Deceased Robber Thwarted?

Close. I was thinking Dead.Right.There.

No need to burden the court system or future victims.

Unfathomable neglegence on the part of CVS, simply unfathomable.

Having read the story and tried to listen to the news report (but it was choppy and just stopped playing at one point), it seems obvious to me that the prescription was originally filled by the hospital pharmacy, which is not at all strange. It only goes to the fact, in this story, that CVS did not have the prescription already on file.

Aside: Had the woman been able to return to the hospital for her refill there would be no story, but hospitals are not in commercial competition with pharmacies, they only fill prescriptions for current patients, released patients are not their business. Except in cases where the prescription actually could not be filled anywhere else.

Anyway, getting back to the story, the woman obviously had an actual scrip entitling her to a refill of her prescription or she would not have even been able to try to get it refilled. Was she not even allowed to show her scrip to the pharmacist before she was arrested? This is simply bizarre, because there is no way the pharmacy should have had her arrested without even seeing the scrip and then going through the process of confirming it. Bizarre? Let me amend that, insane.

I dunno if this would be a specific CVS policy or a mistake that would be more likely to happen with that company (or if it is city/state specific).

Part of our schizophrenic system where half the world seems to make it way too easy to get your hands on medications you don't need, and the other half seems bent on keeping people from getting medication they do need.

It seems nuts that some addicts can get a bazillion prescriptions with no problem and a lot of people with illnesses that cause chronic pain can't get a doctor to write a script for anything much less having to worry about finding a pharmacy that would fill it without calling the cops or an insurance company that will pay for it.

I mean I understand there are addicts and drug seekers but some doctors do seem to see anyone in pain as faking it (unless the doctor cut you open, they do seem to all agree surgery causes pain) and it can't possibly be bad enough to need medication. Even when a required symptom of the disease is pain. You'd think if you need to find out if the patient has pain before putting that label on them they wouldn't turn around and then act like the patient cannot be having pain. {/soapbox}

Not sure what the laws are in Texas, but it seems there is a push in some areas to crack down on prescription drug abuse. So I'm a bit surprised this doesn't happen more often, although I'm not sure how many areas have enough cops to get them to the pharmacies on a regular basis.

That being said, since people do sometimes get legit prescriptions for pain meds and I do think triple checking things before calling the police rather than assuming you can't make a mistake on your end seems to be a wise, and less costly, path.

Although around here it is getting over the counter decongestants that makes one feel like they are just itching to get you arrested. Really, I just wanna keep my ears clear enough I don't get another ear infection, really! How many forms of ID and extra forms do I have to fill out this time?

They have done this here too to try and break up crystal meth production.

They make you do that because it is federal law. Big huge waste of time and manpower required of the pharmacies and really doesn't curb meth addicts ability to "Smurf" (their term) from pharmacy to pharmacy to get enough Sudafed to make a batch in their bathtub. It only seems to work on the back end after someone is arrested to help the DA make a conviction stick (or more likely, a slap on the wrist and have them back "Smurfing" next week)

Doesn't stop the small time do it yourselfers, but I think I read it did cause the outsourcing of industrial production to the Mexican cartels.

Besides the job-loss that adds to the border protection costs and if anything they seem to be more violent than our home-grown drug producers. So a big win all around.{/sarcasm} *sigh*

The fact that methamphetamine use hasn't really gone down over the last few years really makes the whole system seem pointless; which means government will have to appoint a blue ribbon committee to study the effects and come out with recommendations in about 6 years.

My BIL is a phamacist for a small, private pharmacy. He deals with false prescriptions and the like all the time. Because of the major trouble he could get in for distributing drugs on invalid prescriptions, he has to take extra care on validating a lot of what he does. And he has to have a pretty good nose for someone trying to scam him. It is a fairly common practice for him to deny someone on his suspicions. Also, he and other pharmacies have a pretty good network for preventing these scams. When one of them denies a scrip, they'll let others know about it and give a description of the person so that other pharmacists can be wary of them, too. It's a CYA thing and I don't blame them a bit. That may have happened to Estee's friend she mentioned.

That being said, I can't judge if the CVS pharmacist was right or wrong in his suspicions or his actions. For one thing, I don't think enough of his side of the story was reported to give us an idea what actions were made before the arrest. I'd be curious to see how closely what was reported is what actually happened and how much information got lost or distorted in a rush to report and print. Maybe the arresting officer was a little overzealous and at that point it was out of the pharmacist's hands.

This will probably become a media s***storm with calls for firings, policy overhauls, new regulations and all kinds of overhyped unneccessary crap when quite possibly all is needed (beyond any legal compensation to the woman involved) is a review of the reasoning and discernment skills of the pharmacist and/or the arresting officer.

Fear the reaper.
"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." - Margaret Thatcher