Owners hurt their own pets to get opioids from vets
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Some people, desperate for drugs, injure their own pets to get narcotics from their veterinarian, DEA officials warned doctors.
One case that got global attention: A Kentucky woman used her husband’s disposable razor blades to cut her mixed-breed retriever, Alice, on multiple occasions to get an opioid painkiller.
“I remember my initial feeling of disbelief – this can’t be real,” said Elizabethtown (Kentucky) police officer John Thomas, who investigated the case. “It was shocking.”
Scott Brinks, with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Diversion Control Division in Washington, cautioned more than 200 Kentucky doctors – including veterinarians – during a conference in Louisville this month to watch for people who try to get drugs as animals also become victims of the nation’s worst drug epidemic.
One participant asked whether it’s possible to search a database to see whether a pet owner has received narcotics from other veterinarians – a possible indicator of “doctor shopping” for more drugs. Doctors routinely run a similar check when treating people.
Jill Lee, an investigator and pharmacy consultant with Kentucky’s prescrip- tion drug monitoring program, said veterinarians can’t run the check on the pet owners because the animal is the patient, even though the pet owner has access to the prescription.
Alice’s owner, Heather Pereira of Elizabethtown, doctor-shopped at an animal clinic in Louisville, then at an animal hospital in her hometown to get Tramadol, which is used to treat moderate to moderately severe pain, Thomas said.
Pereira claimed Alice was cut after rubbing against a broken part of a gutter and after playing under a car. The investigator said Pereira finally admitted she cut her dog.
Circuit Judge Kelly Mark Easton referred to Pereira’s crime as a “selfish act to feed her out-of-control drug habit” and sentenced the pet owner to four years behind bars for obtaining a controlled substance by making false statements – a felony – and misdemeanor torture of a cat or dog, according to a report in 2015 by The News-Enterprise in Elizabethtown.
She was released in 2016 and remains on supervised probation, Thomas said.
“Certainly, we know that people who have a drug problem will do almost anything to obtain them,” said Doug Peterson, president of the Kentucky Veterinary Medical Association.