True enough Lamia. Don’t they argue in the case of possesion of pain pills that since you had them you intended to either take them or sell them though? Isn’t that the purpose of the laws, to catch people like Courtney Love who have pain pills illegally, so they can get them into rehab programs? (After legal procedures in which they may get prison time, and fines of course.)
This is such a strange thread. You start out talking about the legality, or otherwise, of carrying prescription medicines in containers other than the bottles they were prescribed in. And (horrors!) carrying more than one type in a container.
And all the replies say, nope, there’s no laws against it.
And then you dig up cites about how pharmacists are supposed to dispense the drugs – which has nothing to do with how the patient/end consumer can choose to store or carry them.
And then it’s anecdotes about people being hassled when passing through border inspection or airport security lines.
And people point out that all you have to do in that case is provide proof of your having a valid prescription for the drugs – by having it faxed, say. Which somehow you twist into “it’s really against the law, and they only ‘back off’ because it’s too much hassle.” No. They ‘back off’ because there’s no law being broken! The law is against HAVING PRESCRIPTION DRUGS YOU WEREN’T PRESCRIBED. You show you have a prescription, therefore no law was broken. Carrying your medicines in the original bottle OR carrying copies of your prescriptions is a sensible precaution to take when travelling abroad (or by airplane, in this post-911 world) BUT IT IS NOT A LEGAL REQUIREMENT.
Sorry, hit the wrong button.
And now you come up with yet another irrelevant point. Everyone has agreed all along that it is illegal to have prescription drugs that haven’t been prescribed for you. If Courtney Love has ‘pain pills illegally,’ then that is what she is charged with, ‘having pain pills illegally.’ It doesn’t matter if she was carrying them in bottles with forged prescriptions OR bottles with valid prescriptions that were written for other people OR in an old sock.
The problem is if the DRUGS WEREN’T PRESCRIBED FOR YOU.
There is NO requirement on how people store/carry their prescribed medicines in their day to day life. Don’t you think it would be mentioned now and then if there were? Wouldn’t your doctor say something when he handed you the script? Wouldn’t your pharmacist warn you when he handed you the bottle? Wouldn’t it be mentioned in the three pages of printed warnings and cautions and advice that they hand out now with every prescription? Wouldn’t those stories in the women’s service that suggest storing your pills in cool, dry places sometimes mention that oh, yeah, be sure and keep them in the original bottles because that’s the law? And all those stories in parents magazines that warn you about keeping pills out of children’s reach and not putting them into containers children can open…how come they never throw in a word about ‘and besides it’s illegal’?
I’ll tell you why: because it ISN’T against the law.
Sheesh. Can’t you just accept that you were wrong about this particular fact? Give it up and move on.
In most cases, probably. I don’t see what that has to do with what sort of bottle they’re in, though. People who carry their pills in the original prescription bottle likely intend to either take or sell them too.
The purpose of what laws? It seems that the only relevant law is “you can’t have any prescription meds you don’t have a valid prescription for”. There’s no reason to make laws about how the pills can be carried, since a prescription bottle is neither the only nor the best way to prove that you have a valid prescription.
If there really were some kind of prescription bottle law it would be less than worthless since no one seems to know about it. In more than five years of daily prescription medication use, no doctor or pharmacist has ever mentioned to me that I should be keeping my pills in the original bottles. It would only help the police if they could be reasonably certain that anyone without a prescription bottle didn’t have one because they couldn’t get one. If large numbers of legal pill owners don’t carry prescription bottles then prescription bottles cannot be used as an easy way to distinguish them from criminal dealers or addicts. Heck, if such a law really existed I’d expect the dealers and addicts to know about it even if regular people didn’t, so they’d actually be more likely than the average citizen to carry their pills in (stolen or forged) prescription bottles.
This is what makes me nervous about flying.
Like Robyn’s mother, I have MS. My injectible is Copaxone which is in pre-filled syringes. Now, I have the prescription and a letter from my neurologist to back me up. I still don’t want to deal with the hairy eyeball from someone who has no clue.