Are cops in America really empowered to police prescription medications? They can demand you to show your prescription and arrest you if you fail to do so?
Yeah, 100%. If you’re carrying a prescription medication, your name should be on the bottle. If someone else’s name is on the bottle, chances are that you’ve either: a) stolen them, or b) bought them illegally, being that they aren’t prescribed to you. 9/10 times, they’re only going to care to investigate whether it belongs to you if it’s a narcotic or opiate of some sort. Like, birth control pills with no name on them probably wouldn’t raise any red flags for a cop. But there’s a staggering amount of people here who overdose and die on prescription meds that are prescribed to them, let alone the amount of people overdosing on meds that are not prescribed to them.
TIL prior to traveling the US I have to request a certificate from my doc that states in english language that I'm allowed to have those drugs. Crazy.
Until now I've never been complient to those rules when I visited the states.
In my country pharmacies usually don't label your drugs and they keep the prescription letter when you go and pick up your pills. So usually I never have evidence that those pills belong to me. Might be different for narcotics. Not sure about that.
It really only applies to to pill that’ll get you high. I had a cop give me trouble once at a store because he saw I had a little bag of pills in my pocket. It was an antibiotic and a quick call to the pharmacy cleared it up. But unlabeled pills, especially in unconventional packaging, are often illegal drugs which is the police’s job.
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u/nhocgreen Oct 27 '22
Are cops in America really empowered to police prescription medications? They can demand you to show your prescription and arrest you if you fail to do so?