FINGERPRINT PLAN STALLS IN PULASKI

A proposal to fingerprint OxyContin customers in Pulaski is making little
headway.

Several pharmacists and representatives from the Pulaski Police Department
met this week for a second time to discuss the feasibility of
fingerprinting customers with invisible ink before OxyContin prescriptions
are filled.

"Basically there wasn't a whole lot done" at Thursday's meeting, said Eddie
Hale, owner of Martin's Pharmacy in Pulaski. "It is now wait and see."

The first meeting, in July, raised questions about who to fingerprint and
ended with a resolution for businesses to study the logistics of
fingerprinting and bring back the results.

The police department received CrimeBite fingerprinting kits earlier this
year and pharmacists can request kits for store use.

But there seems to be little interest.

"As far as someone saying 'I would like a kit' ... no one has said that
they were going to start using it," Pulaski Police Chief Gary Roche said.

OxyContin is a powerful prescription painkiller that has received national
publicity because of reports of its abuse in Southwest Virginia and
elsewhere. Pulaski County was one of the first communities in Virginia to
report a rise in property crimes and other incidents related to OxyContin
abuse.

Pulaski is also the first locality to offer the kits to pharmacies to fight
the problem.

Hale said he does not plan to fingerprint anyone at his pharmacy.

"The only time we would use it is when somebody came to pick up something
for somebody else and when we did not know them," he said, noting that
there have been only two instances in the past six months when he would
have considered fingerprinting a customer.

Of the six pharmacies in town, only two were represented at the meeting -
Martin's Pharmacy and Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart representatives who attended the
meeting could not be reached for comment.

"We would have liked to have had everybody there," said Roche. But, he
said, many companies are still studying the plan.

Hale said pharmacists run into several problems with fingerprinting, from
offending customers to confidentiality issues.

"This draws attention," he said, because other people in the pharmacy would
know an OxyContin customer when fingerprinted.

Roche did not want to comment on confidentiality issues other than to say
that "it is an issue that I believe will be resolved."

Hale said the issue will be brought to the Virginia Board of Pharmacy. No
one from the board was available for comment Friday.

The next step is to decide what pharmacists want to do, Roche said. The
police department is likely to meet with pharmacists again, but no date has
been set. Now, whether to fingerprint or not is being left up to each pharmacy.

"Everybody would have to do it to be effective," Hale said.

And the police department will continue to work with pharmacists to get
this plan in action. "The mission of the agency is to 'form partnerships'
with various entities within the community," Roche said. "And we hope this
one is successful."

"It is possible that if we don't take advantage of this opportunity to
address this problem, that if it continues like in the past," he said,
"then someone will mandate a solution to the problem."

Members of the police department will brief Attorney General Randolph
Beales and the Task Force on Prescription Drugs on the proposal Aug. 23 in
Roanoke. The task force was created earlier this year to address the
problem of OxyContin abuse in Southwest Virginia and is expected to report
on the issue in the fall.