© 2024 WUKY
background_fid.jpg
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Ky. Close to Launching Drug Monitoring Partnership with Ohio

By Brenna Angel

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Day two of a tour through Kentucky by National Drug Control Policy Director Gil Kerlikowske involved a roundtable discussion on a wide range of issues related to prescription drug abuse and prevention.

One of the participants was Congressman Ben Chandler, who praised Kentucky's prescription drug monitoring program with spotting potential abusers and giving law enforcement a tool to catch them.

"You can see how unwieldy the thing is when you've got 50 different states with 50 different systems or in some cases no system at all. We absolutely need a seamless national system. We just do."

While Kentucky officials continue to press Florida Governor Rick Scott not to abandon its tracking system, a partnership is forming between the Commonwealth and Ohio.

The leaders of both Kentucky and Ohio's drug monitoring programs announced Wednesday that they are only a few weeks away from launching a database that would allow physicians to see what medications were dispensed to a patient in either of those states.