Florida’s Prescription Drug Epidemic
According to research published by the DEA, Florida is home to Forty nine of the nation’s top 50 oxycodone prescribers. Walk-in clinics in Florida are becoming hubs for prescription drug traffickers from all over the nation to visit and buy thousands of pills. Florida drug rehab facilities are also targets for these dealers since the majority of residential rehab facilities hold large quantities of prescription drugs readily available in order to taper off the dosage amounts for the people who have already gotten addicted to the painkillers. Check out https://www.thewatershed.com/resource/residential-rehab-center/ for more info on rehab centers.
Florida- The Oxycodone Highway
Doctors in Florida are handing out prescriptions of oxycodone as well as other painkillers at a rate that is Ten times higher than that of every single other state combined. That has caused people from all around the united states to travel to Florida to get prescriptions of these medications. Walk-in clinics in Florida are referred to as pill mills by law enforcement since they simply provide prescriptions of the drugs for their own profit. Traffickers of oxycodone come from all over the country, but most them are all from the Appalachian areas including Tennessee, Kentucky and the Carolinas. A lot of these dealers drive down to Florida for one or 2 days and then leave Florida with several thousand pills that they can re-sell in their cities at a large profit margin.
Zero Regulations
The reason that Fl is responsible for most of these types of prescription medications is that there presently is no system to monitor who is buying these prescriptions. Almost all the other states employ a system that can monitor who’s getting prescribed pain pills and also how frequently. This means that in Florida, drug traffickers are able to go from clinic to clinic with the same symptoms and pick up several prescriptions daily. Until a system is set into place, this will continue being a serious problem in Florida.
Prescription Drug Related Deaths
In Florida alone, over 7 people die every day as a result of prescription drug related incidents. Countless other people are being affected by addiction. These pain killers are created from opium and therefore are very addicting and almost as deadly as heroin. The only difference is the fact that it’s much less common for any physician to prescribe heroin. The drugs affect the body’s central nervous system and cause the respiratory system to slow down and eventually stop if ingested in large enough amounts.
Legislation
Despite the fact that a law was approved last session to implement a monitoring system on prescription drugs, there was initially no funding provided in order to initiate the system. Florida’s Governor has openly called the program a complete waste of money. Until doctors in Florida are held accountable for essentially selling pills for personal profit, there’ll always be an enormous drug industry in Florida.
Florida drug rehab facilities and other residential rehab facilities will continue to fill up with more and more drug addicts until this is stopped. The state cannot afford to keep up this awful trend. Prescription pain pills like oxycodone are dangerous when they are abused the way Florida enables them to be. Check out https://www.thewatershed.com/florida-fl-drug-rehab/ for more information on Florida drug rehab programs.