Missouri is the only remaining state without some form of prescription drug database used to screen for those obtaining excess prescriptions for addictive drugs. We even made the New York Times for our intransigence in the face of pressure for Missouri to create some form of prescription drug database from elected officials in bordering states and even from the St. Louis-based manufacturer of oxycodone, Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals.
Missouri State Senator Rob Schaaf, a family practice physician from northwest Missouri, has been the chief opponent of legislation advanced, multiple times, to create some kind of database. Liberty and privacy interests, from his perspective, need to be advanced over all. Prescription drug addicts need to be eliminated from the gene pool.
What is unclear to me is how fostering the operation of pill mills to serve prescription drug addicts in the four state area will do anything to improve the gene pool. Many prescription pain relievers mimc the body's natural pain-relieving functions. These natural pain-relieving functions are necessary to our survival — we need them in the gene pool. Opportunity and access play some not inconsiderable role in turning necessary survival of pain mechanisms into addiction.
Is it "addiction as choice" theory that underlies a world view that says easy access to prescription drugs plays no socially cognizable role in increased rates of addiction? Or, is this kind of Missourian isolationism — telling all boundary neighbors they are wrong on this issue and need to revise their thinking to bring it in line with that of their free-thinking Missouri neighbors– the fullest flowering of robust federalism as well?
Missouri State of Mind 