Jay Rockefeller: “I rise today to introduce a piece of legislation that is desperately needed in West Virginia and across the country--the…”

“I rise today to introduce a piece of legislation that is desperately needed in West Virginia and across the country--the Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 2013. It is an important bill aimed at addressing the rapid increase in deaths and overdoses from methadone and other opioid prescription drugs in the United States. These deaths have hit my home State of West Virginia particularly hard, but I know that every State is struggling with this serious problem. In the 111th Congress, Senator Corker and I, along with our colleague, the late Senator Kennedy, introduced the Methadone Treatment and Protection Act of 2009--a similar piece of legislation that stemmed from a disturbing rise in deaths due to methadone, a synthetic opioid prescription drug that had been increasingly used for pain management. Before 1990, it was used primarily to treat opioid addiction. Because of its high efficacy and low cost, methadone is frequently used for pain management. However, if not used correctly, methadone can be a powerful and deadly drug because it works differently than other painkillers. Methadone stays in a person's body for a longer period of time than the pain relief lasts so a person who does not know better might take far too much of the drug, possibly leading to respiratory distress, cardiac arrhythmia and even death. Methadone prescriptions for pain management grew from about 531,000 in 1998 to about 4.1 million in 2006--nearly eightfold.…”