AUGUSTA, Maine — A task force looking for solutions to Maine’s prescription drug abuse crisis meets again this week, as the rate of drug store robberies in the state explodes.
The 17-member panel, which includes medical and law enforcement representatives, meets Tuesday in Augusta. The Prescription Drug Abuse Task Force gathers as the number of robberies at pharmacies so far this year is roughly the total for all of last year.
Tuesday’s meeting also comes as the number of drug deaths —mostly involving overdoses of opiates — exceeds the number of highway deaths in Maine.
Hoping to get ideas on how to deal with the wave of drug store robberies, Public Safety Commissioner John Morris has called a meeting of representatives of all Maine’s drug store chains on July 9.
Why not have a “sugar pill” with say severe laxative action that looks like the narcotics to hand out?
Now you’re thinking! Thanks for the morning chuckle – but, definitely not bad idea…
Are you crazy?!? We need to come up with something complex…spend millions to figure it out, surround it with red tape, and make it impossible to enforce.
Something like a secured bank vault area within a pharmacy where all narcotics are filled and stored might be an option. I’ve always wondered why the medications are neatly lined on the shelves in full view of the public.
caseybean…Love your idea. My mother suggested mini M&Ms years back but I like your idea of laxatives. lol
For the same reason banks keep money in drawers by the tellers rather than in the vault.
How does that relate? The money isn’t on display and large amounts, which I was equating to narcotics, are kept in a safe location.
Ease of access for the pharmacist and techs. A place like wal-mart does hundreds of prescriptions a day. If they had to access a vault for every script it would take 2x as long.
This is one of the reasons I try to emphasize on my radio show and anywhere I speak that this is not just someone else’s problem. Everyone in every community needs to be aware of this epidemic.
Do you folks REALLY want to put an end to the pharmacy robberies as well as much of the other drug related crime? Then go to the L.E.A.P. website and learn how from the men and women on the front lines of the War on Drugs.
Thank god, meetings and a panel. Now things will surely get done quickly!
If Doctors didn’t prescribe it so often the pharmacy wouldn’t need to keep so much of it on hand.
Yes, those darned patients being in pain and wanting it to stop. It’s a bloody nuisance.
they don’t prescribe them just to “old people” – they prescribe them to just about everybody.
I didn’t mean it in terms of the patients being elderly – “darned old X” is just a figure of speech. Here, I’ll fix it.
On the plus side, someone taking a fatal drug overdose is probably less likely to take some unsuspecting passer-by with him than someone having a fatal car crash. Unless they’re doing it while driving, I suppose, but isn’t (say) the bathroom a more customary place for that sort of thing than the car?
If the powers above really wanted to fix the problem of pharmacies being robbed it is an easy task. The bottom line is the bottom line, they have to find a way for someone to pay for it while being reimbursed by the government. Simple.
The war on drugs has made us less secure over the 40 years it has been waged on the American people.
Prohibition has caused more problems than the drugs. End the war, end the madness. When will they learn.
Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome is insanity.