Missouri is the last state in the nation without a prescription drug monitoring (PDMP) bill.
"It only makes sense - it's common sense, really - that Missouri take this step to try to fight addiction," Democrat Jason Kander told reporters before holding a half-hour roundtable discussion on the subject. "There's a crisis going on, and we absolutely need to do it."
Kander, Missouri's current secretary of state who's running for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Republican Roy Blunt, said Missouri officials should deal with the issue - but it will be a priority for him in Washington if he's elected to the Senate.
"There's no reason that Missourians should miss out on the opportunity to treat that crisis," Kander said. "Missouri should address this directly and, if that doesn't happen, this is something where we should continue to have a focus in Congress on this."
Natalie Newville, public information director for the group ACT Missouri, told Kander during the roundtable: "Having a federal PDMP would be fantastic, where all 50 states could talk to each other."
Joy Sweeney, head of Jefferson City's Council For Drug-Free Youth, said one problem with Missouri's not having a PDMP is, "We've got doctor-shoppers from all those surrounding eight states, coming into our state and purchasing medicine with prescriptions, but they've gotten five different prescriptions filled - and that's illegal.
"We don't have any way to track it, even to monitor it."
Sweeney said PDMP supporters aren't trying to limit freedoms or anybody's rights.
But opponents of the state legislation are concerned about it being misused.
State Sen. Rob Schaaf, R-St. Joseph, is a medical doctor and long-time PDMP opponent.
When U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was in Missouri last month, urging state leaders to create a PDMP, Schaaf posted on Facebook: "Missourians do not want their sensitive medical information on a government surveillance database!"
Kander told the News Tribune after Thursday afternoon's roundtable discussion: "It's been a common sense solution in 49 states; you can prevent people from falling into the trap of addiction. That's just a very valuable end goal, to protect people's lives."
Kander's roundtable discussion involved nine people from different agencies that deal with dependence.
Part of the problem, they said, is doctors and patients want to eliminate pain, so doctors - especially following surgery - prescribe more pain-killing medications than really are needed.
And patients can get hooked on that "no pain" feeling pretty easily.
"Bottom line - opiates feel good," a woman from Crossroads Treatment Centers told Kander. "Once you figure out that they feel good, you want more.
"They're highly addictive, and then you become what we deal with - a bunch of adolescents and adults who become doctor-hoppers," telling doctors the right symptoms to get a prescription for an opioid drug.
A PDMP program would allow officials to track efforts to fill those prescriptions and stop patients from getting too many drugs at one time.
No doctors were part of the conversation.
And, several people said, the talk about opioid dependence really needs to begin with alcohol and marijuana.
"Most of the kids we work with don't start out with opioid addiction," the Crossroads official said. "They start off smoking weed.
"But nobody wants to tackle the marijuana issue because it's so political."
Sweeney acknowledged she gets emails and letters telling her she should resign her job when she says this, but "marijuana primes the brain for opioid addiction."
And Jill Quick, whose teen-age son nearly died from a drug overdose, told Kander: "My son would never have wanted opiates until he smoked marijuana."