Take drug thefts seriously

Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2008 | 2:05 a.m.

You have to question just how much control is being exercised over prescription drugs when pharmacy technicians can leave after their shifts with handfuls or even hundreds of pills secreted in their clothes.

Las Vegas Sun reporter Marshall Allen wrote Monday that state Pharmacy Board records reveal that a least a dozen technicians were disciplined for theft in 2006 and 2007. And board officials told him that much more drug theft goes uncaught.

Records show that one woman who worked at a local pharmacy confessed to stealing more than 300 bottles of various drugs over a year’s time — for a total of almost 60,000 pills.

These drugs are controlled for a reason. People who abuse them can end up dead, addicted or with their bodily organs terribly harmed. Abuse of prescription drugs can also lead to traffic accidents and other incidences that leave innocent people injured or dead.

Unlike pharmacists, technicians cannot by law counsel customers who ask questions about their medications. They can and do, however, work the registers, assist customers and routinely handle the drugstore’s inventory.

Their duties give them access to drugs that are highly prized by street dealers, and that can be prized as well by their friends, family members and themselves.

Given the street value of prescription drugs and the dangers they present to individuals and the general public, drugstores need to tighten their inventory-control. Most pharmacy technicians are honest, but the hazards presented by the few who are not should impel drugstores to improve the monitoring of their controlled drugs and the people who handle them.

Additionally, legal consequences for stealing prescription drugs should be more severe. The woman who stole the 300 bottles was sentenced to probation, even though she endangered lives through her actions. Allen reported that most of the cases involving thieving technicians are handled by the Pharmacy Board and are not criminally prosecuted.

Any employee of a drugstore caught stealing controlled pills should face criminal charges.