Pharmacies Besieged by Addicted Thieves

[Dave]

Pharmacies Besieged by Addicted Thieves



By ABBY GOODNOUGH
Published: February 6, 2011


BINGHAM, Me. — The orange signs posted throughout Chet Hibbard’s pharmacy here relay a blunt warning: We Do Not Stock OxyContin.
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Matt McInnis for The New York Times

“Outside hiring an armed guard to be in here 24/7, I don’t know what else to do.” CHET HIBBARD, a Maine pharmacist who has stopped selling OxyContin.

Mr. Hibbard stopped dispensing the highly addictive painkiller last July, after two robbers in ski goggles demanded it at knifepoint one afternoon as shocked customers looked on. It was one in a rash of armed robberies at Maine drugstores last year, a sharp increase that has rattled pharmacists and put the police on high alert.

“I want people to know before they even get in the door that we don’t have it,” Mr. Hibbard said of OxyContin, which the authorities say is the most common target of pharmacy robberies here. “Outside hiring an armed guard to be in here 24/7, I don’t know what else to do.”

Maine’s problem is especially stark, but it is hardly the only state dealing with pharmacy robberies, one of the more jarring effects of the prescription drug abuse epidemic that has left drugstores borrowing heist-prevention tactics from the more traditional targets, banks. In at least one case, a tiny tracking device affixed to a bottle let the police easily track a thief after a robbery.

More than 1,800 pharmacy robberies have taken place nationally over the last three years, typically conducted by young men seeking opioid painkillers and other drugs to sell or feed their own addictions. The most common targets are oxycodone (the main ingredient in OxyContin), hydrocodone (the main ingredient in Vicodin) and Xanax.

The robbers are brazen and desperate. In Rockland, Me., one wielded a machete as he leapt over a pharmacy counter to snatch the painkiller oxycodone, gulping some before he fled. In Satellite Beach, Fla., a robber threatened a pharmacist with a cordless drill last week, and in North Highlands, Calif., a holdup last summer led to a shootout that left a pharmacy worker dead.

CONTINUED AT:

www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/us/07pharmacies.html

[keith]

Pharmacies may have to be redesigned with specially designed secure areas for dispensing controlled drugs.

After my daughter's surgery she was given a prescription for pain killers. Like any young mother, her normal fashion accessory is a diaper bag. She tossed the pill bottle in an outer pocket of the bag when she went out. It was only when my wife pointed out the street value of the bottle that she put it in a more secure location.

[Dave]

I saw a show on TV a couple of months ago about medical practices writing prescriptions for pain killers to patients who didn't plan to use them, but instead stepped outside to immediately sell the Rx for cash. The buyer then had it filled and sold the drugs on the street. Everyone one knew what was happening, including Medicaid who was paying for all of this. There was no MD present in the medical practice, just a PA who wrote prescriptions.

[keith]

I thought PAs were supposed to prescribe under a doctors physician. Perhaps the rules have changed. I know that was the case in the past in my doctors office.

I did notice that on the last prescription the PA wrote there was no doctor listed on the label. The only reason I noticed was that there was an error made & I looked carefully at the label to see who made the error.

[Dave]

You are right that a PA works under direction of a physician, and in fact there was a doc associated with the clinics visited by the reporter/producer. But he was associated in name only. We have a friend who is a PA and she has essentially a private practice (she does psych meds) and has a doctor covering her, at least on paper. The doc does not wind up on the rx bottle, according to my wife.