Federal Government Seeks to Curb Prescription Drug Abuse

The U.S. Department of Justice awards more than $6 million for prescription drug monitoring programs.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced this week the release of $6.2 million to help states fight prescription drug abuse.  The money was awarded to 22 states to support prescription drug monitoring programs.

States with prescription monitoring programs can collect and analyze prescription data much more efficiently and studies show that states with programs experience lower incidences of inappropriate prescriptions.  Monitoring programs help prevent drug-seeking patients from "doctor shopping," which is going from doctor to doctor in order to obtain several prescriptions.

A result of the Justice Department's technology standard for information sharing is a commonly accepted model that enables states to exchange information between contrasting information systems, so the monitoring programs are not limited to just in-state data.

Prescription drug abuse remains one of America's fastest rising categories of substance abuse and has rapidly grown into a national epidemic.  The latest National Survey on Drug Use and Health showed that 7.5 million people in the U.S. were current users of prescription drugs non-medically.  In addition, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse reported that more than 15 million Americans had abused prescription drugs in the past year.

"What many people forget," comments Gary W. Smith, Executive Director of Narconon Arrowhead, "Is that prescription drugs have the potential to be just as harmful as street drugs, and that most of today's illegal drugs were once marketed and sold as pharmaceuticals."

Narconon Arrowhead is one of the nation's largest and most successful drug rehabilitation programs and uses the effective drug-free rehabilitation methodology developed by American author and humanitarian L. Ron Hubbard. 

According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, "Programs and efforts that do not reduce drug use must be restructured or eliminated, an effort to use taxpayer money wisely that this Administration takes seriously."

For more information about effective drug rehabilitation, contact Narconon Arrowhead today by calling 1-800-468-6933 or visit www.stopaddiction.com.

To learn more about prescription drug monitoring programs or the latest national drug control strategy, log on to www.ojp.usdoj.gov or www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov.

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