Displaying items by tag: Operation Medicine Cabinet

We’re Attacking Prescription Drug Abuse on Several Fronts

They are in your home, sitting in your medicine cabinets, expired, unused and perhaps forgotten. Unfortunately, when they fall into the wrong hands, the consequences can be tragic. They are: prescription drugs.

To use medical terms, the illegal sale and trafficking in prescription drugs have reached epidemic proportions not only in the Tampa Bay area, but around the country. In an effort to target the increase in organized trafficking and sale of prescription drugs, doctor shopping and prescription fraud, Pinellas County Sheriff Jim Coats recently announced the formation of the Narcotics Strategic Diversion Unit. The alarming increase in the number of pharmaceutical overdose deaths was another factor in this expanded investigative effort.