Let’s assume non narcotics for the moment, and that neither person is a medical professional.
Alice and Betty both have valid, current prescriptions for Albuterol inhalers. Same medication, same dose, same route, etc. They’ve compared them carefully, and they’re absolutely identical.
Alice’s inhaler runs out and she needs a new one, but doesn’t get paid for two weeks. Can Betty legally give Alice one of her inhalers?
Who is going to find out ? And to whom are they going to snitch ?
I don’t have any answers here, but one question that might matter is if she has a valid script for a replacement.
That’s not relevant to the question. The OP asked if it is legal.
IANAL but I’ll bet that the law simply says that prescription medications are not to be used by anyone other than the named person. I very much doubt that an exception would have been carved out in the law for situations where two people have identical prescriptions.
Good point. Another way to phrase the question if this caveat is added onto it is whether or not a person with a valid prescription from a licensed physician who gets this prescription filled by an unlicensed pharmacist, knowing that the pharmacist is unlicensed, has committed any offense, as long as the drugs obtained are within the scope of the prescription in terms of quantity and substance. After all, you could say that borrowing Aunt Suzie’s Albuterol inhaler after showing her your prescription is more or less the same thing as filling your prescription out of one of those “mail order Canadian pharmacies” of dubious licensure and with drugs of dubious provenance.
Illegal for sure. Dispensing drugs without paperwork is severely forbidden.
Here’s Kansas’ statute
http://kansasstatutes.lesterama.org/Chapter_21/Article_36a/#21-36a05
I imagine all the states and Feds are pretty similar. Unless you are a licensed pharmacist, it is illegal to distribute controlled substances.
What do they have to say about not controlled substances?
I haven’t looked up the law, and this involves the mail…
In our disease community, one family mailed a prescription drug to another family and got a lovely call from a postal inspector highlighting the illegality of it. The sender raised a defense that the recipient had the same prescription. The postal guy said it doesn’t matter. It was illegal to distribute without proper licensing (e.g., pharmacist). FWIW.
Here’s an interesting idea. Could you hire a licensed pharmacist as an intermediary to pick up drugs from Bill and “deliver”/dispense the drugs to his Aunt Suzie after verifying that Suzie’s prescription is for the same thing? I understand that licensed gun stores are sometimes used as intermediaries to transfer guns that are being privately sold. E.g. you have a 1911 you don’t want anymore, so you find a willing buyer online who offers you $300 for it. So he puts the money in escrow, then you then take the gun to a local gun store, pay some sort of fee, and tell them to ship it to a gun store near the buyer. The buyer goes in to the gun store near them, possibly pays a fee themselves, goes through a background check performed by the store, and if they pass, picks up the gun. Then you go claim the money from escrow.
Thinking some more about this…and still not having any answers myself… We’ve had a bunch of threads explaining that it’s illegal to donate unused drugs to charities. I’m not sure it would be any more legal just because you know the person.
Substances that are not controlled would be available without a prescription.
Nope, not necessarily. While all medications available over-the-counter without a prescription are not considered controlled (i.e. strictly regulated by the government, and this includes both illegal and legal medications), many “not-controlled” medications still require a prescription. (BTW I’m talking in the U.S. Countries obviously differ.)
Controlled substances are divided into “schedules.” A Schedule I controlled substance is one that the DEA considers without any accepted medical use and a high probability of abuse. LSD, heroin, marijuana, and ecstasy are examples.
Schedule II controlled substances have medical uses but are still considered high-risk of abuse/addiction. Certain types of narcotics (morphine, meperedine, oxycodone, etc.) and stimulants (amphetemines of various brands) are included here.
Schedule III controlled substances have medical uses and are of moderate risk for abuse/addiction, and many are combos that include either hydrocodone or codeine.
Schedule IV controlled substances are basically like Schedule III but are considered lower risk. Here’s where you’ll find most benzos (benzodiazepine, or “downers”), commonly used for antidepressant or antianxiety purposes: diazepam (valium), clonazepam (Klonopin), lorazepam (Ativan) and my all-time favorite, alprazolam (Xanax). 
BUT a vast amount of medications that do not fall under these schedules are still prescription-only: antidepressants like Prozac and Zoloft, beta-blockers for blood pressure treatment (or anxiety) such as metoprolol, diabetes meds like metfornin, and antibiotics such as amoxicillin.
