Painkillers: Too Much, Too Easy

Sept. 7, 2006 — -- The Drug Enforcement Agency unveiled a new proposal on Wednesday intended to make certain powerful painkillers more easily available to patients with legitimate medical needs.

The new plan would extend the maximum prescription length for some pain medications from the current 30-day supply to a 90-day supply.

Speaking at a press conference, DEA administrator Karen Tandy called the announcement "a good news day for people who are in chronic pain and need these drugs."

Experts in the field see the proposal as a long-awaited change that would update problematic regulations.

Rollin Gallagher, director of the Center for Pain Medicine, Research and Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, told ABC News, "These new rules will enable many more patients with severe pain to obtain proper treatment and prevent the consequences of pain."

Current laws do not allow prescriptions for Schedule II drugs, such as Oxycontin and Vicodin, to be refilled. This means patients must visit the doctor every month to obtain a new 30-day prescription. Such frequent visits can be a burden on patients and physicians alike, and also prove costly.

Plus, the current system doesn't indicate if doctors can issue multiple prescriptions during one office visit. This creates a potential for doctors to violate DEA regulations and possibly lose their licenses.

The new plan clarifies the rules, allowing doctors to issue multiple 90-day prescriptions for these drugs at one office visit. To prevent abuse, the new proposal controls the number of doses issued with each trip to the pharmacy. It allows for the 90-day prescription to be filled in three stages, with a month's supply available immediately, and then again after 30 days, and again after 60 days.

"The ability to prescribe a 90-day supply will greatly improve our ability to manage pain without forcing the patient to repeatedly make unnecessary doctor visits and trips to the pharmacy," Dr. Fredrick Burgess of Brown University Medical School told ABC News.