Frisco Criminal Lawyer: Lawmakers Try to Reduce Texas Pill Abuse
While many prescription drugs can save lives and cure disease, pills can have harmful consequences if used inappropriately. Our nation has a serious prescription drug problem, with an average of 50 Americans dying each day from prescription drug overdoses and more than six million reportedly suffering from prescription drug addiction. Many addicts follow the common practice of “doctor shopping” for medications, visiting many different health care providers in an attempt to stockpile drugs.
As a way to curb the doctor-shopping problem in Texas, local lawmakers have proposed that doctors should be encouraged to monitor this behavior by recording patients in online data bases. These databases would identify and flag patients who visit many different doctors to procure multiple prescriptions. The proposal recommends offering doctors incentives to actively use this database, and enabling prescribers to enroll when they receive a license.
Since prescription drug overdose is one of the leading causes of accidental death in the US, law officials are cracking down on pill abuse. If you’ve been charged with a prescription drug abuse crime, you are facing grave consequences—from prison sentences to hefty fines. Some of the most common types of prescription drug charges include:
- Visiting multiple doctors to acquire multiple prescriptions
- Forging prescriptions
- Possessing prescription drugs without a prescription
- Driving under the influence of prescription drugs
Getting charged with one of these types of crimes is serious business, and not an issue that should be handled lightly. If you have been charged with a prescription drug crime, it’s imperative that you contact a lawyer with experience in Texas prescription drug crimes. An expert Frisco criminal lawyer can guide you through your options and help you craft the best defense possible, working to minimize the severity of your penalties or help to have the case dropped entirely.