different eastern countries, such as China. And the drugs have been extremely problematic in Georgia.
“I don’t know if it’s because we’re so accessible but we definitely see designer drugs all the time. It is something that we battle legislatively in every single session. We have put in what we call backbone legislations where we control the central part of the molecule of a drug and if the exterior parts are modified slightly, [that drug] will still be controlled. Last year, we updated our benzodiazepines legislation for the same reason,” Kilcrease said, referring to public health efforts made by her state such as the recently implemented Senate Bill 81, which requires clinicians prescribing opiates and benzodiazepines to register with a state database that monitors patient prescriptions.
In spite of the legislative efforts implemented, dangerous toxic substances have been increasingly abused in Georgia. From 2011 to 2014, the state’s crime lab saw a 300 percent increase in heroin submissions – 276 cases in 2011, compared with 863 in 2014. Controlled prescription drugs are also a huge problem. During 2015, 7.8 million pain medication prescriptions were dispensed in the Peach State, which is more than one bottle per resident.
“The biggest thing that we can do is to educate ourselves on what is out there,” Kilcrease said. “Every state has taken a different legislative approach, some more effective than others, but I think education and rehabilitation are where the focus needs to be. We need to know that just because a tablet is marked as oxycodone, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is oxycodone anymore. It may be a number of other things.”
Kilcrease explained that so many cases of mislabeled of prescription pills occurred in Georgia that it became a trend – where an OxyContin sample turns out to be pure fentanyl and heroin.
“The days of very recognizable drugs are gone,” she said. “I think that’s the biggest thing in the drug world with all the trends. Nothing looks like it used to and nothing is predictable anymore. These things can come in tablets, in liquids and powder. Gray is just the new thing we happen to have right now, but the predictability is completely gone, and that’s the important thing. We’ve got to educate ourselves on that.”
