🚀 go-pugleaf

This approach is almost insane. Why not just put each buyer
on a lie detector and search their homes like they are doing
to Congressman Condit? --Tom
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Town's OxyContin Buyers to Be Fingerprinted 
Pulaski Pharmacies Plan to Use Invisible-Ink System in Police-Led 
Battle Against Abuse of Painkiller 

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 11, 2001; Page B04 

Patients in the small southwest Virginia town of Pulaski will have 
to provide fingerprints at the area's six pharmacies to get 
OxyContin as part of a novel law enforcement effort to curb 
widespread abuse of the prescription painkiller.

Pulaski police are planning to meet with pharmacists next week to 
show them how to use a chemical fingerprinting system that employs
invisible ink to "sign" documents for authenticity. Patients will 
be asked to leave their fingerprint signature on prescription papers 
so police can track cases of fraud.

Police hope the technology, regularly used to prevent payroll fraud 
and for cashing checks, will stem the increasing number of fake
prescriptions for OxyContin. Police will be able to use the 
fingerprints to ferret out suspects and link them to illegal 
transactions.

The system is not used anywhere else for prescription drugs except
Louisiana, where doctors use it for several sensitive narcotics.

"Anything that will stop the flow onto the streets we'll be happy 
with," said Detective Marshall Dowdy of the Pulaski police. "This 
is a seemingly never-ending battle."

OxyContin, which comes in a time-release pill and is similar to 
morphine, has emerged as one of the most widely abused drugs 
throughout Appalachia. It has been linked to at least 43 deaths in
southwest Virginia since 1997 and has been blamed for significant 
rises in crime -- from fraud and theft to violence and murder -- 
throughout the region.

Pain patients who rely on OxyContin for relief consider it a 
miracle drug, but abusers are drawn to the pills' purity and 
availability. They crush the pills and snort them or inject them for a
euphoric, heroin-like high.

Purdue Pharma, the Stamford, Conn.-based manufacturer of OxyContin,
supports the fingerprinting as long as it is applied to all controlled
substances and is not limited to OxyContin. Company officials believe
singling out OxyContin will simply lead criminals to go to other
pharmacies or abuse other potent prescription drugs.

"Any identification technology that does not discriminate against 
patients or stigmatize them will be a valuable aid to reduce 
prescription fraud and aid law enforcement in their investigations," 
said J. David Haddox, senior medical director for health policy at 
Purdue Pharma. "There's no question in my mind that there are 
instances now where patients are being under-treated or quite 
frankly don't have access to this drug when this drug is what works 
best for them. And that's an absolute tragedy."

Pulaski officials said the fingerprinting would begin only with 
OxyContin prescriptions, but could be expanded later.

To make the print, a patient swipes an index finger across a pad, 
picking up an invisible chemical. The patient then places the same 
finger on a treated paper sticker, which almost immediately displays 
a blue, smudge-proof print. During investigations, police can scan 
the print and compare it with local and national databases, as if 
it had been taken with ink. 

Abuse of OxyContin has been creeping onto the streets of Northern 
Virginia and has popped up in urban areas across the country. 
Northern New Jersey and the Boston area have recently seen waves 
of abuse and crime related to OxyContin, while Florida has 
experienced a steady rise.

Pulaski police said they had more than 1,800 drug-related crimes 
in the first six months of the year -- almost one crime for every 
five people in the town -- most of which were connected to OxyContin.

Dowdy, who came up with the idea after seeing a similar system for
validating checks at a local grocery store, said the fingerprinting 
won't be an "end-all solution" to the problem but could make at 
least a small dent.

"It's horrible, and I don't know if it can get any worse here," 
Dowdy said. "We're at least willing to try."
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http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44111-2001Jul10?language=printer