Narcotics make you constipated. Junkies tend to not have ready cash to pay for OTC meds, but the one thing they all need enough to steal are stool softeners.
Certainly in Canada, many drugs have gone “behind the counter” in recent years as a response to their identification as drugs of abuse (which in itself also renders them much more prone to theft).
This includes most laxatives and stool softeners (though bulk agents tend to still sit out, lending themselves comparatively poorly as they do to both abuse and theft), dimenhydrinate (Gravol) in all its varied forms (including infant-dose suppositories), and caffeine tablets. Anything with codeine in it (cough syrup with 8mg/T or Tylenol #1) has been behind the counter for a long long time, and buying it usually provokes an obligatory conversation with your pharmacist along the lines of “Did your doctor recommend it?”
I recall hearing a statistic in one of my crim justice classes that along with condoms, laxatives are one of the most stolen items from drug stores due to the fact that people are too embarrassed to bring them to the counter and buy them so they’d rather steal them and avoid the embarrassment. No cite on that but it was one of the factoids that certainly stuck with me.
Really? That makes a lot of sense because the narcotics I’m taking now (that I’m prescribed to) are painkillers/opiates, and that’s the reason I need these meds. I just wasn’t making the connection between my opiates and THEIR (the junkies’) opiates. WhyNot, you get a gold star!
I’m just lucky I live in a wonnerful place where the supermarket shelves are freely stocked with stool softeners and other laxatives of every shape, size and description - including the Atomic Power Flush stuff you take before colonoscopies.
But it doesn’t seem possible that a store could secure every item of use for encouraging illicit pooping:
Junkies in Aisle 4—LOCK UP THE PRUNES!!!
So all those times I actually paid for some embarrassing product like Vagisil or hemorrhoid cream (it was for a friend) I could have just stolen it and saved myself the embarrassment? :smack: Now you tell me.
Suuuure it was.
Theft deterrence. Not everyone has access to my top-of-the-line culinary equipment.
The teasing wont stop, so I might as well roll with it 
All right, I promise* not to tease if someone will please explain this to me. I assume you are talking about a ladle, which I’ve seen referenced before. I want in on the joke!
*crosses fingers behind back
Ms. Pumpkin, I PMed you the link to the thread where it all began.
Yep. One of the ickiest things to watch a detoxing heroin addict go through is the pain when the bowels start moving again and all that stagnant fecal matter starts making its way out, sometimes violently. So take your Colace* while you’re on those painkillers! You’ll be much happier if you don’t get completely stopped up.
This is probably one of those questions with many answers, though. I’ll take that gold star, but I hope you have more to share with the class, because there are lots of good answers here! 
*One thing I thought was really odd when I had my c-section was that they sent me to the pharmacy with a scrip for a stool softener. The pharmacist handed it back to me and said, “I can fill this for $11, or you can go buy the same thing in Aisle 3 for $4.” Thanks, doc.
Exactly which ones are behind the counter might be a provincial issue. As an Albertan, I agree with you on the Gravol and over the counter Tylenol with Codeine (although I never get any flak from the pharmacist when I ask for OTC Tylenol with Codeine). However, laxatives and caffeine pills are certainly never behind the counter at either the Safeway or Shopper’s Drug Mart that I frequent. Are iron supplements behind the counter where you are (they are here)?
No shit!
Well, hardly any.
Robin
There are four main reasons you lock away product in a store.
- The law requires it.
- It’s expensive and people steal it sometimes.
- A group that isn’t old enough to purchase a specific item, steal it a lot.
- It’s stolen a lot, because a number of persons are embarrassed to purchase it.
I know we have a rule about english only, so I will just say that your joke about culinary equipment is a lot funnier in spanish.
Depending on your type of insurance and your co-pay, sometimes it does work out to your advantage to have a scrip for something OTC.
Yeah that would really be the shits.
I am in Edmonton. I rarely go to a pharmacy because I get my meds delivered to my home by a local outlet. Last time I was in a London Drugs, everydamnthing was behind the counter as I described, but you could buy folic acid 1mg tabs off the shelf. Both times in adulthood I’ve ever bought OTC codeine products (once cough syrup, the other Tylenol #1), the pharmacist felt inclined to chat me up. I may just be unusually attractive to pharmacists.
The outpatient pharmacy in the University hospital is a Rexall that puts literally everything behind the counter and you have to ask the clerk for Gaviscon. I imagine there’s personal choice involved.
You beat me to it. Back when I worked in a small drugstore my boss (the pharmacist) told me the same thing. They didn’t keep the stool softeners locked up, but they were on a shelf directly in front of the pharmacist’s station.