I had 4 wisdom teeth ripped from my skull last week, and I was prescibed some T3s. In true ETS fashion, I saw this as an opportunity to add to my FAK, by cutting down my consumption. How long can I expect them to be good for? The bottle lacks a date, as they're supposed to be gone.

Expiration date is on your pharmacist's bottle. Most meds are good for 2-3 years but you don't know how old it was when you got it. Play it safe and discard it. Also technically in the US (dunno aboot canada) tylenol with codeine is controlled substance. If by any chance you got cought with it without prescription (as in putting it in plain bottle in your psk) you will be in trouble if someone wanted to be stupid about it.

I keep 4 Vicoden in my first aid kit. I would rather get a slap on the wrist, on the remote chance that "officer Barny" might go through my gear; than to not have it if I broke something in the back country.
I guess if you have a criminal record you may not want to risk it.

I think as long as you could prove you have a prescription, any charges would be dropped. You may want to carry a copy of said prescription with you. If you explain to your doctor what you want it for, and you don't have a history of abuse, you could probably get this without needing to pilfer from your toothache stash. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

If your doctor won't do it, ask why and then go find another doctor who will. Carry the prescription with you.

Not sure how cops would handle this as there are a LOT of folks who carry around their meds every day and some of them are pretty hard core. I would suspect that unless you are a junkie or they are looking for cause, you'd be fine. And if they are looking for cause, well... look out because there's a lot of leeway in the books now.

I'm not sure if vacuum packed vicodin or T3 in your pocket survival kit next to the bandaids and water purification tabs will raise any suspicion, but if you have a prescription, there's really no problem I can think of. Any LEOs care to comment?

Laws vary by state, and enforcement varies by LEO. Here in California, one is required to keep any perscription medication in the container that it came in. But, not many people do that. If you get a bottle of 100 pills, with the instructions to take one a day at lunch, are you really going to carry around a big bottle that rattles with every step? Some time ago, I went to my doctor and he gave me a "sample pack" of 6 pills in a blister card. No paperwork, just handed them to me and told me to see how they worked for me and report back. Now, that could take a little explaining....

Also, my fellow LEO's have to walk a fine line between enforcing drug laws, and not violating HIPPA and other medical privacy laws. I would hope that they can figure out the difference between a couple of pills in your PSK or EDC, and a trunk load packaged for distribution at the local high school.

But a better question might be: Why are you allowing them to search your personal possessions?

Getting back to Canada, don't you have "222's" available over the counter? That has always been an effective pain killer for me.

Prescription drug laws are ALL federal. It wouldn't do that much good to carry a written prescritpion with you, because it would expire in 6 months whether or not it had been filled. To be perfectly safe from a legal standpoint, keep whatever you are going to keep in the original container, which was small since a dentist wrote the order; it couldn't have been for more than 8-12 tablets. The earlier post about the fact that the pharmacist can tell what the expiration date is is correct is you contact him/her while he/she is still using the same open bottle. That expiration date is on the container. As a practical matter though, I would take those tablets 20 years from now. The only thing that might happen is a reduction in potency of the codeine. Now, tylenol (acetaminophen) taken in large doses is toxic to the liver, and arguably could be if it degraded into something else over a couple of decades as in my example above. But this is not going to cause a significant health hazard with four tablets to relieve joint pain over a 24hour period, as you would be using it. By the way, should you decide to take the tablets out of the original container and put them in something else, I would just say they were acetaminophen tablets unless they were embossed with the '3'. If someone had the nerve to ask, I would have the nerve to tell them whatever I wanted them to know.

There are lots of Federal drug laws, but also many state laws as well. For California, they start here:

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate?WAISdocID=6817592563+0+0+0&WAISaction=retrieve

You may not want to read them unless you are having trouble sleeping. <img src="/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

I am in Canada, so the US drug laws don't apply here, but good to know. My bottle doesn't have an expiry printed on it, maybe because it was a non-refillable prescription supposed to last a week. However, it does have my name on it, so with ID I would think it would be ok to prove it's mine. I'd assume the pills are fairly fresh, the pharmacy is right next door to my dental surgeon, who I'm sure prescibes lots of the stuff.

Sorry I didn't notice the "Canada" which made most of what I said moot. Still, it such retain it's potency a long time, particularly for what you want it for. And as long as you kept it in the bottle you have it in now, no worries that I could foresee in any country based upon English common law.