously they have not done to the bill or the other three that go with it. Rep. Brad Daw is the sponsor of this bill HB 36, along with HB 25, and 35. The other two bill doe EXACTLY what you're claiming this bill neglects. They enforce the use of a DOPL database for controlled substances so that physicians must look up a patients record and then can see all other outstanding prescriptions from other doctors. It's private, and it's efficient, and it stops shoppers.

And I'm not surprised that you haven't heard of anyone being convicted of a prescription drug use DUI considering you didn't even know of the other bills. Prescription drug use DUIs are only convicted if there was no presence of alcohol...which happens A LOT in Utah....ALL the time. IN fact, at this committee hearing in the senate, the Lindon Police Officer gave an alarming number representing the statistics for how often people are pulled over due to prescription drug abuse.