Pubdate: Wed, 03 May 2006
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2006 Chicago Tribune Company
Contact:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82
Author: John Keilman, Tribune staff reporter
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?159 (Drug Courts)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/oxycontin.htm (Oxycontin/Oxycodone)

SUDAFED? SHOW ID. VICODIN? NO NEED.

While Illinois clamped down on the sale of cold medicine, a teen says 
she repeatedly gamed the state's safeguards to buy powerful painkillers

When Victoria Squire, 17, was on the prowl for high-powered narcotic 
painkillers, she had little trouble finding a pharmacist willing to 
hand them over.

Using a fake name and a prescription forged on a computer, the Villa 
Park teen went into one drugstore after another and emerged with a 
bottle of Vicodin, usually with no questions asked. On the rare 
occasions when pharmacists detected her scam, she said, they'd tell 
her to leave rather than call police.

Squire, a recovering crack and heroin addict who said she was 
obtaining the painkillers for another person, was finally caught in 
February after as many as 30 successful forays. Sitting in a DuPage 
County Jail cell, she is still amazed at what she was able to pull off.

"I think it's really ridiculous how easy it is," she said. "The 
government, the state, they practically let you get away with it."

Though you need to show a photo ID to buy cold medicine in Illinois, 
addictive medications can be obtained with nothing more than an 
easily faked prescription slip. Pharmacists aren't legally obligated 
to verify an order is genuine, and tamper-proof prescription pads, a 
security measure used in other states, are not required here.

It's a system some say is easily gamed, contributing to a plague of 
painkiller abuse. According to federal estimates, more than 11 
million people--almost 5 percent of those ages 12 and older--used the 
drugs outside of a doctor's care during the last year.

"Filling prescriptions has become such a big business now that I 
believe at times they're overwhelmed," said Lt. Terry Lemming, 
statewide drug enforcement coordinator for the Illinois State Police. 
"Because of that, perhaps, they're not as vigilant on reviewing the 
prescription as they should be."

There are many ways, experts say, to fraudulently obtain prescription 
painkillers, from enlisting the aid of corrupt doctors, pharmacists 
or pill-pushing Web sites, to swiping prescription pads or simply 
buying the drugs on the street.

Squire began with a ploy known as "doctor shopping." She visited a 
series of emergency rooms in the western suburbs complaining of a 
toothache or migraine, and though she didn't ask for narcotics, 
knowing that would tip off the physician, she usually got them 
anyway. "I knew how to play it up so they didn't really get 
suspicious," she said.

Squire, whose own drug problems had caused her to leave her parents' 
home, said she wasn't getting the medication for herself, but for a 
housemate addicted to Vicodin.

In time, Squire said, the housemate came up with a new strategy, 
taking a legitimate prescription written by a Naperville internist 
and in a few simple steps, producing near-perfect forgeries with a 
home computer.

Squire said that to her surprise, even an underage girl dressed in 
baggy jeans and rock band T-shirts roused little suspicion.

She said that she visited pharmacies like Target, Wal-Mart, Osco and 
CVS, and that the druggist almost always filled her order. When 
employees did check with the doctor's office, they would warn Squire, 
allowing her to escape.

The Drug Enforcement Administration says 1 in 4 cases of illegally 
obtained prescription drugs involves forgery. Under Illinois law, 
however, pharmacists are required only to act in good faith when 
dispensing a controlled substance. They don't have to confirm the 
authenticity of the prescription.

A spokesman for Walgreens, where Squire said she took most of her 
prescriptions, said the chain's pharmacists use "professional 
judgement" when assessing the veracity of an order. Marlin Weekley, 
president of the Illinois Pharmacists Association, said most 
druggists are savvy about recognizing bogus prescriptions.

He added that phoning a doctor to check every narcotics order would 
be impractical. A pharmacy fills dozens of them every day and 
callbacks already can take hours, imposing a heavy burden upon 
honest, suffering patients, he said.

Even so, some states have tried to curb doctor shopping with 
electronic prescription tracking, which allows physicians, 
pharmacists and law enforcement to check a patient's history of 
obtaining controlled substances.

Illinois has been tracking prescriptions since 2000, but only 
so-called Schedule II drugs, such as the powerful painkiller 
OxyContin. Vicodin and some other narcotics, classified as Schedule 
III medications, are not reviewed. A bill pending in Springfield 
would expand monitoring to all controlled substances, but the measure 
has yet to leave the House Rules Committee.

Electronic systems can raise an alert if phony prescriptions or a 
doctor's DEA license number are in circulation. Yet while the number, 
used to confirm a physician's authority to prescribe narcotics, helps 
track down doctors who abuse the privilege, it is less useful for 
nailing forgers with a slew of aliases.

"It's like people using bad checks. You have to start somewhere with 
some real information," said Susan Hofer, spokeswoman for the 
Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.

Some states have tried a further safeguard with special prescription 
slips for controlled substances. Forms used in Kentucky, Indiana and 
elsewhere include such features as watermarks, heat-sensitive ink and 
paper that displays the word "VOID" if the form is copied, scanned or faxed.

Squire's pill-gathering spree lasted until Feb. 11, when she went to 
a Jewel-Osco in Lombard with a prescription slip bearing a bogus 
name. She had gotten Vicodin there before, she said, but this time 
sensed the pharmacist's suspicion.

She swallowed her unease and stuck around to get the drugs. But 
Lombard police said the pharmacist checked the order with the 
doctor's office, and upon learning it was a fake, called authorities.

"When I went to pick it up, they said it would be another 15 or 20 
minutes," Squire said. "I went to go find [the housemate] and two 
cops stopped me and arrested me."

Charged with forgery and unlawful possession of a prescription 
form--felonies carrying a penalty of up to five years in 
prison--Squire is now behind bars, hoping to get into a drug court 
program that would let her avoid incarceration in exchange for treatment.

Meanwhile, Squire's mother, Liz Cunneen, who lives outside St. 
Charles, has been writing to elected officials in Washington, looking 
for changes in a system she said has proven all to easy to cheat. 
Above all, she wants pharmacies to check IDs when filling 
prescriptions for controlled substances, something a growing number 
of states require.

Squire said that would have complicated but not derailed her plot. 
However, if all the defenses adopted by other states were in place, 
she said, the plan would have been too complicated to attempt.

"There might always be a way around the system, but I think it would 
diminish it 99 percent," she said. "I don't think being able to do 
what I was doing was right."