Combating the abuse of controlled prescription drugs through secure prescription forms (also known as tamper-resistant prescription forms)

How can we fight prescription drug abuse?

Having understood the meaning of “Prescription Drug Abuse”, I wanted to know more about the ways and means to combat prescription drug abuse.

Since tampering, forging and copying of prescription forms are the most relevant ways to get prescription drugs, these are logical targets in the war against prescription drug abuse. One of the most cost-effective and convenient ways of doing so is by implementing the use of counterfeit-resistant prescription forms. This could be one of the reasons for CMS (Centers for Medicaid and Medicaid Services) has implemented the requirement of tamper-resistant prescription forms by law. CMS mandates the use of tamper-resistant prescription pads for drugs covered by Medicaid. According to a letter by CMS, as of April 1^st 2008, all prescription forms were required contain at least one security feature to be considered tamper-resistant.

The security features outlined by Medicaid are:

1) One or more industry-recognized features designed to prevent unauthorized copying of a completed or blank prescription form;

2) One or more industry-recognized features designed to prevent the erasure or modification of information written on the prescription by the prescriber;

3) One or more industry-recognized features designed to prevent the use of counterfeit prescription forms.

However, no later than October 1, 2008, to be considered tamper resistant, a prescription pad must contain all of the above three characteristics.

After reading about this new law, I feel that this is a great initiative by Medicaid and will hopefully help reduce the amount of prescription drug abuse. This small change may have a great impact on the rising prescription drug abuse in the US.
(Interesting Story - http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080730/hl_nm/usa_drugs_dc)