How Safe is Your Medicine Cabinet?
In Hyannis, Mass., three men armed with a knife, a bat and a revolver broke into a home in 2008, bound the owner’s hands and feet with duct tape and tore through drawers and cabinets until they found her husband’s Oxycontin…
In Harpswell, Me., a masked man broke into the home of a 77-year-old woman in June, knocked her to the ground and snatched her Oxycontin pills at knifepoint…
“We’re seeing people desperately and aggressively trying to get their hands on these pills,” said Janet T. Mills, the attorney general in Maine. “Home invasions, robberies, assaults, homicides, thefts — all kinds of crimes are being linked to prescription drugs.”
Full article on how opiate painkillers are driving the nation’s latest crime wave.
WOW. This is very disconcerting.
The pill buyback program is misguided. All people have to do is flush the pills if they want to dispose of them. People keep old medications because they figured pain pills might be of some future use. I suspect that the anecdotes where people were held up and robbed were due to someone close to the family blabbing.
Devon, once all our medical information is stored electronically, the thieves will not have to rely on anyone babbling. The bad guys will just tap into the data base and discover who has a fresh supply of whatever pill they want.
I agree with Nancy. Electronic medical records will be like a telephone book for pill thieves.