This is a story of success. Or maybe it's a cautionary tale.

The difference, I suppose, is whether you are haunted by the lives ruined and lost, or you are focused on the path going forward. Either way, you need to understand the history and the players.

You could begin in 2002 when then-Gov. Jeb Bush quietly sobbed while discussing his daughter's addiction in the middle of a speech advocating for a prescription-monitoring system.

You could look to the Oxy Express, which is what they called Interstate 95 in 2010 when the Drug Enforcement Administration declared 90 of the nation's top 100 oxycodone-prescribing doctors were in Florida.

You could shake your head about the day in 2011 when Gov. Rick Scott tried to kill the prescription database because he said it wasn't working, even though it was months away from even launching.

Finally, you should know officials announced this week the number of health care providers using the database has doubled in the past year after the Legislature made it mandatory instead of voluntary.

"It was time. It needed to be mandatory because it works,'' said Pasco Tax Collector Mike Fasano, who was one of the architects of the original program when he was in the Senate and it was approved in 2009.

"The big question is how much time was lost? How many lives could have been saved if we had gotten it passed when Gov. Bush wanted it in 2002?''

The opioid problem is far from solved. Drug deaths may finally be trending downward but still exist in frightening numbers. And as the supply to opioids — pills, heroin and fentanyl — is cut off, there has been a subsequent rise in meth use and crack cocaine in some areas.

It's also important to point out the prescription monitoring database has not been a magic bullet. The shutting down of pills mills, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi's office, got rid of the bad actors in the medical profession. The database supplemented that by cutting down on patients who would bounce from one unsuspecting doctor to another, picking up new prescriptions at every stop.

And though the new law took place less than three months ago, there is already some grumbling from medical professionals about the number of drugs that need to be logged, and the time it takes each day.

But weigh all that against the backdrop of seven overdose deaths from opioids every day in Florida.

"There are a lot of different barriers that have been put up that, cumulatively, are having an impact,'' said Linda McKinnon, the chief executive officer of the Central Florida Behavioral Health Network. "Some of it makes it more difficult for patients who have legitimate needs … but it's keeping physicians educated about their patients, and that's a good thing.''

In retrospect, it's stupefying to think of how many people in, and out of, Tallahassee fought against the idea of keeping doctors informed of their patient's pharmaceutical history.

Fasano first introduced a prescription monitoring bill in 2002. It died. And again in 2003. And pretty much every subsequent year until a watered-down program — voluntary and with no state funds attached — was passed and signed by Charlie Crist in 2009.

Fasano had to do battle with his colleagues, including former House Speaker Marco Rubio, the American Civil Liberties Union, which called it government interference, pharmaceutical companies and their campaign donations, and the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons.

The first several years after the monitoring system was approved, Fasano had to cobble together money from Bondi's office and state police chiefs and sheriffs who contributed funds seized in drug busts just to keep the database alive because Scott didn't want it in the state budget.

"The issue was exploding in Florida, and they kept fighting it,'' Fasano said. "We had parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles coming to us in desperation, begging for help. They would bring bags of pills they said their child or grandchild was able to get. And now the child was dead, and the bag of pills is what they left behind.''

It's been 16 years since Jeb Bush first envisioned this. It's been nine years since Fasano got lawmakers to agree to it. And this summer it finally became mandatory for health professionals in Florida.

In the meantime, more than 20,000 Floridians have died of overdoses.

A drug database would not have saved all of them, or even a lot of them. But surely it would have saved some of them.

And I guess that's what it took to finally make this story a success.