As a student and an advocate for mental health and substance abuse treatment, I find the proposed rule to be useful in the fight against opioid abuse. Substance abuse is a multi-faceted and complex issue that requires both mental health treatment and emotional support, as well as denial or limited access to a controlled substance. The proposed rule to restrict prescriptions to only e-prescriptions (except in limited circumstances) will help to limit unmonitored access to controlled substances, and hopefully, therefore, mitigate their abuse as patients will no longer be able to obtain paper prescription pads and write themselves prescriptions. As I mentioned, limiting access to substances only treats part of the problem, but I agree that this proposed rule change is a useful addition to the Virginia Code and will hopefully keep Virginians a bit more safe from opioid abuse. 

There is an opioid crisis in the United States and I support regulatory actions changing how providers prescribe medications to increase safety and decrease medication fraud. However, after reviewing the adopted legislation and researching the benefits and limitations of this regulatory action, I am curious how it will impact the providers that will receive a waiver? After one year (and a provider's circumstances have not changed), will providers who received waivers have extensions? Is there state funding to support the transition or is this an unfunded mandate? If extensions for waivers are not provided, this can limit opioid prescriptions and decrease the risk for greater access to opioids altogether. In Virginia and at the local level, we need to protect our residents and better manage controlled substances to limit exposure to opioids and other addictive substances.