When you go get a prescription filled, you typically brace for a few bad outcomes: There's the possibility your insurance won't cover your drug or you'll have to wait a long time. Typically, the worst thing that happens to us is we waste a bunch of cash on chocolate bars and trashy magazines at the checkout.
But when one Dallas woman headed to her local CVS pharmacy recently, the unimaginable occurred: She was arrested.
When Ann Lenhart hobbled into her Dallas-area CVS pharmacy on crutches, her leg was engulfed in a large brace and she had a permanent IV line in her arm.
She was looking to fill a prescription for Norco, a powerful narcotic she'd been prescribed the previous month after shattering her kneecap while doing volunteer work in Haiti. (h/t The Consumerist)
Lenhart spent a night in the Dallas County jail while the police tried to contact her doctor, according to a local television station in Dallas Fort Worth, Texas. The following day she was released on bond and was charged with obtaining a controlled substance by fraud, CBS 11 News reported.
The police eventually dropped the charges after speaking with Lenhart's doctor, who confirmed the legitimacy of the prescription but said he never received a call from CVS. A CVS representative told CBS that the company is "investigating how this unfortunate incident occurred and we are working to resolve the matter with Ms. Lenhart."
In the meantime, Lenhart is suing CVS Pharmacy for false imprisonment and defamation. "I don't want somebody who I love to go in there and get arrested," Lenhart said to CBS.
Abuse of prescription drugs, including painkillers like Norco, is a growing problem in Texas. Deaths by accidental overdose, including those involving prescription drugs, more than doubled from 2000 to 2008, according to the Houston Chronicle.
A similar trend has emerged nationally, where prescription and over-the-counter medications accounted for the majority of drug abuse by high school seniors in 2010, according to a report by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.