Bad Medicine: On Painkillers, Pharmacies and the Law
It’s a provocative question currently pending before the Nevada Supreme Court. The case is part of a broader movement under way to place more responsibility for patients’ prescription-drug use on pharmacies. Click here for Amy Merrick’s page-one story in the WSJ.
The facts of the Nevada case are undeniably tragic. On the afternoon of June 4, 2004, a woman named Patricia Copening climbed into a gray Dodge Durango, veered onto a Nevada highway and plowed into a delivery-van driver who had pulled over to repair a flat tire on the highway’s shoulder, killing him at the scene. She also hit another man, causing a head injury, a broken right leg and other wounds. Copening wasn’t injured.
A lawsuit filed by the victims and their families against Wal-Mart, who dispensed a painkiller prescription to Copening, asks whether drugstores must use information at their disposal to protect the public from potentially dangerous customers. In this case, state officials had sent letters to 14 pharmacies in the Las Vegas area warning that Copening could be abusing drugs.
As a result, consumers, government officials and pharmacies themselves are increasingly asking what a
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