Today, Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes commended the partnership of Regence Utah and Walgreens at a press conference in Bountiful as they work to fight the opioid crisis across the state. Through their collaboration and combined efforts and resources, Regence Utah and Walgreens are providing Drug Take Back boxes at Walgreens pharmacy locations in Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.

“Walgreens’ program has successfully answered the questions ‘Will it make a difference?’ and ‘Can it be done?’ In two years, Walgreens has been instrumental in taking back over 540,000lbs of prescriptions drugs,” said Attorney General Reyes. “Where would those drugs be if it wasn’t for these Take Back programs and kiosks?  I’ll tell you where they’d be – they would be in our medicine cabinets, at skittling parties with neighborhood high school kids, on streets getting sold, or, sadly, they would be in the medical examiner’s evidence lab marking yet another death for Utahns.”

Watch a portion of the press conference here: 

Regence is sponsoring 38 kiosks in our four markets, including eight in Utah. The locations in Utah are as follows:

• Provo (1315 N State St.)
• West Jordan (7794 S Redwood Rd.)
• Layton (1171 W. 200 N Antelope Dr.)
• Draper (1311 E Draper Pkwy.)
• Bountiful (515 S 500 W)
• Salt Lake City (531 E 400 S, and 909 E 2100 S)
• Taylorsville (4040 W 5415 S).

Due to the joint efforts with AmeisourceBergen, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Pfizer, Prime Therapeutics, and Walgreens, an additional 900 disposal kiosks will be added at Walgreens across the country for a total footprint of about 1,500 stores, up from 600 locations today.

Regence’s Behavioral Health Medical Director Dr. Jim Polo said Regence was proud to partner with Walgreens in providing options for safe disposal. He went on, “This will take effort by everyone involved: hospitals, pharmacies, legislators, the community. It will take all of us to see a change.”

Lt. Governor Spencer Cox, State Senator Todd Weiler, and State Representative Raymond Ward also expressed their support of the initiative, as well as officials from the City of Bountiful, the Salt Lake Metro Narcotics Task Force/DEA, Regence Utah, and Walgreens.

SALT LAKE CITY October 20, 2017 – Attorney General Sean Reyes has joined with a bipartisan group of attorneys general from across the country in letters to 15 healthcare companies that provide pharmacy benefit management (PBM) services encouraging the companies to implement programs to mitigate prescription opioid abuse.

The attorneys general also sent a letter to the president and CEO of CVS Health Corporation applauding the company’s recent program that automatically enrolled all commercial, health plan, employer and Medicaid clients in an opioid abuse mitigation program.

“As Attorney General, I have seen far too much devastation to Utah families and communities from opioids. In our fight against this epidemic we have learned that all too often addiction starts with prescription medication,” said Attorney General Sean Reyes. 

“I applaud pharmacies like CVS who are proactively implementing policies to lessen the likelihood of addiction by patients. We urge other companies to follow their lead. Limiting the duration and dosage of opioids, among other solutions, will likely decrease significantly the number of new addicts.

“Working with pharmacies is part of the Utah Opioid Task Force’s multi-layered approach with many stakeholders including manufacturers, prescribers, insurance companies, law enforcement & the recovery community to comprehensively address the opioid threat ravaging our nation.”

In their letters to the PBMs, the attorneys general asked that the companies adopt similar measures as CVS, including limiting to seven days the supply of opioids dispensed for certain acute prescriptions for patients who are new to the therapy, limiting the daily dosage of opioids dispensed based on the strength of the opioid, and requiring the use of immediate-release formulations of opioids before extended-release opioids are dispensed. The CVS program’s requirements are similar to the opioid prescribing guidelines recently issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  

The multistate PBM letters were sent to:

• Argus Health Systems, Inc.
• Benecard Servies LLC
• Envision Pharmaceutical Services LLC
• Envolve Health
• Express Scripts, Inc.
• Humana, Inc.
• Magellan Rx Management
• MedImpact Healthcare Systems, Inc.
• Navitus Health Solutions LLC
• OptumRX , Inc.
• PerformRx
• Prime Therapeutics, Inc.
• ProCare Rx
• RxAdvance
• WellDyneRx

“While there are no doubt additional measures that pharmacy benefit managers could take to combat prescription opioid abuse, we believe over-prescribing of opioids could be curtailed by the implementation of a CVS-type program,” the attorneys general wrote.

“The opioid epidemic is the most pressing public health crisis our country faces,” the attorneys general wrote. “It affects every state and has a devastating impact on communities – tearing apart families and stretching the budgets of local law enforcement and first responders as they do the difficult work on the front lines. For our part, attorneys general are pooling resources and coordinating across party lines to address the crisis.”

Opioids, both prescription and illicit, are now the main driver of drug overdose deaths nationwide. According to CDC, opioids were involved in 33,091 deaths in 2015, and opioid overdoses have quadrupled since 1999. The Utah Department of Health reports in Utah 23 individuals die from prescription drug overdoses every month, and from 2013-2015, Utah ranked 7^th in the U.S. for drug poisoning deaths. From 2000 to 2015 Utah saw a nearly 400% increase in deaths from the misuse and abuse of prescription drugs.

In addition to AG Sean Reyes, those joining one or both of today’s letters include attorneys general from Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Please click here to view these letters.
https://attorneygeneral.utah.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Letters-to-CVS-and-PMBs.pdf

###

EDITORS NOTES:

1. Find drug overdose death data on the CDC site: https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/statedeaths.html

2. For Utah specific data on prescription drug overdoses visit: http://health.utah.gov/vipp/topics/prescription-drug-overdoses/