During her first 18 years as a pharmacist, Arlene Raimondi had been robbed only once. But in the last four years, it's happened five times.
"We just had one a couple weeks ago," she says. "As a business owner, it's really hurting our bottom line - doing a lot of damage and it's really scary for myself and my staff."
Linda Bartling, who's worked as a pharmacist for more than two decades has also been on edge recently after having been robbed at knife-point.
"You always have a feeling of tenseness. When you watch the customers come and go - you wonder if they're just an ordinary customer or if it's somebody who's coming at you."
Those aren't the conditions she thought she'd be working in when she chose her profession.
"I grew up in the old times when this didn't happen," Bartling says.
The reason it's happening now, Raimondi thinks, is that the production of the highly addictive painkiller OxyContin has been discontinued and is being replaced with a new formula - OxyNeo.
OxyContin would slowly release doses of oxycodone into the body. But to get high quickly, abusers would chew on the tablet, or pulverize it for snorting. Some would even crush the pill and mix it with water, so they could inject it. OxyNEO's formula is supposed to prevent this from happening, though. The tablet is difficult to crush, according to its manufacturer. And if it is combined with water, the mixture becomes a viscous gel, making injection difficult.
And since it's harder to abuse, it's also less valuable on the street. But the changeover in pharmacies is gradual, and thieves know that.
So Raimondi, who's heard of a rash of robberies among her peers in the last little while, has a theory: "My personal view is they're trying to get the last of what's out there before we go to OxyNeo."
The situation has left her and her colleagues feeling helpless. She says she's already spent thousands on security, and police have told her they've done everything they can. And even thought she isn't suggesting police need to do more, she and other pharmacists aren't sure what else to do.
"You put bars up and then they steal a car and drive through. That happened to one pharmacy just recently. Or they come through the roof. Or they burrow through the side of the building."
As a joke, she even put up a sign in the window which says: "Notice to robbers. We've already been cleared out of OxyContin. Go somewhere else!!!"
While the sign isn't staying up, it's an expression of her frustration - a sentiment shared by her colleagues.
"We're all frustrated. We went into this profession thinking we were helping people and it turns out to be a dangerous profession," Raimondi says. "I have young kids and I maybe would think twice about telling them to become a pharmacist."
With files from Fletcher Kent, Global News
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