The federal Drug Enforcement Administration is discussing a computerized prescription monitoring pilot program to reduce the abuse of narcotics like OxyContin.

        A newspaper in Jackson, Miss., reported on Thursday that the DEA had named five states for the pilot system: Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Florida and Mississippi.

        Rojene Waite, a spokeswoman for the DEA in Washington, D.C., would not confirm the states the DEA planned to target, saying that the agency was only discussing the issue.

        Ms. Waite said the talks were “extremely premature,” and that no commitments had been made.

        Local law enforcement officials have named diversion of prescriptions for OxyContin and other narcotics as Greater Cincinnati's fastest-growing drug problem.

        If begun in Ohio, a computerized monitoring system would bring the state's prescription monitoring on a par with Kentucky, which already has a computerized tracking system. The Kentucky system tracks prescriptions by doctor, pharmacy and patient.

        Officials at the Ohio Attorney General's Office and with the Ohio Board of Pharmacy said they did not know if Ohio was one of the states the DEA planned to target.

        Susan Feld, a spokeswoman with the DEA in Detroit, said the agency promoted any tactic that would decrease prescription drug abuse, but said she was not aware of any details of the pilot monitoring program.

        Ms. Waite said the program being considered by the DEA would track schedule II and III narcotics. Schedule II narcotics include all drugs that contain oxycodone, the active ingredient in the widely abused painkiller OxyContin. Schedule III narcotics are as strong as a schedule II drug but are often made illegally and are highly restricted.

        Oxycodone is a generic substance used in 40 different pain medications, including OxyContin, a painkiller that has been abused in parts of eastern Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Florida and Ohio.

        Jim Heins, a spokesman for Purdue Pharma, the Connecticut company that makes OxyContin, said the company had discussed the plans for the pilot systems with the DEA. Mr. Heins said no details about how the company would be involved had been discussed, but that Purdue would supply some funding and may support its implementation.

        Kentucky, along with 17 other states, including Indiana, uses a computerized prescription-tracking database, called KASPER, that allows law enforcement and medical personnel to monitor prescription drugs.

        Jim Paine, director of the Northern Kentucky Drug Strike Force, called Kentucky's tracking system "definitely effective.”

        He said KASPER, put in place following Attorney General Ben Chandler's investigation of prescription abuse in Kentucky, allowed officials to track people who may travel the state “doctor shopping or passing forged prescriptions. You can start putting that pattern together and show that there is a pattern of them probably obtaining prescription medications fraudulently,” Mr. Paine said.

        Maj. William Stewart of the Kentucky State Police said Kentucky's system, implemented in 1998 after the DEA determined that Kentucky was 13th in the nation in oxycodone consumption, was a “proven deterrent.”

        Maj. Stewart, who is also on Kentucky's OxyContin Task Force, said cases had been documented in which people have traveled into other states such as Virginia and West Virginia to purchase narcotics to avoid being tracked by KASPER.

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