Area lawmaker seeks passage of drug database bill

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Missouri lawmakers have tried and failed for more than a decade to join the rest of the country in creating a prescription drug monitoring program. All the while, state Rep. Holly Rehder watched her daughter's addiction to painkillers deepen.

"This is something that affects all walks of life," the Sikeston Republican said, adding she took her three children to church and "kept my children away" from drugs.

It didn't work, as her oldest child began taking drugs at 17 after slicing her thumb at work, which required stitches and came with a prescription for the painkiller Lorcet. She then turned to so-called doctor shoppers, Rehder said, people who go from physician to physician collecting prescriptions for drugs like Vicodin, OxyContin or Xanax to sell or feed their own addictions.

Rehder hopes to change how easy it is for Missouri residents to obtain pain pills. She and Republican Sen. David Sater, a pharmacist from Barry County, are sponsoring bills that would create a database with an alert system to inform doctors and pharmacists when similar prescriptions were recently written or filed -- a sign of potential abuse. Missouri is the only state without such a database.

But Democratic and Republican lawmakers wary of another government database with personal information have dug their heels in, saying they're unconcerned with being the last to adopt such a program if it means protecting individual liberties.

Fresh on legislators' minds is a release of the state's concealed carry permit database to federal authorities in 2011. Even with safeguards, Sen. Kurt Schaefer said, there's a possibility that information could be breached.

"No one has a problem with the premise," the Columbia Republican said Wednesday during floor debate on Sater's bill, which is up for a vote for initial approval. "But if we're going to do that, you better lock it down really tight."

Bills moving through the General Assembly this year include a litany of restrictions on any database -- a compromise to assuage wary lawmakers. Under Sater's bill, information would be under the state Department of Health and Senior Service's control, kept confidential and not be shared with other states. Rehder's bill, which won House approval late last month, includes a provision that would allow prescribers in other states to view the database.

Those changes have managed to win the backing from one of the proposal's most vocal critics.

Republican Sen. Rob Schaaf, who tried to block the measure with a filibuster in past sessions, took the lead this year in defending it on the Senate floor. The St. Joseph Republican said the Senate version would create a program "better than every system in the U.S."

But as he pledged support for a prescription drug database, others took his place to pick apart the measure -- even Rehder has concerns. She said too many restrictions could limit a database's effectiveness and could end up making it difficult or impossible for the state to create one.

It's been 12 years since her daughter, now 29, tried prescription drugs, eventually abusing methamphetamine, bath salts and alcohol before finding some success in rehab. She reached nine months of sobriety on March 14.

Rehder still hopes something will pass if the bill comes to a vote in the Senate.

"It's embarrassing and it's hurtful, because it has done so much damage to so many families," Rehder said. "But it's something we need to talk about."

Prescription drug monitoring bills are HB 130, SB 63.