he American Society for Automation in Pharmacy developed and publishes the implementation guide for the standard that every state Prescription Drug Monitory Program in the country requires that pharmacies use to report the controlled substances dispensed as well as other drugs of interest to these programs. As such the American Society for Automation in Pharmacy, through its reporting standard, is helping reduce the abuse and diversion of opioids and other addictive drugs. The standard was developed in 1995 and enhanced over the years to include new data elements that would increase the completeness of the information reported to Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs. The standard also includes a standardized way for the monitoring programs to transmit errors in the files submitted that have to be corrected and resubmitted as wells as a way for pharmacies to report that no controlled substances were dispensed during the reporting time period