Doctor shopping

Drugs like heroin, crack and Ecstasy get most of the attention from law-enforcement agents and the media, but about one-third of drug abuse today involves prescription drugs. People who are addicted to these drugs often acquire them from doctors who presume they are prescribing them for real pain.

But doctor shopping is a well-known phenomenon in the medical and dental professions. Most watch for the red flags that signal a drug abuser: someone who doesn't want the drugs paid by insurance or someone who wants only a certain drug prescribed or someone who calls the doctor or dentist at home, where there are no records. They have been placed in the position of policing the abuse of prescription drugs.

Doctor shopping is just now getting the attention of law enforcement. A Jackson man who will soon stand trial is accused of obtaining 7,000 hydrocodone pills over a period of 15 months by going from doctor to doctor with complaints of pain.

The state is trying to devise a program for tracking prescriptions. The system would allow physicians, dentists and pharmacists to share information about the drugs prescribed. This system is badly needed. Keeping drugs from being prescribed to drug addicts in the first place seems the best way to begin curbing the problem.

But doctor shopping is hardly the only way prescription drugs are being illegally obtained. An estimated 14 percent of youths between the ages of 12 and 17 are abusing prescription drugs, often by grabbing pills out of their parents' or grandparents' medicine chests.

When it comes to drug abuse, each of us must be a bit of a policeman.