This story about the drug pilfering druggist is very intriguing and opens up the floor to discussion about how much of this is really going on with medical professionals.
Well done to this gentleman for managing to return to pharmacology several times and regaining his license after treatment. However, is that very wise? It seems that he is returning to society under the most difficult of circumstances. Every day he has temptation all around him and if he messes up there is quite a bit at stake – others’ lives.
Oxycontin, Dilaudid, Vicodin, Xanax and Adderall – day in and day out he is dispensing these. He knows what they taste like and what it feels like if he takes one. Every day he is reminded of the high. It’s kind of cruel to even let him go back.
Why did we send him back to be around his pills? Is there a shortage of pharmacists?
Well done to him and his treatment center if he makes it. We need an update on this story in a year.
“They had him cold. A secret camera caught the pharmacist helping himself to drugs off the shelves and downing them on the job. He was taken away in handcuffs and arrested, but on the second day of his trial, he got off with a light prison sentence, probation and regular drug testing.
It barely broke his stride, and he soon landed another job in another pharmacy. Prison? The judge let him serve his term on weekends. Drug testing?
“I put my knowledge of pharmacology to good use,” Jared Combs says. “A lot of drugs I selected were ones that have short half-lives. I would take pills before going to jail, but then they didn’t last through the weekend, so I started smuggling the drugs into jail with me.”
It would take another couple years of swallowing, snorting and injecting prescription drugs on and off the job, and another group of cops showing up with handcuffs before Combs, now 37 years old, would acknowledge his addiction, check into a monthlong treatment program followed by a stay in a halfway house and get to the point where he will celebrate nine years of sobriety this Wednesday.
He said he never harmed or killed a customer by giving out incorrect dosages or drugs while under their influence himself. As his addiction worsened, he’s certain he was headed to an overdose or other fatal accident had he not gotten help in time.”
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bal-md.marbella04oct04,0,2706724.story
