A Wave of Addiction and Crime, with the Medicine Cabinet to Blame

Police Departments are claiming that crime rates are rising because of painkillers and prescription drugs. Since the elderly citizens have many prescription drugs and painkillers in their homes, their the ones being targeted in the burglaries.

“We’re seeing people desperately and aggressively trying to get their hands on these pills,” said Janet T. Mills, the attorney general in Maine. “Home invasions, robberies, assaults, homicides, thefts — all kinds of crimes are being linked to prescription drugs.”

In Harpswell, Me., a masked man broke into the home of a 77-year-old woman in June, knocked her to the ground and snatched her Oxycontin pills at knifepoint. And in Hyannis, Mass., three men armed with a knife, a bat and a revolver broke into a home in 2008, bound the owner’s hands and feet with duct tape and tore through drawers and cabinets until they found her husband’s Oxycontin.

The battling rate of crimes in the United States is caused by the addiction through these drugs. We must make more people aware of these crimes in order to protect the innocent and their homes.