HEALTH-FITNESS

Florida lawmakers turn to opioid fight, but critics say more money needed

John Kennedy
jkennedy@gatehousemedia.com
While Florida's opioid crisis has commanded the attention of some lawmakers, the money behind the drug-fighting proposals emerging in Tallahassee is seen by many as minimal. [GateHouse Media Archives]

TALLAHASSEE — Already a statewide emergency claiming thousands of victims, Florida’s opioid crisis is now commanding the attention of elected officials calling for prescription limits, treatment dollars and sanctions on the pharmaceutical industry.

But the money behind the opioid-fighting proposals emerging in Tallahassee is seen by many as minimal, despite an influx of new tax receipts, which this month added almost $500 million to state coffers.

“This isn’t a cheap thing,” said Rep. Nicholas Duran, D-Miami. “We need to start thinking about how do we help folks who are trying to shake addiction. What I know from addiction in my own family that this is a never-ending battle and that’s going to cost money.”

Duran’s brother-in-law died in 2016, overdosing on fentanyl, an opioid he had been using secretly after successfully fighting addiction the previous seven years.

Gov. Rick Scott last May signed an executive order calling opioid abuse a Florida public health emergency after 5,725 people overdosed in 2016, a 35 percent spike from a year earlier.

Prescription drugs kill more Floridians than street drugs, with fentanyl deaths up 97 percent and oxycodone-caused deaths climbing by 28 percent. Duval, Manatee, Palm Beach, Bay and Volusia counties are among some of the hardest hit by the crisis.

Advancing in the Legislature are spending proposals that largely mirror what Scott is seeking: $53 million, although more than half of that funding comes from the federal government.

Even one of the governor’s most reliable supporters, Attorney General Pam Bondi, said it’s not enough, noting it’s just a blip in the state budget.

“In an $80 billion budget, that’s nothing,” Bondi said recently. “Nothing, given all the lives that have been taken due to opioid abuse.”

Bondi, a member of President Donald Trump’s Opioid and Drug Abuse Commission, quickly attempted to soften the criticism, calling the $53 million, “a great start.”

Modest commitment

Still, the view that lawmakers are low-balling spending on a problem coursing through almost every community in the state seems to be taking hold — even with leaders, as the Legislature enters its final scheduled three weeks.

“There may be additional resources put into that issue,” Senate President Joe Negron said last week.

But when pressed for an amount, the Senate’s budget chief, Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Fleming Island, said he thought only another $8 million or so could be added when the House and Senate begin final negotiations on an $87 billion state budget.

The $53 million in House and Senate budget proposals includes $5 million for bulk purchase of Naloxone, the drug used by doctors and first responders to reverse overdoses; $17 million for community substance abuse services; and $1.1 million to upgrade the state’s prescription drug monitoring program, a database used by doctors and pharmacists.

Also included is $27 million in federal money to treat uninsured addicts, distribute Naloxone, and provide programs in high-need counties aimed at keeping middle and high school students away from opioids.

Some lawmakers, though, think that what the state is offering shows only a modest commitment. It’s been further dwarfed, they said, by a new economic forecast that gives lawmakers another $461.8 million to spend this year.

The new money stems from increased tax receipts from post-hurricane rebuilding and a speed-up of gambling payments by the Seminole Tribe.

“Is that all we have in state dollars to save thousands of lives in Florida?” House Democratic Leader Janet Cruz of Tampa said of the roughly $23 million in state cash earmarked for the new opioid effort.

Pushback on prescription limits

For his part, Scott has been slow to come around to fighting Florida’s addictions.

The monitoring database he now wants enhanced was created in 2009 to fight the spread of doctors and pharmacists freely handing out opioid prescriptions.

But Scott tried to close the database after he took office in 2011, and he successfully shuttered the state’s drug czar office, a post his Department of Health now recommends re-establishing to help coordinate Florida’s latest fight.

The governor’s current call for legislation limiting initial opioid prescriptions to three days, with some allowances for a seven-day supply for acute pain, has been embraced by the House and Senate.

But amid pushback from surgeons, negotiations are underway to increase prescriptions from 10 to 14 days.

“When you’re doing something like a hip replacement, you’re going to have real pain and you’re going to need something for more than seven days,” said Chris Nuland of Jacksonville, lobbyist for the American College of Surgeons-Florida, and other groups.

Medical groups say patients will be hurt by the limits, forcing them to return to doctors for prescription renewals while they’re still recovering.

The opioid fight at the state Capitol continues even as the pharmaceutical industry is showing some signs of submission.

OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma announced this month it would no longer market its painkillers to doctors. It’s the company’s best-selling drug and critics say marketing over the past 25 years has underplayed its risk.

Scott, though, so far hasn’t budged from his three- to seven-day limit. But Rep. Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton, sponsor of that prescription proposal in the House, said he thinks all sides are open to a different timeline.

As Florida’s death toll continues to mount from opioids, Boyd said it’s clear, “The days of 90-day supplies of opioids are over.”

Ten states have sued pharmaceutical companies seeking restitution for the cost of the opioid crisis, similar to the approach Florida and other states took against cigarette makers in the mid-1990s.

Florida hasn’t joined them, but several counties and cities are moving ahead with lawsuits. Alachua and Osceola counties sued the industry this month, while another nine counties from the Panhandle to South Florida and the city of Sarasota also appear poised to sue to recover taxpayer dollars lost to the crisis.

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