OFF PAGE ONE
Saturday, August 24, 2019
East Oregonian
A11
Pain pills: Oregon pharmacists ordered millions of opioid pills
oids, so interventionists like pain
physicians and physiatrists are in
higher demand to provide more
alternative pain control options,”
she said in an email. “Further, the
understanding of the psycholog-
ical component to pain and our
reaction to it has garnered interest
and the need for pain psychology.”
She said studies have suggested
that opioids, while effective in the
short term, are no more effective
than Tylenol in treating chronic
pain. It’s important medical pro-
viders address root causes of pain,
she said, and manage expectations
so that patients understand that in
some cases it is not possible to live
completely pain-free.
Continued from Page A1
data from the Drug Enforcement
Administration tracking the path
of every prescription pain pill in
the United States between 2006
and 2012. It shows millions of opi-
oids were flowing into Eastern
Oregon each year.
From 2006 to 2012 Oregon
received more than 1.3 billion
prescription pain pills, according
to the Post’s database. Of those,
22,583,610 were supplied to Uma-
tilla County pharmacies — enough
for every person in the county
to receive 43 pills per year. Mor-
row County pharmacies received
1,235,200 pills, enough for 15 pills
per person per year. Those num-
bers don’t include prescriptions
patients received directly via mail
order.
John Murray said the data-
base has its limits — their Con-
don pharmacy, for example, shows
a high “pills per person” count for
Gilliam County because it doesn’t
take into account that they also
serve neighboring counties, such
as Wheeler and Sherman, which
don’t have any pharmacies.
“I applaud looking at these num-
bers, though, because you have to
start somewhere,” he said.
Since the Post’s database came
out, some pharmacists have shifted
blame for opioid overuse on doc-
tors, saying they didn’t feel they
could say no to filling prescrip-
tions. But legally, pharmacists do
have a right to step in when they
have suspicious of abuse or other
worries.
The Murrays say they often do
just that.
They cross-reference the patient’s
prescription history through the Pre-
scription Drug Monitoring Program
and will call up a physician to ask if
they were aware the patient is already
receiving drugs from another pro-
vider, are a first-time opioid patient
or on other medicines, such as mus-
cle relaxants that make opioid use
more dangerous. The calls some-
times result in an agreement that the
dosage should be adjusted.
They even worked with police
when someone at an area clinic was
illegally calling in prescriptions not
authorized by the doctor.
“We’re the last line of defense
people have (against misuse),” John
said. “We have a co-responsibility
with providers.”
Patients are also more likely to
self-police their use these days after
reading about the dangers or see-
ing someone close to them battle
addiction.
“People will say, ‘This was writ-
ten for 30 days but please just give
me 10,’” Ann said.
Changing laws
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
Ann and John Murray pose in front of the Heppner location of Murray’s Drug Friday afternoon.
Preventing abuse
Safe use of opioids
On the other end of the spec-
trum are people still trying to game
the system. Steven Hardin, emer-
gency department manager for St.
Anthony Hospital in Pendleton,
said ER doctors are no strangers
to people making up stories about
having injured themselves while
traveling or getting their medica-
tion stolen.
St. Anthony doesn’t replace pre-
scriptions patients claim were lost,
stolen or “eaten by the dog,” Hardin
said. And when someone comes in
looking for a new prescription for
an injury, the department can use
the Emergency Department Infor-
mation Exchange to check their
story.
“We’ll ask if they tried anyone
else and they’ll say no, but EDIE
will tell us Joe already hit up two
other emergency rooms in the last
30 days,” Hardin said.
The emergency room hands out
significantly fewer opioids than it
used to. In the past, someone with
an injury that would be expected to
heal in a few days might have auto-
matically been given a 30-day sup-
ply. Now, they will get two or three
days’ worth.
ER departments have shifted
from “just believing patients,” Har-
din said, to checking history, alert-
ing primary care providers of ER
visits and comparing the pain level
patients claim with what X-rays and
other tests are actually showing.
