Sharing prescription drugs and medications can often feel like the right thing to do. Maybe you’re taking painkillers, for instance, and a sibling or a roommate complains about a serious toothache. They want to use your medication to see if it helps them. You certainly feel like you’re just doing the right thing.
But the thing to remember is that sharing prescription medication is illegal in almost all situations. Your intent doesn’t matter. It can help in some ways, such as showing that you didn’t have the intent to distribute drugs more widely, but it doesn’t mean that you have not broken the law. It is only legal for prescription medications to be used by you, the person to whom the prescription was given.
Why is the law so strict?
The reason that the laws on prescription drugs are so strict is simply that these drugs see a lot of recreational use and abuse. For example, over the last few years, there has been the rise of an opioid epidemic in the United States. This causes tens of thousands of deaths every year, so the authorities are attempting to stop the spread of prescription drugs for these recreational purposes.
Now, you may have no intention of abusing your medication or selling it to someone who will, and you may think you’re just helping someone or making a few dollars off of extra pills you didn’t need. But it could still put you in violation of the law, and that’s when you’ll need to know about all of the legal defense options that you have.
