Florida looks tough on opioids because Trump looks so weak
In Florida, we got action Monday on the opioid epidemic. In New Hampshire, we got ranting on the opioid epidemic. Guess which will help more?
The action came from the Florida Legislature. Gov. Rick Scott toured the state to sign House Bill 21. It restricts physicians from prescribing more than a three-day supply of painkillers such as oxycodone and hydrocodone except for the terminally ill, cancer patients, people in hospice care and victims of recent trauma.
In addition, the bill requires physicians to check the patient’s history on the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program database. That provision aims to stop addicts from doctor shopping to amass more pills than medically necessary.
The ranting came from President Trump. He was in New Hampshire trying to head off talk of a primary challenge there in 2020. Since the state has the thirdhighest drug overdose rate, Trump also chose to announce what the administration had billed as the president’s longawaited “plan” for the epidemic.
Not surprisingly, Trump announced no plan. He pledged to emulate dictatorships that execute drug dealers. Trump, however, offered no example of which “drug dealers” would qualify for capital punishment. Most live overseas.
And, of course, Trump returned to his favorite diversion: a wall on the border with Mexico. “Eventually,” the president said, “the Democrats will agree with us and build the wall to keep the damn drugs out.” Many experts in this field — more experts than Trump now has lawyers — have pointed out that the heroin fueling this stage of the opioid epidemic gets here through legal ports of entry.
The proposed spending bill in Congress — in which money for the wall is an issue — contains $6 billion that actually would begin to address the crisis. Those experts, however, said the nation needs much more money to help addicts get and stay sober. Meanwhile, Trump’s push to repeal the Affordable Care Act would mean drastic cuts to Medicaid, which finances drug treatment for millions of lower-income Americans.
Trump’s failure to follow up after declaring opioids a national public health emergency last October remains the most frustrating of the reality-TV showman’s many unfulfilled promises. About 64,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2016 alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overdoses kill more Americans under 50 than any other cause.
Indeed, for all the justified focus on Florida, this state ranks 15th in the rate of overdose deaths. The Overdose Death Belt includes Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West Virginia — all of which Trump won. Trump also carried neighboring Michigan and Indiana, where rates are nearly as high.
Within those states, rates run highest among less-educated, rural Americans at the core of Trump’s electorate. Though ranting about a border wall and sanctuary cities may play well on Fox News, it won’t help Americans who got hooked on legal painkillers and have migrated to their cousin heroin.
We must place even Florida’s new law in perspective. It may help to reduce the number of new addicts, but it could have done much more several years ago, when Palm Beach and Broward counties were closing down pill mills with little or no help from the state. In 2011, Attorney General Pam Bondi had to prod Scott into creating the drug database. His first budget sought to repeal it. Scott said he worried about patient privacy.
South Florida legislators also found the issue a tough sell in Tallahassee. Former Sen. Jeff Clemens kept trying to convince colleagues that the problem was not limited only to his district, which included Delray Beach and its many sober homes, and this region.
Clemens was right. Based on a survey of state medical examiners, Sarasota and Manatee counties — south of Tampa — in 2015 had the highest death rates from fentanyl. It’s related to heroin but is much more powerful. Rep. Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton, who sponsored HB 21, said at the bill signing, “There’s not a person in this room who doesn’t have a family member or a friend of a family that hasn’t been affected by this epidemic.”
Yet only $65 million statewide will come with the legislation. Scott also did not call for Bondi to sue the drugmakers and distributors who brought us this plague. The state and nation could do much more. Their hesitation is worth ranting about.
Randy Schultz’s email address is randy@bocamag.com.