“We say no a lot, which isn’t
popular,” he said.
On the other hand, Hardin said,
they don’t want to scare off people
who legitimately need something
stronger than ibuprofen. Opioids
can help someone function in the
early stages of healing from sur-
gery or serious injury, which can
be healthier than lying down all
day just thinking about their pain.
The Centers for Disease Con-
trol provides guidelines for taking
pain medications safely, encourag-
ing people to never take more than
prescribed or for longer than pre-
scribed, and to step down their use
as their pain decreases.
Jaine Crowell, community
health educator for Good Shepherd
Health Care System in Hermis-
ton, said mixing opioids with other
medications or alcohol is one of the
main causes of overdoses. The hos-
pital is starting to hold trainings
for the public on how to adminis-
ter Nalaxone, which reverses the
effects of an overdose.
Those who have prescrip-
tion medications in the house are
encouraged to lock up the drugs
they’re actively using and safely
dispose of anything extra, cutting
off opportunity for theft by friends
or family secretly battling addic-
tion. Area police departments have
secure drug take-back boxes, and
Good Shepherd recently added one
to their pharmacy for people who
don’t feel comfortable dropping off
unused pills at the police station.
Crowell said they are also work-
ing with other partners in the area
B2H: 500-kilovolt, 300 miles, $1 billion
Continued from Page A1
And if all goes well for
Idaho Power, he said, the
state’s draft proposed order
would become the proposed
order by the end of the year,
with the final order and per-
mitting coming in 2021.
Construction would begin
in 2022, wrap up four years
later, and Boardman to Hem-
ingway would going live soon
after.
Berg said B2H is one of
Idaho Power’s biggest projects
since the Hells Canyon Com-
plex of dams in the 1960s.
“We see this as crucial to
ushering in the clean energy
future we envision,” he said.
Idaho Power’s goal is to
use only renewable energy
by 2045 amid the grow-
ing population of the north-
western United States. The
existing power lines are at
capacity, according to Idaho
Power, and B2H would alle-
viate Oregon’s high-power
needs in the winter and the
Mountain West’s increased
need for electricity in the
summer without having to
on a campaign to reduce the stigma
of admitting an addiction to opi-
oids — something she said can
affect people of any demographic.
Juli Gregory, education director
for Good Shepherd, said there are a
lot of resources for people who find
themselves addicted to painkillers,
from peer support groups to coun-
seling. One frustration, however,
is that Medicare does not pay for
inpatient rehabilitation treatment
for addiction.
“It’s not just people who rec-
reationally use drugs,” she said.
“Seniors have a high rate of
addiction.”
Alternatives to opioids
As awareness has increased
about the addictive nature of opi-
oids, medical providers are upping
their focus on controlling pain
without medication.
Good Shepherd offers regu-
lar classes on “living well with
chronic pain.” It also recently
opened a Physical Medicine and
Rehabilitation clinic, offering
comprehensive pain management
strategies ranging from chiro-
practor sessions to peripheral joint
injections. They plan to add an
acupuncturist and massage thera-
pist to the staff soon.
Dr. Miriam Washington, a
physiatrist for the clinic, said the
newer generation of doctors is
more wary of prescribing opioids.
“Many primary doctors are
looking for a specialist that can
help get their patients off opi-
Walkout: Democrats back off threat
to fine protesting Republicans
Continued from Page A1
EO file photo
A crew works on a transmission line tower outside of Board-
man in November 2017.
build new generating plants.
The line, then, would inte-
grate the region, Berg said,
and make power more
reliable.
The Stop B2H Coali-
tion contends there are bet-
ter solutions to the region’s
energy needs than clear-cut-
ting swaths of private and
public lands for big power
lines atop towering util-
ity poles. The East Orego-
nian covered the coalition in
a June 6 story available here:
https://www.eastoregonian.
com/news/local/stop-b-h-
coalition-remains-charged-
up -to - defeat-massive/
article_8cf33576-9dd7-11e9-
8d94-bb057ba8134f.html
Berg said the public input
has helped shape the project to
find ways to mitigate environ-
mental impacts and avoid sen-
sitive areas.
