Oops – 20,000 fake oxycodone tablets sent to wrong address!

A woman expecting a yoga mat ended up opening a package of 20,000 fake oxycodone tablets that was delivered to her instead of the dealers who were supposed to get their hands on it.

Dead drop smuggling

US postal authorities are very good at interdicting contraband in the mail. It rather helps that packages are sent to a specific address. People in the narcotics supply chain get around this by having their wares delivered to an empty address, and have someone waiting outside pretending to be the resident of the address. They collect the goods from the postal worker or delivery person and the contraband carries on its merry way toward the addict.

In this case, the woman who lives in Rock Hill NC had moved house from her condo to a new address and had registered the move with the US Postal Service. The narcotics supplier in Newport Beach, CA misspelled the destination address, and the USPS checked to see where she lived. The drugs were then delivered to her new home.

The woman in question had recently ordered a yoga mat from Walmart so wasn’t surprised at the package being delivered. The problem was this wasn’t an accessory to access a transcendental paradise within her inner mind, but a consignment of opiates that would get her so stoned she’d never need to buy the stuff again.

20,000 fake oxycodone tablets delivered by mistake instead of a yoga mat.

Let’s face it, despite some 300 million opiate prescriptions being written every year in the US, and somewhere around 2 million people having a prescription opioid addiction, not everyone would be thrilled to receive enough drugs through the mail to either become a millionaire or get banged up in prison for the rest of their lives. Nor was this woman.

In this case, on opening the package and pills spilling across the floor when she got her wits together she phoned the local cops. Sometimes honesty is the better option and they believed her story so while excitedly collecting the narcotics only questioned her briefly. The story got out and she rather sensibly asked for anonymity on the matter.

A keyhole view on a major problem in the US.

While Trump sabre rattles over the national cannabis industry, there is a real and pressing problem facing the authorities. Millions of people are getting hooked on prescription opiates and, when they realise that they can get the stuff cheaper from dealers than on prescription from their pharmacy, they buy through a booming black market.

For those who realise they have a problem they often go back to the same doc who got them hooked in the first place and use more substances prescribed for them. There are cheaper, more effective ways out – what about kratom? Kratom is a herbal remedy that has been shown to be an effective and legal way of coming off opiate addiction. While the DEA tried to ban it recently, amidst great drama it backed down for the first time in history. Kratom is currently legal across the US and could well be used as part of a multi-pronged approach to tackling opiate addiction. Perhaps then, fewer women will be shocked and embarrassed when a box full of pills they didn’t order lands on their doormat as the black market for opiates is curtailed.