Editorial: Florida action on 'pill mills' can't wait

It took eight years, but Florida lawmakers have taken the first step in admitting there is a drug problem, one that spreads far beyond that state's borders. Now, they need the gumption to fix it as quickly as possible.

The Florida Legislature in June passed a law aimed at cracking down on the hundreds of pain clinics -- mostly in South Florida -- that contribute to the illicit prescription drug trade in many Southern and Midwestern states, including West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky. The legislation passed after similar bills failed for seven straight years.

But after that first, long overdue accomplishment, the likelihood of any quick action isn't too promising, officials there say. That attitude should be changed quickly.

The Tri-State was reminded again in the last few weeks why Florida is a popular destination for many of this region's residents, and it's not for the theme parks.

On Oct. 16, a man was arrested at a Huntington hotel, where officers found five prescription pill bottles, bundles of cash totaling $8,380 and a card from a Florida pain clinic. A woman found with him told authorities she had accompanied the man several times to Florida to obtain pills.

On Tuesday, the Lawrence County Drug Task Force in Ohio reported that a three-month investigation had yielded 21 arrests of people on charges of drug trafficking. The investigation found that a "sponsor" would pay others to make the 15-16 hour drive to Florida, visit pain clinics to get prescription drugs, return to the Tri-State and split the medication with the sponsor for each to sell.

Then, on Thursday, Kentucky authorities arrested 500 people -- 34 in nearby Boyd County -- in connection with what they described as prescription pill pipelines between Florida and Kentucky.

The toll from these activities is great. This illegal drug trade fuels property and violent crimes, feeds people's addictions and kills people. Kentucky officials say 877 deaths in Kentucky last year were caused by prescription drug overdoses. West Virginia experienced the nation's largest increase in drug overdose mortality rates from 1999 to 2004, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Most of those deaths were associated with non-medical use of narcotic painkillers. The majority of overdose deaths in West Virginia in 2006 also were associated with pain pills, the study said.

Authorities in this region obviously are taking steps to combat this influx of prescription drugs. Besides the arrests, authorities earlier this year closed down alleged pill mills in and near the town of Kermit, W.Va. And Kentucky has implemented the use of a prescription tracking system to try to prevent abuses.

The brazenness of so many "pill mills" in Florida finally convinced lawmakers there to act this summer.

Among other things, the new law authorizes a statewide database tracking prescriptions for addictive drugs as a way to spot abusers. New rules are expected to require clinics to hire doctors to manage their sites, which should give the state leverage to push for more responsible behavior. The law also requires inspections of the clinics.

But recent reports have indicated that implementation could take years while new rules are written and vetted by the public and medical professionals, and to ward off any challenges from the pain clinics. There's no question that establishing the details of new rules requires some time, but Florida officials do have the luxury of borrowing approaches from other states that have gone down this road many years ago. And the state should be aggressive in the face of legal challenges from the pain-clinic industry.

One particularly troubling harbinger of delay is that Florida officials haven't even come up with a way to pay for the prescription tracking system, which is authorized to start in January and would be one of the primary weapons to crack down on the illicit trade. That is inexcusable, considering the magnitude of the problem.

Florida officials should find the necessary money to move the process along and carry out implementation of the new law with urgency. That state's pain clinic industry is causing far too much grief and suffering in the Tri-State and elsewhere in the country to be allowed to carry on as it is now.