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| Ms Gettings and Oxycodone |
A CBC expose has shown that it seems much easier for addicts to scam for Oxycodone and other prescription narcotics in B.C. than in other provinces. In this case, two sisters somehow permitted an acquaintance to access personal information and use it to get narcotics over a five-year period. The fraud artist and addict, Audrey Gettings, was finally caught when she recklessly started to shoplift drugs in the pharmacy where she was waiting to get a prescription filled. The matter is clearly serious and has revealed that at least two members of the B.C. College of Physicians and Surgeons were doling out Oxycontone in a way that seems impossible here. In recent years, the Ontario Government has put the fear of serious consequences into both the Ontario college and its members. Pharmacists are similarly facing rigorous rules and scrutiny. Records show that one B.C doctor, Michael Davidson, prescribed 80 Oxycodone pills to Gettings and then gave her another 60 two days later. Both physicians and pharmacies in Vancouver are said to have supplied Oxycodone to patients they did not know without a health card. The CBC story is not as complete as it might be because if Ms. Gettings did not steal a card, it is nothing short of astonishing that she was able to string out a five-year fraud without one. What this case shows is the apparently stark differences between provinces where the doctors, pharmacies and the health systems are regulated provincially not nationally.
