The state will send $36 million to treatment programs to help people fighting prescription drug addiction to get into recovery and back into the workplace. Gov. John Kasich says the statewide battle against this problem is an enormous challenge.
“The situation is is that a big chunk of the people who we find who have these addictions end up on Medicaid. They end up in jail because they’re breaking into places to steal things in order to support their addiction. Number two, they end up on Medicaid and it just destroys families.”
Kasich says $9 million was moved from Ohio’s local alcohol, drug addiction and mental health boards to the state’s rehabilitative services commission, which was then able to draw down 27 million federal dollars, which can then go to treatment programs. Orman Hall heads up the state’s Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services.
“Opiate addiction is our top priority, but we’re also going to fund services for people with serious mental illness, for persons that are transitioning out of prisons and local jails, and for veterans and transitional aged youth who have mental illness or substance abuse.”
The epicenter of the painkiller abuse problem continues to be southern Ohio, and especially the pill mills in Scioto County, where Hall says 10 million doses of prescription drugs went out just in 2010.
“..which is equivalent to 123 pills for everybody down there, but statewide, everyone would get the equivalent of 67 pills. What we do know is that it is a vast problem in our state, and that it’s increased significantly over the last 13 years.”
And Gov. Kasich also says he’s disappointed with the state’s medical board for not doing enough to stop pill mill doctors like this one…
“You got a guy who sees 90 patients per day in Portsmouth, he has no support staff and no nurses and my understanding is that there was a complaint filed against this person in 2007 and nobody did anything.”
He says he’ll be meeting with the medical board to find out what help it needs to crack down on doctors running these operations. In February, the state created a prescription drug abuse task force, headed up by former attorney general Betty Montgomery. And a bill to require doctors and pharmacies to use an automated drug reporting database when they prescribe painkillers has passed the House and moved on to the Senate.