For both our nation and our profession, few current challenges are as daunting as controlled substances. Emergency department visits related to nonmedical use of oxycodone, hydrocodone, and other narcotic analgesics have skyrocketed. Patients show with elaborate excuses for needing early refills. We worry about dispensing too much of these products, lest DEA show up with warrants. And we worry just as much about being robbed or having our pharmacies burglarized by those seeking narcotics. I know. During my community practice days, I was held up at gunpoint three times.

In such a complicated situation, ads and news releases from the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA) suggesting that “drug diversion starts at the local pharmacy counter” are particularly unhelpful. Implying that pharmacists might even be the source of problems with misuse of narcotic analgesics is insulting to the huge majority of us who strive every day to sort out use from abuse, under treatment from overuse.

When the APhA House of Delegates convenes this week in New Orleans, pharmacy’s largest and most inclusive deliberative body will take up policy on controlled substances. Pharmacists—and APhA—are concerned about patients who need medication having the ability to access them, and I’m sure the delegates will communicate that in the final policy that we approve. We don’t want our patients caught in the web when they need effective pain management, just as we don’t want them to become addicted and overuse these drugs.

The fight against prescription drug abuse is every health care provider’s responsibility, including those pharmacists employed by managed care companies who are members of PCMA and those pharmacists on the frontlines who are responsible for a large part of prescription drug dispensing. This is a difficult problem, one in which all pharmacists need to work together. I’ll be working to do what I can to tone down the rhetoric in favor of better collaboration. There are far more patients who benefit from our care than abusers who work every angle possible to get their fix. Unfortunately, the abusers get the headlines and challenge our ability to do what we do best.