Nevada Supreme Court weighs pharmacists' liability for narcotics distribution
In the legal profession, we have an expression: "an oral contract is worth the paper it's written on." I think of this when considering the distribution of controlled substances. My rendition is : "a prescription is worth the paper it's written on until it is filled".
Pharmacists have the legal responsibility to ensure that a prescription is written for a valid medical purpose prior to filling it. However, a case that is currently pending in the Nevada Supreme Court may help to better define the duty of pharmacists in preventing prescription drug diversion.
The case, Sanchez vs. Wal-Mart et al, asks whether drugstores must use information at their disposal to protect the public from potentially dangerous customers.
As Amy Merrick reported in her article on Sanchez, Case Spurs Pharmacies' Fears of Lawsuits Over Drug Abuse, Patricia Copening 
bought nearly 4,500 doses of prescription painkillers in one year. In June 2003, the Nevada Prescription Controlled Substance Abuse Prevention Task Force, which administers a computerized program mandated by Nevada Revised Statutes 453.1545 to track prescriptions for controlled substances, sent letters to 14 pharmacies in the Las Vegas area “warning them that Ms. Copening had purchased during the prior year 60 prescriptions, or nearly 4,500 doses, of controlled substances.” There is no record of any pharmacist so much as noting the task-force letter in Ms. Copening’s records. Instead, the pharmacies continued to allow Ms. Copening to buy large quantities of hydrocodone and Soma, a cocktail “said to produce a euphoria similar to that induced by heroin.”
On June 4, 2004, a year after the warning letters were sent to the pharmacies, Ms. Copening, under the influence of hydrocodone, ran her car into a 21-year-old delivery van driver, killing him at the scene, and hit a 33-year-old man, causing a head injury, broken right leg, and other wounds. Ms. Copening faced charges of reckless driving, driving while intoxicated, and being involved in a fatal accident. The injured and his family and the family of the deceased filed suit against Ms. Copening, the doctors responsible for most of the prescriptions, and multiple pharmacy-chain owners, including Wal-Mart, Walgreen, CVS Pharmacy and Rite-Aid. Now the Nevada Supreme Court is left to define the responsibility that the pharmacies should have taken to protect the public from the effects of prescription drug abuse.
In my opinion, this should serve as a wake-up call to pharmacies and large drugstore chains. They have the tools at their disposal to fight prescription drug diversion. If they can develop sophisticated systems to track the productivity of the pharmacists and to track inventory losses, they can also do a better job of slowing the flow of controlled substances for illicit purposes. Tracking productivity and inventory losses is good for drug stores because it helps make them more profitable. Saying no, on the other hand, costs money. Warranted refusals to fill prescriptions means "no sale." Make no mistake that these drugstores are about making money. This is one reason why holding pharmacies responsible for monetary damages is important. It is only when they think that they could be hit in the pocketbook for their negligence that they might take heed.
We at the Pill Mill Monitor will be watching this interesting case and will keep you posted.
