Pharmacies Cope with Growing Trend of Pharmaceutical Theft

Victor Baca, owner of Village Pharmacy in Portales, New Mexico, is aware of the rising risk businesses like his face from criminals who steal drugs to resell them, and that is why he and his staff are preparing for the worst.

“We’ve had training for our employees as to what to do in case of a robbery, hold-up or a threat while we are at work,” Baca told the Portales News-Tribune, “then after hours we have an alarm system.”

Pharmacy owners like Baca have had to deal with the chance that their establishment may be hit by a pharmaceutical theft.

While there are no hard statistics about pharmaceutical thefts across the country because the federal government does not keep them and record-keeping practices from state to state, both government, pharmaceutical and law enforcement officials are near unanimous in their opinion that the problem is on the rise, according to the Associated Press.

With the street price of highly valued pharmaceuticals like the painkiller Oxycontin at nearly $60 a pill, it is not shocking that pharmacies are increasingly being targeted by thieves.

“It’s not surprising that pharmacies have become the object of crime, given the popularity of prescription drugs,” Barbara Carreno, a Drug Enforcement Administration spokeswoman, told the news source. “Communities must take this threat as seriously as the threat posed by street drugs like heroin and cocaine.”

Where statistics for the theft of pharmaceuticals do exist they paint an undeniable picture of a growing trend. During 2007 there was only one armed robbery of a pharmacy in Oklahoma, but that number increased to 12 the following year.

The theft of pharmaceuticals poses a serious threat to consumers. Often times criminals cut the drug with potentially dangerous substances before reinserting them into the legitimate supply chain, at best making them ineffective, at worst making them deadly. Even if the thieves do not tamper with the drugs they will likely not store or handle them properly, making them potentially dangerous.

Baca, the owner of the New Mexican pharmacy, isn’t taking any chances. In addition to training for emergency situations, Baca has implemented stringent controls to ensure that no drugs are stolen by employees, and making sure the narcotic drugs sold are triple-counted: once by a machine, once by a technician and then once by another pharmacy employee.