Gifford’s Dr. Joshua Plavin, center, talks with Orange County Sheriff Bill Bohnyak, right, and Joe Boyd of Randolph Na­tional Bank Monday after a legislative breakfast at Gifford. Dr. Plavin and Sheriff Bohnyak were both keenly interested in possible legislation regarding prescription drug fraud. (Herald / Tim Calabro) The growing problem of pre­scription drug abuse—and its rippling impacts on com­munities, health care, and public safety—were among the topics discussed at Monday’s legislative breakfast at Gifford Medical Center.

About 20 folks turned for out Monday’s event, the first of a se­ries of breakfasts co-sponsored by the Randolph Area Chamber of Commerce and Two Rivers-Ottau­quechee Regional Commission.

Rep. Patsy French of Randolph was the sole legislator on hand; Sen. Mark MacDonald was ground­ed with the flu and Rep. Larry Townsend had a prior commitment, it was reported.

French opened her comments by giving an overview of the work of the House Human Services Com­mittee, on which she serves, as well as a quick run-down of other major legislation in the works.

The upside of the small turnout was that it fostered a give-and-take discussion, with most attendees joining in at one point or another.

The topic of prescription drug abuse surfaced early, when French noted the Human Service commit­tee’s study of a possible amendment to a 2006 “prescription drug moni­toring bill.” Gov. Peter Shumlin and Public Safety Commissioner Keith Flynn want the law changed to give investigators more access to the state’s prescription drug registry.

When the registry was started, French noted, “it was all about health care, not law enforcement. It was to help doctors know if a patient was getting drugs from mul­tiple locations.”

Under current law, pharmacies enter information into the regis­try— including the patient, doctor, and the drug—for “certain con­trolled substances.” The law allows Vermont’s health commissioner to share specific data with the public safety commissioner, if the registry reveals a “peril to public health,” she explained. Her committee, French said, is still reviewing the request to expand police access to the records.

Dr. Josh Plavin, a medical direc­tor and physician at Gifford, noted that the prescription drug problem is not limited to its impact on users.

“Addiction bleeds into diversion (illegal distribution of prescription drugs), where it becomes a pub­lic safety issue; you can’t separate them,” he commented. He urged more education, starting in elemen­tary school, as prescription drugs have become “the drug of choice” for middle school and high school students.

Orange County Sheriff Bill Bohnyak joined the conversation, underscoring the seriousness of pre­scription drug abuse, statewide and locally. Some users have graduated from pulverizing and snorting the pills to “cooking” them into a liquid and injecting the highly-addictive opiate for a stronger effect, he re­ported.

Bohnyak noted that the prescrip­tion narcotic OxyContin typically sells on the street for $1 per mil­ligram, so a 60-mg tab might fetch $60. Someone selling the contents of a “little prescription bottle” of 150 pills can make $9000, he said. And, Bohnyak added, the price can double when “the market is tight.”

Mental Health Bill

French noted that the Human Ser­vices Committee has focused long hours early in the session on draft­ing a broad mental heath bill aimed at strengthening community-based services, while also dealing with the state’s need to build a new in-patient facility.

The August 28 flooding that forced closure of the state hospi­tal in Waterbury, she commented, is forcing the state, at last, to do something about the facility, which has been operating without federal certification and funding for years.

Another “silver lining” of the flood, according to French, is that construction of a new acute-care mental health facility will be eligible for some FEMA funding.

In the meantime, there is a short­age of both acute and transitional- care beds in the state, and local hos­pitals and police are often the ones picking up the slack.

Sheriff Bohnyak noted that two of his officers recently spent 24 hours at Gifford’s emergency room, dealing with an uncooperative, and sometimes violent and foul- mouthed patient, while authorities searched for a secure bed for him.

The discussion ranged widely during Monday’s breakfast session and included the following:

• French noted that the House re­districting plan calls for a fifth town, Roxbury, to be added to the district (Braintree, Brookfield, Granville, and Randolph) that she and Rep. Townsend represent.

• School board member Mike Van­Dyke asked if Vermont might shift to a secretary of education, appointed by the governor, as opposed to a commissioner who reports to the State Board of Education. French said she favored leaving the system as it is. The change, she said, might “politicize” educational policy and lead to frequent turnover in the edu­cation secretary’s seat.

• Gifford President Joe Wood­in asked whether the legislature might take up, as have other states, legislation limiting punitive dam­ages awarded in medical malprac­tice lawsuits. It could be, he said, “another small step” in controlling health care costs.

Those increased costs, according to Woodin, come in part because litigation tends to change doctor be­havior. The nation-wide increase in Caesarian-section births, which cost more than natural births, is com­monly cited as a result of lawsuits related to difficult vaginal births.

French said she would not be ad­verse to have such a limit included in a health care reform bill.

Floodplain Regs

Paul Rea asked about new flood­plain regulations, in the wake of Tropical Storm Irene, which he said caused $488,000 damage at his Abel Mountain Campground in Braintree. He has had to borrow money to make the repairs, and the prospect of more restrictions—and addition­al costs—is worrisome, Rea added.

Peter Gregory, executive direc­tor of Two Rivers-Ottauquechee Regional Commission, responded, as he has been working with state officials on drafting flood-related legislation.

Gregory predicted that the em­phasis will be on education and voluntary measures, and not “in­creasing mandatory regulations.” On the other hand, he emphasized that some things must change, over time, to address public safety haz­ards and the expense to taxpayers, when properties in flood-prone ar­eas are destroyed and rebuilt, some­time repeatedly.

There will likely be legislation promoting training for zoning boards and zoning administrators who “are not up on floodplain regu­lations,” Gregory said. Another good step, he said, would be requiring the 30 or so towns in the state that don’t have any flood-hazard regulations to adopt some.

Although there was initially talk about banning development in spec­ified river corridors, Gregory said, the emphasis is shifting to “edu­cating communities on how rivers move” and buying floodplain ease­ments that could absorb floodwa­ters upstream of developed areas.

The next legislative breakfast will be March 12, at the Park House in Rochester.