By now, most of us have heard in the news about the Father’s Day incident on Long Island about the pharmacy murders, leaving two pharmacy employees victims of armed robbery as a result of a gunman attempting to obtain controlled substances for his wife.

Prior to that, there was a prominent news story about an Oklahoma pharmacist who had killed a man attempting to rob his pharmacy, only to be convicted of misconduct.

At that time there was yet another story about the Michigan pharmacist who fought back against some thieves during a middle of the night robbery, and who similarly killed them in an attempt to protect the pharmacy. As a result, the pharmacist was terminated.

In reaction to these events, New York Senator Chuck Schumer has introduced a plan requiring prescribers additional training before having the ability to prescribe narcotics like Vicodin and Percocet, also setting increased penalties for pharmacy robbers.

The White House also recently released a 10 page plan to prevent prescription drug abuse, calling for agencies such as the FDA’s Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) department to initiate extended opioids.

On April 19 the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) made a statement claiming prescription drug abuse is the “fastest growing drug problem” in the nation, citing data from the Substance Abue and Mental Health Services Administration, University of Michigan and the CDC. Included in this data was a statistic that nearly one-third of people aged 12 years and older who had first used drugs in 2009 have now began to abuse drugs with non-medical use. Prescription pain killers are second only to marijuana according to the data.

The plan focuses on 4 areas to control prescription drug abuse:

• education of parents, youth, patients, and health care providers
• Tracking and and monitoring prescription drug problems.
• Proper medication disposal with programs like DEA’s National Prescription Drug Take-Back event on Apr 30
• Enforcement against doctor shopping and pill mills.

Pharmacies were mentioned periodically throughout the plan.

So the question is, how effective will plans like these be for curbing the prescription drug abuse and pharmacy robbery issues floating around in the news so much these days? Cast your opinion below in the comment form.

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