"Think About It" -- A Georgia Initiative

This has got to be the best news story out there in the drug addiction category.

Every state is reporting a devastating increase in overdose deaths and problems in general in just about every category of person: urban, rural, suburban, black, white, Hispanic, old, middle-aged, young, very young. Everyone is being hurt in one way or another by the addiction to prescription drugs that is rampant.

There is a new initiative here in our state that we can be proud of. The Medical Association of Georgia, which represents about 6,000 physicians, has developed a program called Think About It, which kicked off at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday September 27, 2011 at the Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville. Since the supply chain for many if not most of the addictive drugs ends up being traced back to a doctor’s prescription pad, our doctors have developed a campaign to help keep such medicines away from those who should not have them.

The program has three sections: educating health care professionals, creating legislation, and providing safe places to dispose of and store prescription drugs.

Kristine McCall, the director of the Medical Association of Georgia Foundation, said, “It starts with education. This has been an issue for many years, and the majority of the population, including the medical community, was not aware of it.”

Think About It’s goal is to educate physicians, pharmacists and the public and thereby prevent prescription drugs from getting into the wrong hands. Dallas Guy, a Gainesville businessman who helped design the pilot program, said, “It’s not hard to figure out how to stop it if we can educate people to safeguard their drugs, take only what they need to avoid addiction and educate doctors not to over-prescribe.”

This year, our state lawmakers passed a law to create a prescription drug monitoring program. They appointed The Georgia Drugs and Narcotics Agency to be responsible for administering the database. Unfortunately, for reasons that were not explained in the September 2011 article, officials there have said it won’t be up and running until January 2013!

Some of the plans include, but are not limited to: several ways to offer education to doctors, pharmacists, and the public (especially students), coordination of more drug take-back locations, and stocking prescription drug lockboxes in hardware stores and pharmacies.

It’s an impressive start for our Georgia doctors, that is already influencing other states for consideration.