The street value of oxycodone continues to skyrocket, with individual pills selling for as much as $80, according to some law enforcers. Not surprisingly, news headlines bear out the desperate, and sometimes deadly, measures that some addicts or their drug dealers will go to for these painkillers. The pharmacy robbery in Long Island, New York on 19 June that left four people dead brought the issue to the forefront of the public's attention.

But legislators had already noticed. In May, US Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat representing New York, proposed toughening the penalties for individuals who steal, traffic and tamper with medical products, including pharmaceuticals. The Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 2011, now in committee, would increase the prison sentences for medical cargo theft from 10 to 20 years and permit law enforcement to wiretap suspects to collect evidence.

Schumer, who co-sponsored the bill with fellow Democrat Jay Rockefeller, a senator from West Virginia, hopes that harsher penalties will “ensure that law enforcement can crack down on those who would steal prescription drugs in order to sell them on the streets,” he wrote in a statement to Nature Medicine. “We must quickly stamp out the root causes of this epidemic by addressing all of the contributing factors.”

However, it's unclear whether the threat of longer prison times can turn the tide of robberies. Pharmacy theft increased 81% between 2006 and 2010, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration, with 1.3 million pills stolen last year, primarily opioid painkillers such as oxycodone and hydromorphone.

“I don't think that the panacea is increased penalties,” says Aaron Gilson, research program manager at the University of Wisconsin–Madison's pain and policy studies group. He sees a need for a far-reaching program with better monitoring, education and drug disposal programs. “There needs to be a comprehensive or multipronged response to prescription drug crisis that we're currently experiencing,” he says.