North Carolinians usually think drug charges involve street drugs, but you can be arrested for sharing prescription drugs. Sharing legally prescribed drugs with others is a crime and is dangerous.
Dangers associated with sharing prescription drugs
In addition to sharing prescription drugs being illegal and increasing your risk of being charged with a crime, there are dangers associated with sharing. Certain types of drugs carry serious side effects that can harm a person based on their medical history and medical conditions. Some prescription drugs can aggravate certain medical conditions or counteract other prescription medications and cause serious complications.
Sharing prescription drugs is not safe because you can never be sure about the ingredients. Although something might be from a prescription, if it wasn’t acquired directly from a doctor or pharmacist, it might be something other than what you think.
Even when two people have prescriptions for the same drug, there are still differences that can make sharing prescriptions dangerous. One person might have a higher or lower dose of the same medication. For example, you and a close family member both suffer from anxiety but your prescription carries a much higher dose and theirs is much lower. Sharing your higher dose with your family member might result in them experiencing adverse effects such as their heart rate becoming dangerously low.
Why sharing prescription drugs is illegal
If you share your prescription drugs, you run the risk of being arrested on drug charges. You don’t know how the other person will react to the drug, so if something goes wrong, the ramifications could be traced back to you. Just because the prescription doesn’t have negative effects on you, there’s no telling how it will affect the next person.
Only a doctor should provide prescription drugs. Doctors learn about a patient’s health, make a diagnosis and prescribe drugs based on their professional expertise and the knowledge that taking them will help treat a specific condition.
You might think you’re doing someone a favor when sharing your prescription with them. It could end up being harmful instead, which is never worth the risk.
