No-Rx Drug Bill is Open to Interpretation

By HOWARD FISCHER, CAPITOL MEDIA SERVICES

Final Senate vote due on disaster- triggered plan

PHOENIX – If a nuclear terrorist attack sends your blood pressure skyrocketing, the Legislature is moving to make sure you can still get medication for it without a prescription – assuming there’s a drugstore still standing.

The same goes for your high-cholesterol meds and a wide range of other drugs, including birth-control pills and maybe even Viagra, in the event of a large-scale catastrophic emergency.

The Senate didn’t specify what kind of emergency it should take to let pharmacists provide up to 30 days of medication without requiring a prescription from a doctor. The bill, which already passed the House, got preliminary Senate approval without dissent earlier this week and is up for final action today.

To qualify, there would have to be a declared emergency, such as a terrorist attack, forest fire, flood or other natural disaster, and the medication would have to be considered “essential to the maintenance of life or the continuation of therapy.” If the emergency lasts more than three weeks, a second 30-day supply could be provided.

The legislation also doesn’t specify exactly what kind of medications would qualify, which has resulted in very different opinions voiced by the lawmaker sponsoring the measure and the state employee who would be in charge of administering it.

Rep. Bob Stump, R-Peoria, said House Bill 2155 is intended to make sure no one is denied medicines necessary for continued life.

Stump said the current laws governing pharmacists are designed to deal only with the way things are supposed to work when everything is normal. But he added that the experience of Hurricane Katrina proved that isn’t always the case.

When asked about such things as birth-control pills, “I would not see that fitting into that framework,” he said.

But Hal Wand, executive director of the Arizona State Board of Pharmacy, said that’s not the way the bill reads.

“I’m thinking almost every drug will be covered except for a controlled substance,” he said, meaning certain narcotic drugs, because the rules for dispensing them are governed by federal law.

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