Texas CVS sites get more security amid opioid thefts
On Sept. 2, 2020, two men walked into a Central Austin pharmacy, held employees at gunpoint and demanded opioids.
Pharmacies across the U.S. have witnessed this scenario in recent years as opioid use and opioid-related crimes have increased.
Last week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicted the U.S. will see for the first time more than 100,000 drug overdose deaths in a 12-month period. In Texas, those deaths are up 36.4 percent from the year before.
To deter pharmacy robberies for opioids, CVS has added timedelay safes in all 851 of its Texas pharmacies, including those in Target stores. Texas is the 19th state to get these safes since CVS began the program in 2015 in Indianapolis after pharmacies there were experiencing a rise in these crimes.
Walgreens also has been installing these safes in 8,000 of its stores across the United States.
In Texas, CVS began installing safes in September in Houston stores after that area saw a rise in such crimes.
The time-delay safe holds that pharmacy’s high-value controlled substances. It will open only at certain random times during the day
and only after a code is generated by a computer. The pharmacist on site cannot open the safe. Instead, when the safe randomly opens, the pharmacist takes out only the stock of controlled substances that specific store is expected to need for the day, with some extra to allow for a particularly busy day. The rest remains locked in the safe.
If the pharmacy is robbed, only the predetermined stock that the pharmacist has taken out can be stolen.
CVS has very prominent signs in its stores letting people know the pharmacy uses a time-delay safe.
The safes work as a deterrent because “thieves like to get in and out,” said Tom Moriarty, CVS Health’s chief policy officer and general counsel.
When CVS added the safes in Indianapolis, it saw a 70 percent reduction in such crimes there. It has since seen a 50 percent decline in pharmacy robberies at all the locations with the safes.
CVS also has added 252 safe disposal boxes for medications at select Texas CVS stores as well as at 69 Texas police departments.
It also offers customers packets that when mixed with water can safely destroy medications rather than contaminating the water supply or having the medication fall into someone else’s hands.