Vermont Business Magazine Governor Peter Shumlin today applauded the Senate Health and Welfare Committee’s passage of S243, legislation aimed at limiting the prescription of opiates in Vermont. The governor called for the legislation in his State of the State Address in January. In that speech, Shumlin placed the blame for America’s opiate crisis at the feet of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and pharmaceutical industry, which together have enabled pain management practices that in 2010 and 2012 resulted in the issuing of enough opiate prescriptions to keep every adult in America high for an entire month and to give every American their own bottle of pills, respectively.
Governor Shumlin gives his State of the State address in January. vermontbiz.com photo
S243 directs the Commissioner of Health to adopt rules governing the prescription of opioids for acute pain for major and minor procedures and place limits on the number of pills that can be prescribed for some procedures. The rules would apply to all prescribers, including dentists. The legislation passed the Senate Health and Welfare Committee by a vote of 5-0.
Shumlin said, “I want to thank the Senate Health and Welfare Committee for their hard work and Senator Claire Ayer for her leadership moving this bill forward. Vermont has tackled the challenge of opiate addiction head on. We have increased the number of Vermonters receiving treatment by over 65 percent in the last two years. We are moving non-violent offenders suffering from addiction into recovery rather than jail. We have saved hundreds of lives through the use of overdose reversal kits. And we are making progress to remove the stigma of addiction at home and around the country.
“That progress has been staggering. But we will never fully address this crisis until we attack the source of the problem: F.D.A. approved opiates that are handed out like candy. There is no medical reason that someone who undergoes a minor procedure should be sent home with 80-100 highly addictive opiate pills. It is time to put an end to that practice, and I am glad the Senate has moved a bill forward to help us do that.”
Shumlin is also leading a bipartisan effort among America’s governor to create nationwide prescribing protocols to reduce the availability of opiates in America. The protocols, which are likely to include restrictions on the number of opiates that can be prescribed, will be developed in the coming weeks and submitted for ratification by the National Governors Association (NGA) this summer.