Families push for pain clinic crackdown

TAMPA - While new state laws affecting pain clinics take effect October 1st, Hillsborough, Pinellas and the City of Tampa are pushing to plug the gap with even tougher laws.

This week, the Hillsborough County Commission will consider an emergency ordinance to tighten regulations on pain clinics.

Florida's lax regulation of the clinics has people driving in from all over the country, hunting for cheap pain pills they can turn for profit back home.

In the meantime, families of addicts are begging for help.

Amanda Fisher turns 20 next month, but she'll probably be celebrating it in jail. Her father, Scott Fisher, says she is a victim of Florida's booming illegal trade in pain pills.

He says it all started with a DUI stop when she ate the pills, overdosed, and nearly died.

"I was looking at my daughter laying in the bed half dead," Fisher described. "Just thinking what can I do, how did we get here, how did we get here?"

Fisher says he blames himself, as well as the people she hung out with, who took her along writing bad checks to pay for more pills. Now with charges against her on both sides of the bay, Scott Fisher has stopped bailing his daughter out.

He says leaving his daughter in county jail is the hardest thing he has ever done.

"I'd trade places with her right now. She's sorry, she understands, but she also said if I got out right now, I'd probably go right back to it!" Fisher said.

He hopes his daughter is turning a corner.

"I thought it was a major breakthrough. I thought honesty was finally coming out. I think you got to be aware of the problem before you can fix it, you got to admit to it," he said.

Fisher is backing efforts to start regulating the pain clinics. The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office wants them licensed and inspected; otherwise, they say it's going to be too late for all the Amandas out there.

But Scott Fisher says his daughter, and others like her, need more than new laws.

"She needs help, not fines, not community service, she needs help. She needs a doctor's attention," Fisher said.

But that won't come easily -- Fisher says he doesn't have health insurance.

"We're going to hope that we can go to DACCO ," he said, referring to the non-profit drug treatment agency.

Fisher says DACCO's drug treatment program boasts a 78 percent success rate -- now, he has to get his daughter a bed there. Meanwhile, Fisher says he will be on hand Wednesday morning when Hillsborough Commissioners take up the emergency ordinance aimed at controlling the pain clinics.