Posts Tagged oxycodone

Parents at Dania beach are rallying for the approval of the statewide computer system which will keep track of pain pill abuse and pill mills, according to a feature on Orlando Sentinel. These “oxy moms” are just like soccer moms who march and rally for their kids’ sports; the difference is that these moms rally against their children’s addiction to pain pills like oxycodone.

About two dozen parents were marching and carrying placards outside a Dania Beach pain clinic carrying messages for Gov. Rick Scott. Scott and a number of other high-ranking Republican legislators are not in favor of starting a computer system that would record every pain drug prescription.

Colleen O’Hare, a mother from Deerfield Beach wore a t-shirt in memory of her son, Jay, who died of an oxycodone overdose on his birthday. She says, “I’m very upset with Gov. Scott. I voted him in, thinking he would do the right thing. He’s turning a blind eye to what’s going on in this state. My son was a doctor-shopper. He went from pill mill to pill mill, from Boca Raton to Broward County. Only a database that tracks all of that can stop this epidemic of deaths.”

The database will serve as the tool for doctors, pharmacists, and police to track drug addicts and drug dealers who are purchasing massive amounts of pills and to monitor and determine rogue pain clinics that support them. It has been noted that South Florida and other parts of the state have become popular havens for narcotic pill buyers and users in the Southeast. At present, forty-two states have the systems implemented in their place.

Gov. Scott and his colleagues who are against the computer system, on the other hand, says that the database would be an intrusion of people’s medical affairs and believe that the move will do little to stop pill mills. It would also cost the state $500,000 a year if no private support can be sourced.

“Whatever the governor’s reasons and justifications are for trying to kill it, they don’t make sense to the parents of a drug addict,” says Michelle Moore, a parent who marched for the first time last Monday. “We need to do everything — everything — we can to stop these pill mills.”