Maine Crafts Law to Limit Opioid Dosages

While New York State combats opioid abuse through electronic-only prescribing, the governor of Maine introduced a bill to his state's lawmakers to limit the dosage that physicians can prescribe. At publication time, the bill was still working its way through the legislature, with apparent support and some amendments, according to The Portland Press-Herald.1

The bill, which aims to curb the flow of prescription opioids that are contributing to the state's heroin epidemic, will set a dosage cap of 100 morphine milligram equivalents; limit prescriptions to 30 days for chronic pain and seven days for acute pain; require use of the state's prescription monitoring program; and mandate training for physicians before they prescribe opioids.

One of the changes a Maine Senate committee made to Gov. Paul LePage's original bill was to permit a tapering period for patients with existing opioid prescriptions. For those patients, physicians could prescribe as much as 300 morphine milligram equivalents. Physicians would be expected to taper their patients to 100 morphine milligram equivalents by July 2017.

The committee also endorsed exceptions made earlier in the legislative process to the dosing rules for certain patients with a lower risk of opioid abuse and a higher burden of pain that is appropriately treated with opioids, such as those with cancer, in hospice or palliative care, in the hospital, or with other conditions identified by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.

Gordon Smith, JD, executive vice president of the Maine Medical Association, an advocacy group for physicians, told the Portland Press Herald that the bill is a "unique solution for a unique problem."

"These will still be among the most stringent limits in the country," Smith told the newspaper.

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