Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Will sombody please burn my C-V sig book?
My store is one of the very few in Alaska that still has the old C-V signature log. Which of course creates a super-funnel to the front door of every Chera-Tussin chugger within 100 miles. The main reason we have it is because of the cruise ship passengers from who-knows-where are usually coughing up their guts by the time they get here. We literally cannot keep it in stock because of the local codeine junkies. Besides the obvious, any imput as to curbing the flow? I'm needing some creative ideas here! I remember that my father used to limit the regulars to 4oz./wk., but the flow up here is too damn distracting.
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12 comments:
How much money can the Cheratussin possibly bring in? We just don't deal with it at all, and haven't found a pharmacy in town that does.
Maybe an Excel spreadsheet, and limit people to one bottle monthly? A quick ctrl+f would let you search for a name. But then, I'm sure they'd have fake ID's if they were too concerned... I'm so positive that's what's happening with Sudafed down here...
Ugh, previous comment left by me. Blogger being weird.
--Fries With That
I would just stop carrying the stuff then you don't have to worry about it. They can go to the darn doctor like the rest of us do when we have a cough that won't go away.
We have more meth addicts than rats here so after I got fed up with them taking up all our time I quit ordering sudafed. Plenty of pissed off regulars but I don't really give a shit. No more meth addicts in my store. QUIT ordering the shit!
Oooh, don't you just hate those supplier issues that *force* you to only have #junkies-1 bottles (4oz only) in stock per week? So difficult. There was even a fire at a plant in Colorado this week! Such a pity....
Back home our C-V book dates back to the very first time they started doing that... in 1978.
Rather interesting seeing the 'regular' users over the last 30+ years
I have one such signature book in my pharmacy, because the law says I've gotta have one. There's nothing in it, though, because I've never had stocked any Cheratussin AC in 4 ounce bottles, and also because the pharmacists around here try to keep it under the rug that you can actually get it OTC, for reasons that I'm sure you appreciate. Never even been asked for it, and I'd rather not alert the local junkie population to the possibility that they can.
(I also have the poison log book. In three years, I've sold three bottles of tincture of iodine, which I'm not even sure needs to be in there. Rest of the book's blank.)
As to the creative ideas? Here's one off the top of my head: Make up some BS regulation that you can only sell it to cruise ship passengers, because it has to be exported from the state immediately after sale (kind of like a duty-free shop, you can't buy booze or cigarettes and then take them back into the country).
Problem is the junkies probably know the laws by heart already, so it's hard to put one over on them.
It's funny, I coulda sworn I remember learning in my pharmacy law class that it was Federal law that you couldn't sell the same buyer more than five 4-ounce bottles in six months, and the State Board would regularly go through your logs looking for customers buying more than this so they could bust you for it. Now I've gone looking through the CFR, and I can't find any such law on the books. I also looked at my own state's law; NJ limits them to 4 ounces per 48 hours, but has no mention of any maximum per six months that I can find.
(I took that class in 1994, so I suppose it's possible that any such law or regulation was repealed in the interim. I'll have to dig my class notes out of the garage and check. It could even have been a New York State law, except that last I remember, NY banned OTC sales of narcotics altogether.)
We just refuse to sell it without a Rx. That might not work for your situation.
Wow Shalom, I can't believe you kept all of your notes from pharmacy school! I burned mine as a celebration from college.
How about charging a really high price to the locals? Years ago, I'd sell the 1st bottle of the day at regular retail, then go up a dollar for each sale after that. By the time the price reached $20 or so, word got around. "Yeah, they've got it,but you can't afford it". Helped my gross margin,pleased the DM, & discouraged the assholes.
This might be a bit of an extreme measure but how about talk to your state board/legislature and see if you can introduce a bill to make it illegal to sell without an Rx. It is in my state so we don't have to deal with it at all. The meth junkies are another story altogether but it's super nice to be able to say you can't buy codeine cough syrup over the counter in our state.
Lie to them! You know what legit looks and acts like and what junkie acts like (cough cough) so sometimes you have it and sometimes you don't. Delsym is always available.
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