Roseville police crack down on prescription drug scams

ROSEVILLE, Mich. (WJBK) - Opioid abuse has reached epidemic status but in Roseville, police say they started noticing a disturbing trend long ago.

"They were abusing their medications, selling them and then they wanted a police report to get them refilled or replaced," said Roseville Police Chief James Berlin.

It started happening so often they put up a sign in the police station lobby.
 
"Week in and week out, they would say oh my medicine got stolen," Berlin said. "Once you may be a victim, two or three times there is something going on here."

So they decided just not to take the reports as one way to combat the problem.

"I think it does help at least a little bit," Berlin said. "And we will do anything we can to curb the growth that we are facing."

Pharmacies always have to stay ahead of trends like this.

"From a pharmacy standpoint there are databases for us to check to make sure no duplicate therapies going on," said Jamal Zawaideh, ZMC Pharmacy. "From patient to patient or pharmacy to pharmacy."

Pharmacists say another issue they deal with is the ease in which prescriptions are handed out. The patient needs to complain that something hurts and then they have a prescription for pain killers.

"It's not to say the scripts are fake or phony it's just that there is an overprescribing of it and that is what has got us to this point," Zawaideh said.