Pandemic Led to Largest Number of Pharmaceutical Drug Thefts

Since 2017, theft or loss of drugs—controlled substances tracked by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)—had been in decline. What was 1,200 burglaries a year and 830 robberies a year would be 839 and 407 respectively by 2019 based on DEA data received via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

But with the pandemic came a swarm of burglaries—1,718 in total, by far the largest in the data going back to 2011—but not robberies. With in-person businesses closed for many months, pharmacies were regularly unattended. The data does not distinguish between reported theft or loss of a drug.

But there’s little detail about the string of thefts in the news. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) put out a reward in 2020 for serial armed robbers targeting pharmacies in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is one of the states that saw the largest increase in burglaries (397 more than 2019), and Pennsylvania has been dealing with ongoing issues of opioid addiction for many years. That may be the best example, yet those were robberies, not burglaries. In December of 2020, Calgary, Alberta put out a notice of a rise in pharmacy robberies.

Minnesota and D.C., two locations that regularly have almost no burglaries would see 100 incidents in total. Both Minneapolis and D.C. saw riots in 2020 that involved destruction of pharmacies.

California saw the most with 508 in 2020, Illinois saw the largest increase (141 percent). Some states saw a decrease that year, including Tennessee, Arizona, and Michigan. Michigan and Tennessee regularly have the largest number of drug burglaries in prior years.