Few things are more disconcerting to Grand Strand visitors with medical conditions than to learn that S.C. pharmacists can't fill prescriptions issued by doctors in their home states. If you run short of blood-pressure, arthritis or cholesterol pills while on vacation here, you have to find an S.C. doctor willing to write you a new prescription. And if the shortage hits during a weekend, when doctors' offices are closed, you may have to spend hundreds of dollars in the emergency room to get your prescription filled - more if the doctors order lab tests.

Understanding that this law is unnecessarily harsh, Rep. Alan Clemmons, R-Myrtle Beach, has proposed a sensible bill that would spare visitors such anguish and expense - and possibly prevent them for considering a non-S.C. venue for their next vacations. The measure would allow nonresidents to have their doctor at home fax his prescription to a pharmacy; doctors would then cancel the home-state prescriptions.

The needed prescription then could be filled. The prescription would be returned to visitors' home pharmacies when their visits end.

This simple palliative would vastly increase our tourism-dependent state's customer friendliness without weakening prescription security. S.C. legislators should put Clemmons' bill on the fast track to passage, so visitors can reap its benefits during the 2004 season.

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