Illinois lawmaker proposes requiring ID to pick up highly-addictive medications
CHICAGO (CBS) – An Illinois state lawmaker is trying to keep dangerous medicines off the streets after watching a CBS 2 story on a suburban woman's highly addictive pills that a mystery man picked up from a pharmacy without her permission.
Doris Jones has a prescription for oxycodone pills to treat her chronic back condition. But someone else picked up her pills at her CVS in Riverdale last October.
"The young lady said, she put her hand up to her mouth, and she was like, 'I gave away 90 oxycodones,'" Jones said.
Surveillance cameras didn't capture much about the unknown man who drove up. But why did the pharmacist give the man Jones' pills?
"She said, 'Well, he knew your name, and he knew your birthday,'" Jones said, recalling what the pharmacist told her.
That's all the man needed to know to pick up a highly addictive opioid that didn't belong to him. That's the policy set by CVS that follows Illinois law.
After seeing CBS 2's story about Jones' pills, State Rep. Amy Grant (R-Wheaton) wanted to do something about it.
"I thought, 'Oh, this is crazy,'" Grant said. She added, "I'm a common sense legislator, and it only made sense to address this."
So, Grant filed an amendment to the Illinois Controlled Substances Act last month that would require the person picking up some dangerous narcotics, like oxycodone, to show identification.
"If you want Sudafed, you need an ID," Grant said. "If you buy alcohol, you have to have an ID. That's the way it is."
Illinois has required a driver's license from anyone buying cold medicine like Sudafed, with higher levels of pseudoephedrine, since 2006.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration classifies drugs into five categories based on their use and abuse potential from the lowest, Schedule V, to the highest, Schedule I. Oxycodone and other opioids make up Schedule II, and asking for ID for those prescriptions isn't new. CBS 2 found 20 states that already require showing ID.
"The legislature, I believe, will probably be on board with it," Grant said. "Why wouldn't they?"
But some lawmakers might think Grant's proposed legislative change is a step too far, like State Rep. La Shawn Ford (D-Chicago).
"You know, we have to make sure that the controlled substances get in the right hands," Ford said.
Ford added he's all for requiring more information from those picking up opioids, but not an ID.
"So I think that we need a signature maybe, or something that will identify the person as to who they are, but I think that we need to figure out a way to never deny a person because they are without their ID," Ford said.
While state legislators debate the issue in Springfield, it's worth noting that a former Illinois congressman tried to make the same change at the federal level.
"During my 10 years in Congress, we saw the opioid crisis escalate to levels that were unheard of," said Rodney Davis, a former member of Congress who represented a downstate district for five terms.
In 2018, Davis introduced his bill to require identification for opioids.
"If that worked for Sudafed and that worked to decrease methamphetamine production in rural America, then why couldn't we follow the same rules and ask for people to show an ID and write their darn name down to get a narcotic or an opioid?" Davis said.
The bill didn't go anywhere, but he hoped the idea wouldn't die.
"Part of the reason why I introduced the bill at the federal level was to get states to think about doing exactly what they have done," Davis said.
At least 20 other states have similar laws. Will Illinois be the 21st?
Jones hopes so and is in favor of real restrictions on obtaining such drugs. Grant wants her bill to make the change. Jones said she was thrilled that someone finally cared after what she experienced.