Drugstore cowboy video

I was just thinking about the movie Drugstore Cowboy the other day. It’s one of my favorites, and I think it was a little ahead of its time. It was made in 1989, and while pharmacy robberies have been going on since the first pharmacy opened its doors, they probably weren’t as commonplace as they are these days. After all, there are even more drugs to choose from in 2008.

When I was a reporter for a local newspaper in Northern Virginia, I was of course on the mailing list for all of the police press releases. Pharmacy robberies were among the most common crimes committed in the area. I remember one thief even dressed up as Spiderman to steal Oxycontin from a CVS. In fact, if one does a Google search of “oxycontin robberies,” over 100,000 results pop up.

In any event, “Drugstore Cowboy” did an excellent job of portraying the subculture of prescription drug addicts, and it’s interesting to see that not much has changed since 1989.