Florida Law Updates: New Pill Mill Laws

Regulating pain management clinics

What the law (HB 7095) does:

• Tightens rules for the writing of prescriptions and pain-treatment plans.
• Penalizes doctors who over-prescribe painkillers with minimum fines of $10,000 and 6-month suspensions.
• Requires doctors to use electronic or counterfeit-proof prescription pads purchased from vendors approved by the state Health Department and requires the vendors to report monthly sales of pads to state officials.
• Establishes mandatory buy-back program for doctors to transfer narcotics back to the distributors once the prohibition on doctors dispensing certain addictive drugs goes into effect.
• Makes it a first-degree misdemeanor if a pharmacist "knowingly fails" to report to police an attempt to purchase drugs fraudulently.
• Shortens from 15 days to seven days the length of time that pharmacies are given to report prescription information into the state drug database.
• Prohibits pharmaceutical companies from providing money for the operation of the database.
• Requires wholesalers who sell controlled substances to pharmacies to report distribution data to the state.
• Requires doctors who work at pain management clinics to tell the state when they begin and stop working at such a clinic.
• Allows law enforcement offices to look at or copy pain clinic records without a search warrant.