A Windsor pharmacist says he turns people with forged Fentanyl prescriptions away on a weekly basis.

Windsor police Sgt. Brett Corey has also noticed a slight increase in prescription fraud cases in Windsor.

"We are seeing forged prescriptions. Doctors are writing these prescriptions and people are changing or adding medications or increasing the quantity on the medication," Corey said. "We depend a lot on pharmacies to pick that up and report it to us and also the doctor's office to report it to us."

As CBC Windsor has been reporting, abuse of the powerful painkiller is on the rise in nearby Sarnia now that OxyContin is no longer available.

Tim Brady, who is head of the Essex County Pharmacists Association, said he expects that abuse to continue. He also said many people do legitimately need Fentanyl to ease their chronic pain.

A single patch lasts three days and slowly releases consistent pain control.

'The issue is a societal issue.'—Tim Brady, Essex County Pharmacists Association

"It allows you to have a better quality of life," Brady said. "The problem with any narcotic is that if you take a large enough dose, you can overdose."

Brady said 95 per cent of those using Fentanyl are legitimate pain sufferers and that a small group of addicts and abusers is causing a big problem.

"You're always fearful, you don't want anyone to become an addict, but at the same point you don't want anyone who truly has pain to suffer either, so there's always that fine line you're going back and forth on," Brady said. "If someone wants to get high, they’re going to get high. The issue is a societal issue."

Brady said forging prescriptions has become more difficult during the last year. That's due to a new computer system that lets pharmacies share information with each other. New systems track when and where every prescription has been filled in the province.

Pharmacist Stavros Gavrilidis said the new monitoring system is working well for him. Just last week, Gavrilidis refused to fill someone's prescription for OxyNeo because they had already received medication from another pharmacy just days before.

"It tells you the drug identification number. It also gives you the phone number of the pharmacy that they received it from and it also tells you the quantity and the date. So it's very helpful information," he said.