In my experience, medications that fall in the “controlled substances” schedules have always been non-refillable and require a doctor’s authorization and a new prescription. Those that don’t are usually refillable (depending on your doctor, the medication, and whatever’s being treated, obviously).
Just clearing stuff up. Sorry, nothing to do with the OP.
According to wikipedia, you are technically correct. According to common usage, I’m with choie. And it’s not clear to me without a lot more research which usage the linked statue is using. I thank you for the effort, though.
There’s a statue dedicated to prescription medicine? Modern art these days, I dunno… 
The official usage according to the DEA.
Honestly I don’t see how treis is technically correct, even if that is the best kind of correct. I think he’s the opposite of that. “Controlled” has a very specific meaning when it comes to prescription medication. (I feel really weird debating this with a nurse, but…)
Just looking at the Wikipedia article I linked, note the two bolded phrases (my bolding):
So in other words, while some (legal) controlled substances are prescription-only, not all prescription-only drugs are controlled.
Ooh here, my own state’s health department has a good series of definitions. From the New York State Department of Health:
I am not a lawyer, only a pharmacist, so I don’t know the absolute legal answer to the OP, but here is my thoughts.
First, in practicality, in the scenario presented by the OP, I don’t think anyone would care enough to raise an issue of it, especially with a normal rescue inhaler.
However, if someone REALLY wanted to raise a stink, I’m sure they would be able to find a statue to charge someone under. Since I know Georgia law best, (and know where to find it), I could see someone using O.C.G.A 26-3-8
Key word being “dispense” which is defined under O.C.G.A 26-4-5
So… if you “give” the drug to another person, the drug is even misbranded, and you are guilty of distributing a misbranded drug, or, you dispensed the drug without a license, and most likely without doing the required steps to “dispense” something, especially the strict labeling requirements.
So, I would say in Georgia, it is illegal, though there might be other loop holes in the law, and/or your state may vary.
While choie gave a good answer to this already, she left a few “key” words out. Mainly “Legend Drug”.
There are multiple federal laws when it comes to medication, and different agencies that enforce and rule on them. The two major ones are the FDA and the DEA.
The FDA is in charge of making sure medication is safe and effective. They will approve a medication to be allowed on the market, and will even classify it as one of two things; an Over the Counter medication which means that the average person can self-treat themselves with it safely, and doesn’t require the oversight of a doctor; or, they can make it a Legend Drug, which means that the public can NOT safely treat themselves with the medication, and it requires the oversight of a doctor to prescribe it.
The DEA on the other hand is in charge of controlled substances, and they certain medications in one of the five controlled drug schedules (Which choie already went over).
So, there are four possible options, controlled and legend (Morphine, Xanax, etc), controlled and OTC (Robitussin AC), non-controlled and legend (blood pressure drugs, diabetes drugs, antibiotics, etc), and non-controlled and OTC (Tylenol, Benadryl, Advil, etc).
Hope that clears some things up.
I suppose it was illegal, but once my wife and I were out of town for a few days and she had forgotten to bring along her blood pressure pills, while I had extra. They were the same prescription and I never gave it a second thought while I gave her a few. She returned them after we got home.
Yes, you’re right. I got confused by the “prescription” wording in that sentence last night and conceded ground erroneously. They forgot to give me my “Perfectly Right At All Times” pin in nursing school. I think it went out with the capping ceremony in the mid-80s. .
This is an entirely pedantic question, I assure everyone. It came up at a staff meeting as something that everyone knows is illegal, and it occurred to me that no, I don’t really know that, I’ve just always heard that. Of course, I’m not going to call the cops if I find out a person is sharing their rescue inhaler. Neither, however, will I suggest that people share meds, even with prescriptions on both sides. But me being me, I tend to want to find out if things everyone knows are in fact true.
Which brings us to the next question - again - how would they know? If I put a bunch of my pills into your pill bottle, unless they are visibly different -who would tell? What if I add 10 of my pills to your remaining 5 in the bottle? Does the inhaler have the pharma label with name stuck on the “bottle”? With an inhaler maybe they can trace batch numbers and chase down which pharmacist dispensed them.
(Is it illegal to peel off the sticker with the name?)
If you go on vacation and pour Mr. and Mrs. Seldon’s pills into the same pillbox for convenience, are they committing a crime if Hari happens to take one of the pills that came from his wife’s bottle?
Of course, if Alice does not have a refill on her prescription, technically she is not legally eligible to possess the inhaler.