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Congress Approves Funding to Fight Prescription Drug Abuse

Date: June 29, 2006
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Drugs

Congress Approves Funding to Fight Prescription Drug Abuse Thursday, June 29, 2006

- The U.S. House of Representatives today approved $10 million for a national grant program that helps states track and combat prescription drug abuse.

"Prescription drug abuse is a national epidemic," said Congressman Hal Rogers. "Here in Kentucky we continue to see example after example of how these drugs are ruining lives and robbing the potential of our people. State monitoring programs, like Kentucky's KASPER system, are helping fight prescription drug abuse and bring hope to communities around the nation."

Created in 2001 by Congressman Rogers and later named in his honor, the "Harold Rogers Prescription Drug Monitoring Program" allows states that are either looking to create a monitoring program, or upgrade their current system, to apply for federal money to supplement state funding. To date, Congress has provided $34 million for this program, with an additional $10 million proposed in the budget for 2007.

Kentucky has used $940,000 in grants from the program to enhance and expand the KASPER system, which monitors prescription drug use in the Commonwealth. Last year, Kentucky became the first state in the nation to provide a self-service, Internet-based system for tracking all schedule II-V prescription drugs. The program - called eKASPER- allows pharmacists, physicians, law enforcement and other authorized users to obtain KASPER reports 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Prior to the implementation of KASPER in 1999, state drug control authorities took an average of 156 days to complete investigations into abuse of the prescription drug system. The average investigation time has now dropped to 16 days. With the addition of eKASPER reporting times have dropped significantly to allow for what is essentially real-time reporting.

Funding for the prescription drug monitoring program is included in the federal budget for 2007, which was approved by the House of Representatives on June 29. Rogers works to secure funding for projects throughout southern and eastern Kentucky in his role as a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee.

http://halrogers.house.gov/Read.aspx?ID=85

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