A "pill mill" is a doctor’s office, clinic, or health care facility that routinely conspires in the prescribing and dispensing of controlled substances outside the scope of the prevailing standards of medical practice in the community or violates the laws of the state of Florida regarding the prescribing or dispensing of controlled prescription drugs.

Florida leads the nation in diverted prescription drugs, resulting in seven Floridians dying every day and countless others throughout the nation. Our state has become the destination for distributors and abusers through the proliferation of pill mills.

While legitimate pain-management clinics do exist to serve those with chronic pain or terminal illness, other unscrupulous clinics, called pill mills, merely serve as drug traffickers. Common characteristics of pill mills include: cash-only/no insurance; no appointments; armed guards; little or no medical records; grossly inadequate physical examinations; and large prescription doses of narcotics that exceed the boundaries of acceptable medical care.

Florida’s Pill Mills are now the primary source for prescription drug diversion in the Eastern United States.

Broward County reports that 50% of their active cases in their Drug Courts are individuals who are charged with the illegal possession of prescription drugs.

There are 871 registered pain management clinics in Florida.

105 registered clinics in Broward and 96 registered clinics in Palm Beach.

Prescription drug diversion through Pill Mills is a major driver of increases in the crime and misery indexes, and exacts a significant economic cost to our state through ever increasing drug treatment costs, related medical expenses and Medicaid fraud.

When alcohol is excluded, prescription drugs accounted for 75% of all drug occurrences in Florida’s 2009 Medical Examiner’s Report.

Admissions to Florida’s publicly-funded treatment programs with a prescription medication named as the primary substance abuse problem increased 124-percent between 2004 and 2008.

The estimated number of emergency department visits linked to non-medical use of prescription pain relievers more than doubled between 2004 and 2008.