Waterbury, Vt. - Vermont's Public Safety Commissioner, Keith Flynn, says a growing number of burglaries, home invasions, and prescription drug fraud are linked to prescription drug abuse in the Green Mountain State.
The State already as a prescription drug monitoring database which allows doctors and pharmacists to see a patient's prescription history before filling their prescriptions. That prevents patients from being prescribed more drugs than they are supposed to.
Flynn and other lawmakers wanted to improve upon the system during the Legislative session by allowing law enforcement to see it. Then, they could arrest people who abuse it. However, the Legislature failed to pass that bill.
But, Flynn says there is something else that could help.
"Certainly I think that one of things we'd want to look at is real time reporting information to the prescription drug database. I think that's going to be something that we'll certainly propose to the Legislature next year," Flynn said.
Right now, Vermont physicians have seven days to report the prescriptions of their patients to the database. Real-time would make them do it right away.
