Painkillers are often prescribed after some sort of tragedy in a person’s life. Often times they are prescribed after a serious accident that leaves a person with disabling pain or after a surgery to remove cancerous tissue or a workplace accident causes excruciating pain for a once simple maneuver.
As if the pain that caused the prescription drug was not serious enough, the drugs themselves have seriously addictive side effects. Addiction is extremely powerful and once the limited prescription ends, use of the medication can result in criminal drug charges even though the user still desperately needs the pills to relieve their suffering.
According to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, the demand for prescription drugs has caused a correlation with the increase of pharmacy robberies. Approximately 1.3 million pills such as OxyCotin, Roxicodone, Vicodin and Norco were stolen in 2010, a number that rose from 706,000 only four years before in 2006.
The story of one such “robber” struck the hears of investigators after they learned that the Army private who worked as an intelligence analyst returned from service only to lose his job as a warehouse worker. With money is short supply, the veteran robbed a local pharmacy to obtain medication for his wife who had surgery on her mouth a little over one year ago.
The powerful need to ease suffering with the addictive pills can cause a person to go to extraordinary lengths just to ease the pain, and should they find themselves accused of a crime, their rights need to be protected.
Source: The Associated Press, “AP Enterprise: Pharmacy robberies sweeping US,” Chris Hawley, 26 June 2011