The impacts of the region’s prescription drug abuse plague continue to mount. The terrible toll on families extends to the most innocent of victims -- babies. Florida is the epicenter of the nation’s fastest-growing drug dilemma, labeled an “epidemic” by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Too many expectant mothers are too drug addled and dependent to fend off OxyContin, Vicodin, Xanax and other narcotics during their pregnancies. In the Tampa Bay region alone, the number of babies born addicted to powerful pain killers and other prescription drugs stood at an estimated 400 in 2010-2011. Statewide, the figure surged from 354 babies five years ago to 1,374 last year, Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration reports.
“I’m scared to death this will become the crack-baby epidemic,” Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi told USA Today earlier this month in a front-page article. She has asked the Legislature to form a task force to draw up prevention policies, a solid initial step in attacking this problem.
Manatee County commissioners got a earful this month, too, when representatives of the community’s substance abuse organizations and others detailed this scourge and urged preventive action. As Rita Chamberlain, coordinator of the Manatee County Substance Abuse Coalition stated, this is indeed a “crisis.”
Kim Lott, who lost her son Sam to a prescription pain pill addiction, expressed the epidemic’s heartbreaking toll on families in an emotional plea to commissioners: “Please, please stop this madness. Our children are dying at an alarming rate every day.”
Florida’s Medical Examiners Commission reports that 1,516 people died of Oxycodone overdoses alone last year, a frightening quadruple increase from 2005. Another 315 overdosed on Hydrocodone.
While the state clamped down with new restrictions on prescription purchases, a drug database and other strategies, stronger local action is warranted. Manatee County’s emergency ordinance establishing a moratorium on permits for new pain management clinics expired but remains in effect.
Commissioners should make this special permitting system, designed to thwart unscrupulous “pill mills” while allowing legitimate clinic operations, permanent. And crack down with additional provisions, including the coalition suggestion for tougher operating standards.
One of the most startling statistics the commission heard came from Donna Vallenga, executive director for SOLVE Maternity Homes in Bradenton and Englewood. A third of the women requesting help with unplanned pregnancies test positive for prescription drugs.
That figure places motherhood second to an addiction, a shameful situation. Drug babies require special medical care, which places a costly burden on society. We urge Manatee County’s legislative delegation to support Bondi’s request for a task force to devise strategies to save babies from exposure to prescription drug exposure. We also urge county commissioners to adopt stiffer measures. This crisis must be contained.