CVS using time delay safes statewide to combat drug robberies | Local News

CVS Pharmacy officials kicked off a statewide program at one of its stores in Royal Oak aimed at thwarting drug robberies with time delayed safes that hold opioid and other controlled substances.

State Attorney General Dan Nessel joined Royal Oak elected officials and CVS Pharmacy employees for the announcement Monday at the pharmacy at 30900 Woodward.

Betsy Ferguson, senior vice president and deputy counsel for CVS, said that the company now has the time delay technology on drug safes at all its 318 stores in Michigan.

“There was a 70 percent drop in armed robberies when we did this at stores in Indianapolis,” she said.

CVS stores in Michigan now all have signs warning would-be thieves that the pharmacies have time delay safes in use, monitored by around the clock surveillance and emergency alarm systems.

“The time delay safes deter robberies because the safes can’t be opened on demand,” Ferguson said. “The hope is that robbers will understand that the pharmacist has zero ability to open the safe.”

A technology program arbitrarily locks pharmacy drug safes for up to 15 minutes at a time and no employee has the ability to open them for that time period.

A customer with an opioid prescription routinely waits 15 minutes for it to be filled. But Ferguson said it’s unlikely a robbers willing to wait around that long.

She said she did not know the number of drug robberies seen at CVS stores in Michigan, but said the opioid epidemic has made such drug heists more prevalent nationwide.

“I have heard many stories of pharmacists being terrorized,” Ferguson.

The CVS store on Woodward in Royal Oak last year had a robbery in July 2018. Two men vaulted over the pharmacy counter and grabbed three bottles of cough syrup with codeine, an opiate, and promethazine, an antihistamine. They also stole a bottle of pills containing the same drugs.

Police were called, but the thieves had fled by then.

It’s clear the opioid epidemic is present in Michigan, said Attorney General Nessel, who applauded CVS’s new effort in the state with time delay safes.

“In 2017, 2,700 Michiganders died of drug overdoses,” she said. “Seventy-percent of those overdoses (involved) opiods.”

Opioid drugs, such as the painkillers oxycodone and hydrocodone, are highly addictive and sought through the black market and from doctors.

A majority of fatal opioid overdoses nationwide, however, involve Fentanyl. Though Fentanyl is quantitatively at least 50 times stronger than morphine and is generally prescribed only for severe pain, most fatal Fentanyl overdoses are caused when users buy it from street dealers who use it to cut heroin. Drug dealers usually get the drug on the black market from sources as far away as China.

Nationally, there were 70,237 drug deaths in the U.S. in 2017, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Of those fatal overdoses, 17,029 involved prescription opioids.

Time delay safes at pharmacies help “make sure that prescription drugs don’t fall into the wrong hands … and keep communities safer,” Nessel said.

Democratic state lawmakers state Rep. Jim Ellison and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, both of Royal Oak, were on hand for CVS’s announcement along with Royal Oak Mayor Michael Fournier.

State legislators over the past couple of years have joined in a bi-partisan effort to fight opioid abuse.

“Michigan has passed 22 laws aimed at curbing opioid abuse,” Ellison said.

There are signs that the epidemic is starting to diminish, said Nessel, adding that Michigan is involved with other states in a lawsuit against some pharmaceutical firms.

If successful, the lawsuit will bring hundreds of millions of dollars to Michigan to battle opioid abuse and treat addiction.

“There’s not a city, town or family that hasn’t been touched opioid drugs,” Fournier said.