Drug problem has grown since 1991 pharmacy robbery

The first pharmacy robbery I covered was on a slushy, gray day in December 1991.

Pharmacy robberies were virtually unheard of, so interest in the newsroom was piqued at once.

The robber didnt get far, just a couple of miles from the Downeast Pharmacy in Hampden to the parking lot of the former Burger King restaurant on Main Street in Bangor. He had stopped there to get a soda with which to swallow some of the 100 Percodan tablets he had stolen at knifepoint just about 10 minutes before.

By the time I dashed down the block to Burger King, 73-year-old Emil Garrett already had assumed the position and was under arrest.

Turned out Mr. Garrett was a very smart man a retired Army colonel and a chemical engineer but he also was an addict and, as it turned out, not a terribly swift robbery suspect.

It was nine years later when the BDN ran its bold headline: Heroin. Its Cheap. Its Deadly. Its Here. Dealers find markets in Maine for addictive drug.

Garrett wasnt using heroin, but what we all learned nine years after his failed robbery attempt was that heroin and prescription opiates are interchangeable. We also learned that heroin had established a strong foothold here and Maine was in trouble.

Prior to that November 2000 story, most of us had never heard of a drug called methadone.

Today there are nine methadone clinics in the state, four in Bangor, all trying to keep up with the still-growing number of opiate addicts.

Nine years after that story ran, the BDN published another article announcing that for the first time in the states history drug overdoses claimed more lives than motor vehicle accidents. Still true today.

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Drug problem has grown since 1991 pharmacy robbery