Print physician DEA # on opiate pills

Prescription pain medicine is getting a lot of negative press lately. These pills are getting blamed for many bad things. But pain medicine helps people who have pain.

When pills wind up causing harm, like overdoses, where do these pills come from? "Pill mills" get some blame, but are most of these pain pills being swiped from patients by unscrupulous niece's boyfriends who then sell them on the street? If you are a prescriber of pain pills, do 10% of all pills filled under your name wind up causing trouble? Or is it 50% for some prescribers and 1% for others?

I propose each pill could have a bar code or a number printed on it, in that same ink that is already on pills. This number would be added at the pharmacy. One could include info about the patient in this number but I think privacy concerns would be a deal killer. Patients would be told that this number is the doctor's code #. The number would correspond to the prescribing physician and could be the actual DEA#, which is also on the prescription so patients would see this to be the case and be reassured. Then when pills were associated with a problem, like an overdose, one could draw a line back to the physician who prescribed them. This association would be tracked by the DEA, which has the power to curtail or restrict prescribing of narcotics by individuals.