Oregon House OKs bill targeting prescription drug abuse

The Oregon House unanimously passed a bill Thursday aimed at preventing prescription drug abuse and overdoses. State Rep. Knute Buehler, R-Bend, introduced the legislation, and calls Oregon’s opiod addiction an epidemic.

“Oregon has some of the highest rates of narcotic drug use of any state in the nation, and the problem with prescription drugs is they frequently are the gateway drug to heroin,” Buehler said.

He is hoping the bill’s two concepts will help reverse this trend.

First, the law would allow pharmacists to distribute the drug Naloxone without a prescription.

“This is a reversal drug, so say someone is dying from a heroin overdose, they can be brought back to life by this simple injected drug,” Buehler said.

Kim Swanson is a clinical psychologist at St. Charles and chair of the Pain Standards Task Force, a group formed to address the opioid epidemic. She says accessibility to the drug is a great move.

“Other states in the nation have seen a reduction in the death rate by overdose by 50 percent, so it’s a huge-life saving measure for our state,” Swanson said.

The bill also would refine the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program database that allows doctors to access information on the drugs patients have been prescribed. Buehler describes the current system as “too clunky.”

“Providers weren’t accessing it. So it’s really a fix to make it more consistent with the everyday workflow of the typical doctor and the information system that they use right now,” Buehler said.

He hopes the refined database will keep patients from being over-prescribed.

Lawmakers and many in the medical community, including the Oregon Medical and Nurses Association, hope this bill will help turn around the rising rates of abuse and overdoses.

House Bill 4124 now goes to the Senate for debate.