LEWISTON — A Bath pharmacist who worked at a Brunswick hospital was convicted of stealing prescription pain and sleep medication.
John W. Underwood pleaded guilty in Cumberland County Superior Court in Portland earlier this month to two counts of stealing drugs stemming from a series of thefts of the opiate oxycodone and the sleep medication Ambien from Mid Coast Hospital in Brunswick. He served as the hospital’s pharmacy manager at the time and diverted drugs from the hospital in 2011 and 2012 for his personal use, according to a written release from Maine Attorney General Janet T. Mills.
A judge sentenced Underwood to two years in prison, with all but two weeks suspended followed by two years on probation on the felony charge involving oxycodone. He was ordered to serve a two-week sentence at the same time on the charge involving Ambien. A judge also ordered him to pay $800 in fines.
A condition of his probation bars him from accepting any job that would give him access to controlled substances, such as oxycodone. His license to practice as a pharmacist was revoked by the Maine Board of Pharmacy in April 2012.
“Abuse of prescription narcotics is a major public health and public safety issue in Maine,” Mills said in a written statement. “We place great trust in health care professionals to not only provide appropriate care, but to also assist in eliminating the diversion of these addictive drugs to non-medical uses. Mr. Underwood breached that trust and put the health and safety of countless patients at risk. I applaud the Healthcare Crimes Unit for their work in uncovering this deception.”
The case was investigated by Detective Robert Flis of the Maine Office of Attorney General’s Healthcare Crimes Unit and Tom Avery, investigator for the Board of Pharmacy. Underwood was prosecuted by Assistant Attorney General Valerie Wright of the Healthcare Crimes Unit, which is part of the criminal division.
Mills has made it a priority of her office to stem the tide of prescription-drug diversion and abuse, which she has called an “epidemic” in our state. Prescription-drug abuse is the cause of hundreds of drug-affected babies being born each year, and drug-related deaths now exceed those caused by traffic accidents in Maine.
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