Now, we need to get the retail pharmacists to close the gap, perhaps by monitoring the practices of some doctors not caring about the health of our Florida citizens and not following the standards of care. In my opinion the legislature should also license some Florida pharmacists or pharmacies if they want to dispense pain management pharmaceutical care to our citizens. This can indeed reduce law enforcement's burden by not having to put off so many little fires that are keeping them so busy. As a pharmacist myself for the past 30+ years and a member of the Florida pharmacy association I have witnessed both ends of the pain management crisis. In the 70's and 80's no one wanted to treat a suffering pain patient for fear that they would be flagged by law enforcement as over prescribers. Cancer and chronic patients were suffering in pain and couldn't get any help. Then, in the 90s, laws were created to take this fear away from doctors. Then the opposite happened, some greedy unethical doctors took advantage of these "relaxed regs" and took off with it to the other extreme. Now, law enforcement has to basically take us back to the 70's and 80's, or "square one". We need to find a way to balance this, somehow, meet in the middle.

Now, giant pharmacy corporations, such as Walgreens and CVS are being threatened with stiff penalties and fines if they don't monitor this problem. I think, they have to be held accountable to some extent and perhaps even start creating new clinical positions to properly train and monitor how their pharmacists provide this type of pharmaceutical care to our Florida citizens, they certainly have the assets to get it done, but threatening then with multimillion dollars in fines is just going to indirectly hurt many innocent patients in the state when no one can get the care they deserve. I have spoken to many pharmacist in my practice area and they just flat out will not stock any narcs in their pharmacies for fear of being targeted by law enforcement, therefore, forcing the honest patients to inundate the ERs everywhere. Many of these patient's will end up losing their jobs because they can no longer work, because they cannot get the medical care they deserve. The worst part is if this trend continues in either direction, tax payers will end up with the burden.These two boards are on the right track and I commend them.

Lets go back to our roots. For 10,000 years there have always been healthcare professionals whose mission was to care for the sick with compassion and law enforcement professionals to keep us all protected from evil. Lets just all work together on this issue and when I say together I mean including all health associations and law enforcement agencies and bring this epidemic to the "middle".

Enrique Segarra, R.Ph., Pharm.D.