Pill mills thrive as Gov. Scott nixes database

Is Scott out to protect Rush Limbaugh?  From Carl Hiaasen at The Miami Herald here.

Thirty-eight states use databases to keep track of oxycodone and other painkillers that are now the most widely abused (and lethal) drugs in the country.

Florida is the largest state without such a database, and the undisputed epicenter of the sleazy illegal pill trade.

In the first six months of 2010, doctors in Florida prescribed nine times more oxycodone than was sold in the entire United States during that same period. Pain mills here have prospered wildly and proliferated – in Broward County alone there are 130. . . .

Top law enforcement officials, legislators and even the governor of Kentucky (which has been tragically saturated with pills from Florida) have asked Scott to reconsider, but he won’t budge. . . .

According to a federal indictment, seven clinics in Broward and Miami-Dade were controlled by a model citizen named Vincent Colangelo, a convicted heroin dealer.

Apparently pharmaceuticals now offer juicier profit-margins than smack.

Over a two-year period, Colangelo allegedly distributed more than 660,000 oxycodone pills, enriching him and his partners to the tune of $150,000 a day. . . .