Prescription Drug Addiction Blog

In its third attempt to pass a prescription drug monitoring law, the state of New Hampshire's legislature failed again, according to a story in The Citizen of Laconia newspaper. The article states that the cost of implementing a program was prohibitive and that it may have been presented in the wrong committee for the language of the bill. Either way, NH is the only state in New England that doesn't have a prescription drug monitoring program law.

These programs are designed to share information between doctors, pharmacists and law enforcement to prevent doctor shopping and other types of prescription drug fraud that are used by people who have an addiction to prescription drugs.

What law makers fail to see is that by implementing a program like this they will actually save the state much more money in the long run through prevention of overdoses, deaths as well as other healthcare and law enforcement costs. The biggest savings of course or the lives, which is difficult to put a dollar figure on, as one source in the paper estimated that there are about 100 overdose deaths per year in New Hampshire.

By being able to catch some of these offenders earlier in the process they can be diverted to drug treatment programs and hopefully have a chance at making it. Experts recommend long-term drug treatment facilities to provide higher rates of success, which is another issue that New Hampshire has to face along with most states in the country.