Court Opinion

ID: 9750024
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 14:13:41.547547+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:01.676136
License: Public Domain

LEE ANN DAUPHINOT, Justice,
concurring.
I write separately because I cannot tell from the well-written majority opinion what offense Appellant was found to have committed and what drug, dangerous drug, controlled substance, alcohol, or stolen property Appellant was found to have possessed. Or was she found to have violated the law by possessing a pill bottle with someone else’s name on its label? If so, I cannot find that offense in our penal code. The record informs us that she was placed on deferred adjudication community supervision for possession of a “dangerous drug.”1 I join the majority because Appellant consented to the search and because she does not challenge the constitutionality of the statutes defining “dangerous drug” and making its possession illegal, statutes that make so little sense that it is difficult to understand how they provide any guidance to law enforcement, the bench, the bar, the phai'macist, or any person of normal perception.
From reading the record and the briefs, I deduce that the prohibited substance, the “dangerous drug,” was naproxen. Na-proxen? Really? The original prescription was filled in April 2000 and was for sixty pills. When the officer stopped Appellant in August 2008, forty-eight pills remained. At that rate of consumption (assuming these pills were being consumed and assuming they were part of the original sixty), it would take another nineteen-plus years for the original prescription to be exhausted.
It should be noted that this “dangerous drug” can be purchased over the counter at local drugstores. Naproxen is sold over the counter as Aleve and Midol Extended Relief. Wikipedia informs us that “[t]he U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved [the use of naproxen sodium] as an over-the-counter (OTC) drug in 1994, where OTC preparations are mainly marketed by Bayer Healthcare under the trade name Aleve and generic store brand formulations.”2
The record and the briefs inform us that this formulation that can readily be purchased over the counter is a dangerous drug. Why? Nothing in the record suggests that the contents of the bottle were tested and proved to be something other than naproxen. Nothing in the record suggests that the naproxen had been combined with another drug. It appears to be plain old naproxen. So why is it a crime for Appellant to possess it?
Section 483.001 of the health & safety code defines a dangerous drug:
“Dangerous drug” means a device or a drug that is unsafe for self-medication and that is not included in Schedules I through V or Penalty Groups 1 through 4 of Chapter 481 (Texas Controlled Substances Act). The term includes a device or a drug that bears or is required to bear the legend:
(A) “Caution: federal law prohibits dispensing without prescription” or “Rx *363only” or another legend that complies with federal law; or
(B) “Caution: federal law restricts this drug to use by or on the order of a licensed veterinarian.”3
This is the law, but what does it mean? Federal law requires a legend on cigarettes.4 Does this mean that because cigarettes require “another legend that complies with federal law,” a cigarette is a dangerous drug? A dangerous drug must be a substance that is “unsafe for self-medication” but that is not otherwise against the law to possess.5 Naproxen is sold over the counter. Is it unsafe for self-medication? Who must testify that it is unsafe for self-medication? Must a pharmacist or some other expert testify to this fact? Apparently the naproxen found in Appellant’s car was a dangerous drug because it was in a prescription bottle. Would it still be a dangerous drug if it had been removed from the bottle?
I note that there is no exception in the possession statute (or, for that matter, the delivery statute6) for family members.7 That is, there is no exception that would allow a parent to pick up a prescription for a small child, or even an adult child, from the pharmacy. There is no exception that would allow an adult child to pick up a prescription for an elderly parent. Nor can wives or husbands pick up prescriptions for their spouses. And apparently parents must leave the dangerous drug in possession of the child because the parent violates the law if the parent exercises care, custody, or control over the dangerous naproxen by putting it on a shelf only the parent can reach. And what about Fido and Fluffy? If the statute is to be complied with, they had better figure out how to pick up their own prescription from the vet and how to dose themselves because their owner cannot possess pet medication.
If we were not required to give words contained in statutes their plain meaning,8 we could read some of these exceptions into the statute. But we are not allowed to create exceptions the legislature has not created.9
I write separately because the majority does not make plain the offense and circumstances of the offense that Appellant was accused of committing. The statutes defining “dangerous drug” and criminalizing the possession thereof do not make sense and raise too many questions about what kind of testimony, expert or otherwise, is required to prove a violation of the law. I also write to urge the legislature to reconsider these statutes that are so poorly written, to rethink the rationale behind making an OTC drug a dangerous drug with no more guidance than the statutes provide, and to place acquisition and storage of prescriptions in a real-world context.

. Tex. Health & Safety Code Ann. §§ 483.001(2), .041 (Vernon 2010).

. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Naproxen, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Naproxen (last visited Jan. 14, 2011).

. Tex. Health & Safety Code Ann. § 483.001(2).

. See 15 U.S.C. § 1333 (2010).

. Tex. Health & Safety Code Ann. § 483.001(2).

. See id. § 483.042.

. See id. § 483.041.

. See Martinez v. State, 323 S.W.3d 493, 503 & n. 58 (Tex.Crim.App.2010).

. See Getts v. State, 155 S.W.3d 153, 158 (Tex.Crim.App.2005) (quoting Lamie v. U.S. Trustee, 540 U.S. 526, 542, 124 S.Ct. 1023, 1034, 157 L.Ed.2d 1024 (2004)).