Three drugs you should not steal from a vet!

Every now and then you hear of veterinary clinics being robbed.  While some are robbed for money, many are robbed for drugs.  

Did you know that there are a number of veterinary drugs that are used or abused by people?  Every vet clinic will have these drugs well locked up in what is called “the controlled drugs safe”.  And every time one of these medications is used by the veterinary clinic, a log is updated.  This way, the clinic can keep track of exactly how much they have at all times and know if anything goes missing.

Want some Ketamine?

I once heard a story of some criminals who had some really bad luck.  They had an idea of what kind of drugs they wanted to steal, but they didn’t do so well.

One of the drugs that they were looking for was Ketamine.  Ketamine is used in some anesthetic protocols for animals.  But, it can also be used as a street drug.  It causes nasty hallucinations.  Don’t ever try it!

These criminals thought they were stealing Ketamine, but ended up with Ketoprofen – a drug very similar to aspirin.  I can just picture the people injecting themselves and waiting for the crazy high, only to find that all that happened was that their headaches had disappeared.

A good high? Or some bad cramps?

Another drug that is often sold on the streets is Oxycontin.  As a street drug it can produce quite a high.  As far as I know, most veterinary hospitals don’t stock this potent pain reliever.  However, these same criminals found something similar, Oxytocin, and stole it.

What they didn’t know is that Oxytocin is the drug that we give to birthing animals to get their uterus to contract!

That ain’t morphine!

Here is my favorite.  I’m sure you’ve heard of morphine.  It’s a potent narcotic pain reliever.  Imagine the crooks’ delight when they saw a package of tablets labelled, “Apo-Morphine”.  I really wish I was there to see them try to get high on Apo-Morphine.  This is a medication that we give to animals in order to make them vomit!  (We’ll place a quarter of a tablet in the lower eyelid and when the medication gets absorbed an animal will throw up.)   When we’ve used it (usually for toxin ingestion) the poor creatures retch and retch until there is nothing in their stomach and then keep on vomiting some more.

Serves the criminals right!

What do you think?

Do you think these guys got what they deserved?