EKB News

Major Kentucky lawmakers, Representatives Harold "Hal" Rogers, Ben Chandler and Ed Whitfield, are supporting different ways to derail interstate prescription pill trafficking. Rogers favors the approach of states getting grants through the U.S. Department of Justice to setup or improve ways to monitor prescriptions through a tracking system known as KASPAR. Since 2002, the program has funneled $48 million to 47 states and territories. Whitfield and Chandler support a program called the National All Schedules Prescription Electronic Monitoring Program, or NASPER. That program would set up uniform guidelines across the country to track prescriptions while requiring states to share information. Their plan would be a national system, which some say would be too costly, and the Justice Department believes the program may be prohibitive.