ANNIE YAMSON
Daily Reporter
As part of an ongoing continuing legal education series on criminal law, the Columbus Bar Association will present a CLE on the criminal consequences of opiate overprescription tomorrow.
The course comes on the heels of California’s case against Dr. Lisa Tseng, who was sentenced last month to 30 years to life in prison for the murder of three of her patients, making her the first doctor in the United States to be convicted of murder for overprescribing drugs.
The landmark case will be discussed by Bradley Koffel of The Koffel Law Firm, but the CLE will begin with a presentation from Paul Coleman, president and CEO of Maryhaven, on the nature of addictive illness.
“I can’t think of any aspect of the law that isn’t touched by this,” said Coleman. “Certainly if you practice health care law in any way whatsoever, regardless of whether you represent providers or patients, you’re going to be affected by this.”
Attendees of the session will learn about the developing caselaw in terms of litigation involving alleged overprescription, which Coleman said will affect lawyers who practice civil law.
Opiate use naturally bleeds into criminal law and even elder law.
“The effect of these drugs on patients as they age is also more profound than on younger patients, so if you practice any elder law at all, it is something that you want to be aware of,” he said. “So I really can’t think of any practitioner who wouldn’t encounter it in some way at his or her practice and frankly, even if they don’t, it is a massive problem in our community.”
According to Coleman, more people die from opiate overdoses than die in automobile accidents.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control indicates that Ohio has one of the highest rates of painkiller prescriptions per 100 people in the nation.
From 2013 to 2014, the most recent data available, Ohio saw an 18 percent increase in drug overdose deaths, one of only 12 states in the nation to see a statistically significant increase.
The CDC also reports that, since 1999, overdose deaths involving prescription opiates have quadrupled and as many as one in four people who receive prescription opiates long-term in a primary care setting struggle with addiction.
In 2012, doctors wrote enough prescriptions for opiate pain medications for every adult in the U.S. to have a bottle of pills.
Those statistics do not include heroin or fentanyl use, which are often the next step for addicts who can no longer get prescription pills.
In March, the CDC issued new prescription guidelines in an effort to curb what many characterize as an opiate crisis in the U.S..
“In 2002, 38 percent of our patients at Maryhaven told us that opiates were their drug of choice,” Coleman said. “In 2015, 75 percent of our patients told us that.”
Coleman said that opiate use, whether natural or synthetic, has risen in all six central Ohio counties and though prescribing procedures have improved, the problem is still pervasive.
He plans to educate the CLE attendees tomorrow on the typical adult patient progression, which often starts out with prescription opiates for pain management and then moves to heroin.
“I hope not only will the attendees at this event grasp the nature and scope of opiate addiction in our community, but that they recognize that there are treatment protocols that we use here at Maryhaven that can help men and women who are addicted to opiates restore their lives,” Coleman said. “I’m also going to give them my prognosis on what has been called by many people, including the president of the United States, the opiate epidemic.”
That prognosis? It’s actually quite positive.
“We’re seeing a greater emphasis on demand reduction, which is to say treatment and prevention, and with that happening, my overall assessment is that with more emphasis on demand reduction and a continued emphasis on supply reduction, there is a good case for hopefulness, if not necessarily short-term optimism,” Coleman said. “I think we’ll have opiates with us for a while but I think its getting better; we’ll end on a positive note.”
The CLE will also include a position statement from a representative of the Ohio State Medical Association and the personal story of Wayne Campbell, president of Tyler’s Light, a drug awareness, prevention and support organization named after Campbell’s son, who died of a prescription drug overdose.