Prescription Drug Charges

Prescription drug offenses in Alabama are taken seriously and involve individuals being arrested, having to participate in some type of drug program, and having to go to court. They are either classified as a Class C or a Class B felony and charges and potential conviction will depend on the weight, how much of the substance is present, and the type of substance.

Alabama has serious laws when it comes to certain types of drugs and some enhanced penalties apply because of the nature of the particular drug. To best fight prescription drug charges in Alabama, a skilled prescription drug attorney can help someone build a solid defense.

The primary types of prescription drug cases are either possession cases or cases of people who are drug seeking because the doctors have cut them off, they built up intolerance, and they need more. They are going out of their way to find them, which is dangerous because they may not know what they are buying.

These are drugs that they are trying to self-medicate a pain scenario, which is just one of the reasons why people do that. That is the first type of possession type crimes. Secondly, there are people that steal pads from a doctor or medical provider’s office, forge the doctor’s name, and try to present it, which will result in a charge.

Druggists are very aware and know what to look for in case of prescription drug offenses in Alabama. They call doctors for verification and they are looking for that suspicious person coming in. They are trained to be able to discern the difference between that and legitimate prescriptions. The term for it is “busting a script” and sometimes people are duped. For instance, someone else may forge a prescription, but they will get an innocent friend, person, or family member to go pick it up in a drug store. A lot of those types of cases get dismissed, because that person did not know that the script was bad, they did not write it, and the drugs were not for them. They were going to pick it up for someone as a friend who they thought did not feel well enough to go to a drugstore or were too busy, and they incidentally got taken to jail.

Police agencies and drugstores are aware of the types of activities that are going on and they are vigilant about that.

There are a lot of different types of drugs, but the kinds of drugs that are illegal are the ones that appear on Federal Schedule I through IV. For example, in a situation where a case involved a large bag of white powder that was seized by one of the local enforcement agencies. Say it was sent off to the lab and came back that it was not a controlled substance. It was a substance of abuse, but it did not appear on this particular schedule of illegal drugs. That case had to be dismissed even though it was a counterfeit drug. Someone had sold it and that can present a dangerous scenario for people buying elsewhere. They do not know what they are getting, it may be misrepresented in some form or fashion, and can be quite dangerous. Prescription offenses can vary in Alabama, and a drug attorney who has experienced in a variety of cases will best be able to help someone facing charges.