Ind. opioid crackdown leads to pharmacy robbery hike
Dealers, users quickly adapt to evade new obstacles
INDIANAPOLIS — As the nation’s opioid epidemic intensified, Indiana cracked down on over-prescribing doctors and “pill mills” catering to people with addictions. The state also took aim at doctorshopping — the practice of visiting multiple physicians to score more painkillers.
The measures had an impact, but not what officials hoped for.
While making opioid prescriptions harder to get, the crackdown also helped spur a twofold increase in robberies of pharmacies that exacerbated the state’s standing as No. 1 in the nation for those crimes. Between 2009 and 2016, Indiana had 651 pharmacy robberies — the most in the U.S. and more than the 597 recorded by No. 2 California, which has six times the population, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration records show.
The frequent holdups reflect a grim reality: With each regulation or law enforcement tactic, the opioid crisis quickly shape-shifts to evade new obstacles. Dealers and those struggling with addictions adapt, and the epidemic continues with little interruption.
“They’re always looking for wherever they can get their foothold. And once they do, they’re going to take advantage,” said Tom Prevoznik, a deputy chief of pharmaceutical investigations with the DEA in Arlington, Va.
Pharmacies and law enforcement agencies in Indianapolis, where most of the robberies have occurred, are fighting back. Pharmacy chains have installed time-release safes that won’t open for several minutes, forcing robbers to risk arrest by waiting. Signs so far are positive. Robberies in Indianapolis numbered only eight through early June, compared with 55 for all of 2016.
But some criminals responded to those efforts by traveling from Indianapolis to small suburban towns to rob pharmacies, including one in January in Elwood, about 40 miles from Indianapolis, where two robbers herded frantic employees into a bathroom after threatening them with a handgun.
Indiana’s economic makeup has made it a likely breeding ground for opioid addiction for years.
The 2008 financial crisis hit the state’s manufacturing economy hard, causing waves of layoffs. And physically demanding jobs in heavy industry have long left workers prone to injuries that could lead to prescriptions for painkillers.
“They get a legit medical prescription — and then all of a sudden it gets out of control,” said Jason Hockenberry, an Emory University professor of health policy. He said the state already had outsized opioid woes, related in part to its location along Interstates 65 and 70 — two major corridors for illicit drugs.
Opioid addiction was behind the state’s worst HIV outbreak, in 2015, an epidemic that infected more than 200 people in a rural county north of Louisville, Kentucky.