It’s a sad commentary on our society, but one of the ways that people outside of addiction—those who do not suffer from opiate addiction themselves or love someone who does—realize that the problem is real and growing is when crime rates grow up. And how do they know that crime rates are rising? When taxes go up to pay for jails, cops, COs, courts….

Well, crime rates are on their way up and in a very specific arena, one that is letting the general public know that prescription drug addiction is a real and serious thing and one the most quickly rising substances of addiction in the country.

Criminals Target Pharmacies

It’s not just little old ladies getting their purses stolen or people having their cars broken into. The crimes are less about getting money to fund the habit and more focused on getting the drug itself. Ere go, pharmacy crime.

In Duluth, Minnesota, for example, Deputy Police Chief John Beyer said that diverted pharmaceuticals were a growing concern. They include:

“…stealing prescription sheets, adding a line to turn a prescription for 10 pills into 70 pills, robbing drug stores and stealing pills from a family’s bathroom medicine cabinet after hosting a party.”

Says Beyer: “They’re predominately stealing it for themselves because they need it, and they are desperate. Over the last couple of years we’ve had several pharmacy robberies where criminals enter and take pharmaceutical drugs and not ask for any money. They don’t need the money to buy drugs because they get the drugs in the robbery.’’

Pharm Parties

And it’s not just the pharmacies that are getting ripped off. It used to be the parents’ liquor cabinet got raid; now, it’s the family medicine cabinet. Kids are having ‘pharm parties,’ where each of them bring a bottle of something that they snagged at home or somewhere else.

One officer describes it: “A pharm party is basically a bunch of young people that get together and everyone will bring some type of pharmaceutical or prescription narcotic to the party. Someone will say, ‘My grandma takes Lortabs, I’ll bring the Lortabs.’ Someone else brings Ritalin. Someone brings Oxycontin. Basically, it creates a smorgasbord of prescription narcotics at the party.’’

Then they mix the pills not just with other pills but with weed and alcohol as well, sometimes with the mistaken belief that since it isn’t a street drug cooked up in somebody’s kitchen that it must be safe.

Prescription Drug Crime Affects the Users Most

Anyone who has ever had to pay for a long-term prescription to opiate painkillers knows: the bill is no joke. As if the cost of prescription drugs wasn’t high enough, the rise in crime in this arena means that those prices aren’t going down anytime soon… and not just on opiates.

Then there’s the issue of accessibility. All this forgery and drug-seeking behavior has made the medical establishment extremely wary of treating people for pain, and not without good reason. But it makes it that much more difficult to get the meds you need when you need them.

Any ideas on how to get this issue under control?

The problem of online pharmacies is one that plagues doctors and lawmakers and ruins the lives of opiate addicts. Online everything is still relatively new in terms of regulation and online pharmacies are no different, but federal lawmakers are taking illegal sales of prescription drugs online seriously if Congress’ approval of the Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act is any indication.

Ryan Haight was an 18 year old in California who died of a prescription painkiller overdose thanks to drugs that he purchased over the Internet. When George W. signs the bill, the sale of controlled substances online without a valid prescription will be banned.

What Does That Mean?

According to William Winsley, the executive director of the Ohio State Board of Pharmacy, it means that “you’ll see the practices changing” in online drug sales. 

The bill would require:

* A face-to-face meeting between a doctor and a patient to validate a prescription.
* That a prescription be written for a “legitimate medical purpose.”
* That pharmacies receive a specific endorsement by the Drug Enforcement Administration before selling controlled substances online. That would be in addition to a DEA registration.
* Increased penalties for illegal sales of controlled substances.

Susan Foster is the director of policy research and analysis for the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in New York City. She says, “This bill makes it clear that these online prescribing practices are not based on legitimate patient/doctor relationships. It also requires certification of online pharmacies. State laws vary, but there’s no national requirement for certification.”

Is it Enough to Stop Online Prescription Drug Sales?

According to Mathea Falco, an industry analyst with a nonprofit group called Drug Strategies, no. Online pharmacies who want to sell painkillers and other drugs that are illegal without a prescription in the United States will simply relocate to anywhere U.S. laws won’t be able to reach them. It’s easy to complicate the issue: maybe you run your web site from California, but you use a server in Canada and register the site’s ownership in Germany. You ship your drugs from India and use a bank in Jamaica. Whose laws apply? What stage of the process do you try to breakdown in order to stop Americans from being able to access illegal prescription painkillers?

According to Falco, it’s the financial institutions that should be more closely regulated and barred from allowing their payment systems to be used to for online drug sales. She says, “It’s the payment methods where we can get the most immediate response. If people can’t use MasterCard, Visa, American Express and PayPal, it will be much harder to make these sales.”

Search engine owners, too, are subject to Falco’s pointy finger. She says they need to stop selling ad space to illegal web sites.

How Would You Stem the Following of Online Prescription Drug Trafficking?

Is it really the businesses utilized by those who run the prescription drug selling websites or the people running the site? You’re Congress dealing with this situation. What do you do?

ABC 7 News in Denver recently posted a news article on Staying Healthy: Can Camera Help Drug Users Overcome Addictions? Phototherapy Sessions Appear To Help Increase Self-Esteem. I love it! The idea of substituting a camera (or a pen or a paintbrush or a guitar or a pair of ballet slippers) for a needle (or a bottle or a pill bottle or a pipe) makes me really happy.

Say what you will about substituting one addiction for another, but in some cases, it really works, especially when you’re on your own doing an outpatient Suboxone detox without the benefit of structure that comes with an inpatient drug rehab. How many bands have started with a bunch of ex-addicts with too much time on their hands? How many have found new lives as photographers, writers, installation artists, community theater stars? And why not? Anything is better than a life wasted in the fog of addiction. And now that you don’t have a habit to support, imagine how many new hobbies you can rack up?

Phototherapy as a Replacement for Opiate Addiction

And if it’s photography that’s caught your interest, you can get yourself quite a fancy little camera for the price of filling your umpteen prescriptions. Hours in a community dark room, community college basic black and white classes. Think of all the energy you’ll have to wander around town and take candid shots of life in your town, practice close-ups on the contents of your refrigerator and perfect motion shots of your dog.

One recovery center is utilizing phototherapy with pretty positive results. Their first assignment? Photograph their feelings. And discuss.

Using the Lens to See Yourself

Photographer and professor Patrick Van Dusen volunteers to lead the group each week. He says:

“The photograph allows them to detach themselves from themselves. They can talk about the photograph and pretend that it’s not them.”

Interesting. He goes on:

“You know, I once gave them an assignment to go out and photograph something good about themselves, and I had several of them come up to me and say this is the first time in my life that anyone has indicated there was anything good about me.”

According to the Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin, a recent study kept up with the development of self esteem in a group of addicts who participated in a 12-week phototherapy group and the results indicated that self-esteem increased for all but one participant. Not bad.

Anyone tried anything like this? Would you be interested?