Hat tip to RE for sending this in, from woai.com:

Be careful who you open your doors to at your “open house,” some drug addicts are now trying to score at real estate showings.  The pain-pill addicts are scouring the Sunday paper for open houses dressing up as potential buyers, and then showing up hoping to score.

Amara Durham is an addiction specialist with Caron Texas.

“And they’re there to find drugs that people have left behind in cabinets. If you are having an open house and you haven’t cleared out your prescription medications it’s the same as putting a note on the mirror and saying ‘Hey, open up!'”.

She says sometimes the value on a bottleof name brand medication can be worth $5,000 on the street. As the addiction rate to pain pills soars, so does the price.

“We have addicts who look like you and me and not like drug users in an alley with needles  in their arms … combing the  Sunday paper for an open house listed there. They go dressed, looking like potential buyers,” says Durham.

Durham says before hosting an open house, take your valuables and your medications with you.

“The responsibility lies with the homeowner and that means that before you show your home, you take those tablets, put them in a shoebox and take them from the home.”

Experts say the number of Americans who are addicted to prescriptiond rugs like painkillers far outstrips the number of people addicted to traditional street drugs like heroin and crack cocaine.

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