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.
-- bungston, Sep 17 2016

DEA Number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEA_number
for the transatlantically challenged [calum, Sep 19 2016]

How do you keep people from rubbing one off?
-- mylodon, Sep 18 2016


That's a disgusting question to ask, you revolting little oik.
-- 8th of 7, Sep 18 2016


8th not a big fan of having his eh civil liberties curtailed.
-- calum, Sep 19 2016


Why would someone rub the number off? The number corresponds to the MD. The MD stands to get in trouble but does not have the pills. A pill user who was aware that his use might produce trouble for the doctor, and who was interested in protecting the doctor might rub the number off. The user would probably feel that his interests and those of the doctor would be better served by not getting caught.
-- bungston, Sep 19 2016


I think you'll learn which physicians live in crime-ridden areas and/or are willing to give a patient the benefit of the doubt. The real problem is drug laws.
-- Voice, Sep 19 2016


This sounds pretty unfeasible at the moment and guaranteed to jack pill prices even higher. Pretty halfbaked. Wait, where am I?
-- RayfordSteele, Sep 19 2016


I have schemed up a more efficient way to do this. Pills have a lot number. A piece of pill material printed with this lot number would be inside the pill, placed there at the time of manufacture. Washing the outside of pills is easy but opening, fishing out the number and reclosing each pill much less easy.

On prescribing any medicine, the lot # for the particular pills dispensed is logged along with the physician DEA #.

The pharmacy does not need to modify the pills this way.
-- bungston, Aug 08 2017



random, halfbakery