Why might doctors and pharmacists face drug charges?

Prescription drug crime is big business. If you are a doctor or pharmacist, you have the right to access and distribute pharmaceuticals. Yet, by doing your job, you could unwittingly get caught up in a police investigation and face serious charges that put your professional license and career on the line as well as your freedom and reputation.

Drug traffickers may use you without your knowledge, yet you will probably never meet them. More likely, they will send other people to get the drugs from you.

How do drug traffickers take advantage of doctors?

Someone steals or fakes a copy of your prescription pad, then writes false prescriptions for drugs such as opioids which they then sell. Alternatively, the trafficker sends you a set of patients, who con you into prescribing them things they do not need, or higher quantities than they require. Some people can be very convincing when playing the role of a patient in need of pain relief.

How do drug traffickers take advantage of pharmacists?

While doctors can write a prescription, it is the pharmacist who gives out the drugs. So the people with false prescriptions take them to you, and if they succeed, may return on several occasions or send others involved in prescriptions to your store. When the police trace the drugs, they see they came from your store and assume you must be part of the criminal gang.

While you might have written or issued a prescription for drugs that ended up in the wrong hands, that does not make you a knowing accomplice. As hard as you try to verify people asking for prescription medicines, some will slip through your checks. Getting help to clear your name will be crucial.