Physicians have been lost licenses and pill mill practices have been closed. The Prescription Monitoring Programs have been used to facilitate this. Numerous books, documentaries, articles have covered this. In the past, there also was lax attention to providers who had lost licenses in one state and moved to another, which was another problem.Alpha8472 wrote: ↑October 17th, 2023, 11:58 pm The number of opioid prescriptions has dropped significantly in the past several years. Norco used to be one of the most commonly filled prescriptions. Now it is rare to get a Norco prescription.
The drug distributers are limiting supplies to pharmacies. There are times when the pharmacy can't get any Norco in stock.
The problem with filling opioid prescriptions was that there was not enough staffing to call and verify every single Norco prescription years ago. With paper prescriptions it was easy to create fake prescriptions. Later on, electronic prescriptions made spotting fake prescriptions much easier. They should eliminate paper prescriptions for opioid medications. Ten years ago Norco prescriptions could be left on the pharmacy voice-mail and that was good enough to fill a prescription.
The pharmacy business has changed dramatically in less than 10 years. Now trying to fill a Norco prescription has many hurdles to jump through. Even if you have a legitimate reason for a prescription, it is still very difficult to find a pharmacy that can dispense it.
Why are doctors not being punished for writing too many opioid prescriptions? Why doesn't the government go after the doctors? Why try to get money from pharmacy chains?
Pharmacies in many places are concerned that monitoring programs will discipline them even if they are dispensing opioid used for treatment like Buprenorphine. This is a bigger issue than supply.
If pharmacies were not exercising their due diligence with controlled substance prescriptions, then they are legally liable. If you run a business that is subject to regulation, then good luck with conduct that's counter to that.
You seem to rely on hearsay and anecdote, which always needs verification. I've been doing work related to the opioid epidemic for for quite awhile.