Aristide Economopoulos/The Star-LedgerShannon Fogarty sits in the cafeteria of Integrity House in Newark. She abused cough syrup and and pain pills that led her to heroin.

Prescription drug addiction has left a trail of destruction in families and communities that runs wide and deep.

People who never dreamed it could happen to them have seen their lives destroyed. Three told their stories to The Star-Ledger’s Christopher Baxter for a front-page story Sunday: a teacher, a former high school athlete and a young woman just out of school. All led normal lives until a legitimate need for prescription painkillers opened the door to abuse and addiction. How can we turn the tide of this epidemic?

State Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa has come up with a plan that monitors distribution of prescription drugs containing controlled substances, such as OxyContin, Percocet and Valium. We’ve all heard stories of the addict who games the system by going to different doctors for multiple scrips, then hits numerous pharmacies. Some have even stolen or forged prescription pads. And it’s not just the addicts themselves whom we need to watch, but the leeches who want to make a buck off their illness.

Under this monitoring plan, the state would be alerted when signs of such abusive practices emerge, triggering a possible investigation. Medical professionals who dispense drugs would be expected to check a database identifying abusers and peddlers of illegally obtained meds. Doctors who improperly prescribe drugs or pharmacists who improperly distribute them could face fines, prison and loss of license. The plan would make prescription pads harder to forge and easier to track when stolen. Public education is key, including information about disposing of old pills.

It makes sense to galvanize those who work the pipeline of prescription drugs, from doctor to pharmacy. More people die every year from overdosing on prescription painkillers — 15,000 nationally — than die from heroin and cocaine combined.

But care must be taken to ensure we don’t criminalize doctors who are doing their job. “You want to make sure the patient gets what he needs,” said Anthony Slonim, executive vice president and chief medical officer for Saint Barnabas Health Care System in West Orange. Patients with advanced cancers, for example, require higher doses of pain relief. “So much data is available, we have to make sure the data is telling the full story,” Slonim said.

Agreed. The state should make sure investigators have all the information necessary to prevent addicts from extracting drugs illegally and to protect the patients who really need them.