legality of changing medicine bottles?

Factual Questions
1

In a recent column in “Cycle World”, editor Peter Egan gave a few tips on traveling light. In part he says, “Put all your high-powered back pain pills - codeine, Vicodin,etc. - into a single white plastic Bufferin bottle rather than many bottles.”

Reader Tom Jones wrote in saying, in part, that this practice is called, “Felony Possession of a Controlled Substance in all 50 states and is punishable by 3 to 15 years in prison. Anytime you remove your prescription medicine from its original container and carry it in something else, it becomes an illegal substance.” :eek:

Now, the chances that the cops will check this out and prosecute you seem pretty slim to me and I’m not taking ANY drugs while riding my motorcycle. :rolleyes: However, do any Dopers out there (doctors, pharmacists, nurses) know if this law is actually on the books? :confused: Thanks!

2

I have a friend whose dorm room was being searched by police, for reasons we’ll leave out of this. Anyways, in a ring box, under the padding she had 2 vicodin that she kept from her back surgerey in case she ever needed them. The police took them and may or may not have given her a ticket for possesion of a controlled substance. Either way they told her they were taking them since they were not in a bottle. It seems to be that if you have a controlled substance (CII, CIII, or CIV) it best be in a prescription bottle with your name on the front.

3

Reader Tom Jones is right. If you check any gov. agencies travel site, and a number of tips pages from travel agents, you’ll see that this is common knowledge. Right up there with “don’t drink the water.”

4

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that your prescription becomes illegal if you put it into a different bottle- but if the prescription is for a controlled substance, then possessing it is illegal unless it was prescribed for you . And at the point where the police are stopping you, the fact that it’s in a Bufferin bottle, rather than a prescription bottle is going to lead to the inference that you don’t have a prescription, possibly leading to an arrest.

5

In my state putting “any” other pills in a prescription bottle, is a felony.

6

Why do they sell the little days of the week pill containers then?

7

So old people won’t get confused and take the wrong dose.

They also sell ziplock baggies and tupperware, and people put pills in those. That doesn’t mean if you show up at the airport with a ziplock full of drugs you’ll be passed on through the security stop.

8

doreen’s post makes sense to me. Does anyone have an actual citation of a real law that covers this? The stuff that “everybody knows” is often faulty, I have carried my son’s Schedule II drugs into some pretty up-tight schools in a plastic bag with no hassle, and I have not yet been able to find any such law in the U.S. or Ohio.

9

I’m bumping this slightly old thread because I’m really interested in getting a solid answer.

Those containers are a really useful compliance aid. As I’m sure you know, patient compliance is a huge problem. A doctor could prescribe the perfect drug, but if the patient forgets to take it, it’s useless.

I started using one at the advice of my doctor. I had told him that I was having trouble a) remembering to take my pills, and b) remembering whether I had taken my pill or not that day. No, I’m not old, j.c. Difficulty with that kind of thing is a symptom of the very condition I’m being treated for. Also, I’m supposed to take my pills with breakfast, when my brain is pretty much still asleep.

That little pill container has been an absolute godsend. Now I can tell if I’ve taken my pills for the day already. Some days, I just can’t really remeber. It also makes it easier to actually take the pills. Instead of fumbling with three different bottles every day, I just pop the day’s pills out of the case. Also, it’s a little more discreet not to pull out a bunch of prescription bottles covered in dire warning stickers if there are people around that you don’t know well. Another benefit is that by laying out the pills in advance, I can easily see if I need to get something refilled. If taking the pills out of the bottle, I tend not to notice that I need more until there is only one pill left.

No, I don’t own stock in a pill container company. I’m just trying to answer Amberlei’s question and maybe clear up some of j.c.'s misconceptions.

I assume that it must be considered pretty much okay to use these containers. As others have pointed out, drugstores sell them. The CVS even gave me a free one once. But then again, the drugstore could be covering its proverbial ass by saying that they are only selling those things for use with OTC meds and vitamins–kind of like those head shops who are supposedly
selling all the bongs and pipes for use with tobacco.

I’m not too worried that I’ll get in big trouble if my purse happens to get searched and the cop finds my pink plastic container with my pills in it (even though one of them is actually a controlled substance). It would be easy enough to prove that the pills were legitimately prescribed for me.

But I would like to get a firm answer on this. If I’m doing something technically illegal, I’d like to at least know it.

Also, the legality of this could potentially become a serious issue for me if my pills were confiscated at an airport or something because they are not in their proper containers. Again, I’m not too worried about getting in trouble, but if my meds were confiscated, I’d have a rather crappy trip. I’d like to know if I should take the actual pill bottles with me when I travel.

10

I have to say I doubt this is a law- I’d love to see a cite. If I can produce a legal prescription for a drug I posses, what law would I be violating by not having it in it’s original container?

Or are they saying you could be cited for it, then may need to produce proof that you hold a valid prescription? I could see where you could be cited for possesion of a prescription drug without a prescription, but how could they find you guilty if you indeed produce a prescription?

11

Well, the DEA has this to say about it:

I can’t find anything on the DEA site that addresses whether or not it’s okay to keep the prescription in an unlabelled container. The only thing they’re worried about is whether you are legally in possession of it. I could have missed it, of course, but that suggests to me that the container is irrelevant.

There are different rules for different drugs, depending on whether they’re Schedule II, III, IV, or V. Unless you’re carrying heavy-duty narcotics, no one’s likely to care much about what container they’re in. Of course, not every security person or cop is going to know on sight whether a given pill is a Schedule II-IV drug. Realistically, serious drug abusers don’t usually carry their doses in “pill a day” containers, but if you’re worried about being searched, bringing copies of your prescriptions with you should work.

Theory and real life are not always the same, of course. If someone searching you wants to cause you grief or if they’re being hyper-alert about drugs, they could undoubtedly detain you for a while and cause you quite a bit of inconvenience while checking your prescriptions. However, that’s very unlikely to happen unless the officer in question has some suspicion about you to begin with.

12

This is what I meant, although I didn’t get into what it would take for a conviction. But I was wrong- upon further checking I found this in the NYS Public Health Law

So apparently, it depends on how "current use " is defined, and I couldn’t find it defined in the public health law itself. But it’s also not a felony, or even an offense which could lead to jail time.