A Surge In Opioid Legislation Expected Nationwide

A few days after Pennsylvania’s opioid prescription law limiting emergency room prescriptions to seven days with no refills went into effect on Jan. 1, lawmakers in neighboring New Jersey began introducing their own form of prescriber limits — five days for new prescriptions, according to a matching set of bills set before the state’s Senate and Assembly. Meanwhile, lawmakers in Maryland and Utah are proposing similar legislation with a seven-day limit. In Georgia, one proposed law would make it a crime for a doctor to ignore information on whether a patient was getting too many opioid prescriptions.