High Opioid Prescribing Rates — and How Florida Could Be a Model

By Kelly Young

Edited by David G. Fairchild, MD, MPH, and Richard Saitz, MD, MPH, FACP, FASAM

For every 100 people in the U.S. in 2012, there were 82.5 prescriptions written for opioid pain relievers and 37.6 prescriptions for benzodiazepines, according to new CDC data in MMWR. Prescription rates varied widely and were highest in the South.

CDC officials point to Florida as a model for combating prescription opioid abuse. The state enacted legislation regulating pain clinics in 2010 and banned physicians from dispensing schedule II and III drugs from their offices the following year. As a result, drug diversion (i.e., channeling of drugs to illegal markets) declined, and the oxycodone overdose death rate was halved.