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Kasich Rolls Out New Reporting Guidelines For Wholesale Drug Distributors

Gov. John Kasich discusses new reporting guidelines for wholesale drug distributors at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus.
Andy Chow
Gov. John Kasich discusses new reporting guidelines for wholesale drug distributors at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus.

Wholesale drug distribution companies will have to revamp their recordkeeping to keep up with new state reporting standards. Ohio’s pharmacy board plans to roll out an enhanced monitoring system to weed out suspicious activities, in hopes of cracking down on opioid addiction.

The new guidelines create a uniform, web-based tool for wholesalers to report suspicious orders of drugs, which can come from pharmacies, doctors and clinics

These are just the latest in a series of guidelines from Gov. John Kasich’s administration to regulate the flow of drugs to patients.

Kasich points out that fatal prescription drug overdoses are down, although there’s been a rise in fatal overdoses with illegal drugs.

"The deaths are tragic no matter who we’re talking about but we have the most amount of leverage over these things as opposed to some drug dealer out there selling laced cocaine with fentanyl,” said Kasich.

Kasich says the more data the state has on the flow of drugs, the easier it is to pinpoint factors contributing to the opioid epidemic.

The new proposed system is now in the state rulemaking process where the public can provide comments.

Update:

Cardinal Health, headquartered in central Ohio and one of the country's largest drug distributors, released a statement which read, “We look forward to working with the Governor and Board of Pharmacy on these important rules. We take our role in the supply chain seriously and as such we operate a state of the art system to prevent the diversion of opioids from legitimate medical use.”

Copyright 2018 The Statehouse News Bureau

Andy Chow is a general assignment state government reporter who focuses on environmental, energy, agriculture, and education-related issues. He started his journalism career as an associate producer with ABC 6/FOX 28 in Columbus before becoming a producer with WBNS 10TV.