“We think what we have
here,” he said, “is a better ver-
sion of the line than what we
began with.”
As the country has been
gripped by a crisis of addiction
and overdoses, lawmakers on the
state and federal level have passed
new laws addressing the epidemic.
Some of those have resulted in the
prescription and emergency room
monitoring databases listed above,
while others have increased pen-
alties for improper prescribing or
increased money for treatment.
In October, President Donald
Trump signed the SUPPORT for
Patients and Communities Act, a
package of laws which Rep. Greg
Walden told the East Oregonian
is “the most significant effort ever
made to combat a single drug
crisis.”
Among its provisions were
reauthorization to continue pro-
viding $500 million a year for the
opioid crisis, increased measures
to stop fentanyl from illegally
entering the country, removing
some restrictions on medication
that treats opioid addiction and
increasing access to Nalaxone for
first responders.
In the past few years, Walden
has held roundtables in Pendleton,
Hermiston and other parts of Ore-
gon about opioids, taking feed-
back from medical providers, law
enforcement, mental health agen-
cies and people in recovery from
addiction. He said in an emailed
statement that as chairman of the
Energy and Commerce Commit-
tee he also conducted hearings
that resulted in a 325-page report
“that uncovered numerous warn-
ing signs and red flags missed by
wholesale drug distributors and
the Drug Enforcement Adminis-
tration (DEA) that contributed to
the opioid epidemic.”
He added, “We’ve made prog-
ress, but there is much left to do
and I plan to continue to hold
roundtables, propose legislation,
and monitor this epidemic until
we can solve it once and for all.”
have the votes within their
own party.
To date, Senate Dem-
ocrats haven’t imposed
any punishment on their
peers for walking from
the Capitol.
“Stopping the work
of the people by deny-
ing a quorum is uncon-
scionable and undemo-
cratic. Senate Democrats
will work to protect Ore-
gon’s democracy by giv-
ing Oregonians and their
representatives more tools
to stop any future quorum
denials,” Senate Major-
ity Leader Ginny Bur-
dick, D-Portland, said in
a statement. “I hope our
Republican
colleagues
now see that this is not a
tactic that should ever be
used again, and that they
will work with us to pre-
vent either party from
walking off the job.”
Burdick’s
statement
comes after the Senate
Majority and Senate Pres-
ident’s offices were pep-
pered by reporters asking
if they were going to issue
fines. Throughout the past
two months, the Oregon
Capital Bureau asked sev-
eral times about the fines,
and each time was told
that they were going to be
issued.
The issue was brought
back to the foreground
this week when a coali-
tion of unions and lib-
eral groups escalated the
kerfuffle after noticing
a political action com-
mittee set up to help pay
for the absent lawmak-
ers’ expenses while gone
out of state has donated
to
each
Republican
senator.
The group has updated
its state elections com-
plaint against the 11
Republican
senators,
contending it’s unlawful
to use campaign dona-
tions to pay for their
political exodus.
Patty Wentz, a spokes-
woman for the coalition,
said the complaint still
stands.
The only senator who’s
paid his $3,500 fine is Sen.
Brian Boquist, R-Dal-
las. He did so to estab-
lish grounds to sue Senate
President Peter Courtney
in federal court, claim-
ing he has no author-
ity to issue such fines.
Boquist’s check has not
been cashed.
Rick Osborn, spokes-
man for the Senate Demo-
crats, said the retreat from
the fines was not because
the caucus believed it
could be on shaky legal
ground in issuing the
fines. Rather, it was to
save taxpayers from fund-
ing a legal fight.
Senate Democrats said
that “imposing the fines
would have been bogged
down by lengthy litiga-
tion and hundreds of thou-
sands of dollars in taxpay-
er-funded legal fees.”
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