[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5098-5099]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           PILL MILLS MUST GO

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Buchanan) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BUCHANAN. Mr. Speaker, in my home State of Florida, seven people 
die a day, each day, of prescription drug abuse. We had three teenagers 
a couple of weeks ago die in 1 week. A gentleman, a friend of mine, 
buried his daughter on a Saturday. I talked to him on Monday, and he 
pleaded with me to do something about killing these pill mills all 
across our State.
  Florida prescribes 10 times more oxycodone pills than all other 
States combined. To put it simply, we have more pain clinics than 
McDonald's restaurants.
  It's time to put these pill mills out of business. We have 1,300 pill 
mills in Florida. We need to shut them down now. Four thousand deaths 
in Florida in 2008.
  I've introduced legislation to crack down on pill mills. My bill will 
stiffen

[[Page 5099]]

penalties and fines and use the seized assets to fund prescription drug 
databases. Forty-two States have databases. Florida does not. We need a 
database today.
  The time to act is now. I urge my colleagues from both sides of the 
aisle to join me in this fight, to put these pill mills out of business 
and stop these needless deaths.

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